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[quote=Anonymous]I was Mormon for most of my life.  Mormons think of themselves as Christians, but they disagree with the Nicene Creed, so their beliefs would have made them “anathema” to the leaders of christianity in in the first century.

It depends on how you define “Christian.”

Here is the original text of the the Nicene Creed from AD 325:
 The (Original) Nicene Creed of 325
We believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages.
Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made,
of one essence with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became man.
And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate,
and suffered, and was buried.
And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; whose Kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit.
But as for those who say, There was when He was not, and, before being born He was not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is from a different hypostasis or substance, or is created, or is subject to alteration or change – these the Catholic Church anathematizes.

There are several things here Mormons disavow.  First, the idea of the Trinity that God the Father and God the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same.  Mormons definitely teach that each of those are separate entities.  They also don’t technically believe that God is “almighty” (or “omnipotent” as it is also translated), because they believe that there is a fundamental law that preexists God.  That good is good and evil is evil and that God is powerful because He is so fully aligned with good as to be able to master the universe that is based on this goodness.  The idea that God is omnipotent implies that good is whatever he says it is.  There is no fundamental good that he cannot alter merely by willing it to be so.

All That said, you can tell that at the time of it’s writing, there were competing ideas about Christ and his origins and the nature of God, because they specifically disavow the idea that anything existed before Christ/God.  So a Mormon would say that the idea of the Trinity was not a fundamental doctrine taught by Christ, but was a doctrine of men, added later and perpetuated by those seeking unjust authority.

As for the idea that Mormons only read “their own scriptures” and not the Bible, that is laughable.  Mormons study scriptures on a four-year rotation, with one year being the Old Testament, then the New Testament, then the Book of Mormon, then concluding with the Doctrine and Covenants (which is essentially the writings of Joseph Smith and the early history of the church prior to his death).  In high school, Mormon teens attend an additional scripture class 5 days a week during the school year and each year they study one of the 4 books above.  Then in college they are encouraged to attend additional “Institute” classes that cover the same material (and not just at BYU).  I had read the KJV cover to cover before I reached adulthood, and continued to study it in particular and alongside Mormon-specific texts throughout my time in the LDS Church.  Compared to some of my friends of charismatic faiths growing up in the “Bible” Belt, I was a downright biblical scholar![/quote]

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