It sounds like your experience in the church was very different from mine, but it doesn’t erase the fact that the church has always officially identified itself as Christian. That’s been the case since 1830, when it was organized as The Church of Christ, and reaffirmed in 1838 as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
You’re right that there are parts of our history that are hard to reconcile, like past restrictions on priesthood and rhetoric about other faiths. The church has since disavowed those positions and made clear they don’t represent current doctrine. But none of that changes the central point: our faith has always been built on Jesus Christ as Savior and Redeemer, which makes it fundamentally Christian.
It sounds like your experience in the church was very different from mine, but it doesn’t erase the fact that the church has always officially identified itself as Christian. That’s been the case since 1830, when it was organized as The Church of Christ, and reaffirmed in 1838 as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
You’re right that there are parts of our history that are hard to reconcile, like past restrictions on priesthood and rhetoric about other faiths. The church has since disavowed those positions and made clear they don’t represent current doctrine. But none of that changes the central point: our faith has always been built on Jesus Christ as Savior and Redeemer, which makes it fundamentally Christian.