JD Hall on X
Sen. Mike Lee is doing cartwheels of excitement that, with enough political pressure, he got Trump to remove the category “Christian” so as not to offend Mormonism on the Pentagon religion list.
This wasn’t Trump sticking up for Mormons so much as it was Trump offending Christianity, but this is the POTUS who drops F-bombs while praising Allah on Easter morning, so that tracks. But what you might not know is the extent to which Mormon theology drives Lee’s foreign policy, especially in his obsessive and slavish devotion to Israel.
Did you know Mike Lee believes he’s related to the ancient Israelites? True story. Mormons believe they are literal descendants of the tribe of Ephraim or Manasseh. Not spiritually. Not metaphorically. Literally. Through a ceremony called a “patriarchal blessing,” a church official declares your physical tribal lineage, rewriting your genetic ancestry to ancient Israel on the spot.
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism states that “the patriarchal blessings of Latter-day Saints indicate that they are literal, blood descendants of Abraham and of Israel” (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow (New York: Macmillan, 1992), vol. 2, p. 461, “Ephraim.”).
So when Lee votes to give even more billions to Israel in the Senate, he’s not advocating for a foreign nation in his own mind. He’s advocating for his own people. His blood relatives. His own home country.
In his framework, American Christians supporting Israel are gentile sympathizers. Mike Lee is a relative rooting for his home team. But it gets worse. In 1841 – fifty years before Theodor Herzl invented political Zionism – Joseph Smith sent an apostle to climb the Mount of Olives and formally dedicate Palestine for Jewish restoration and an independent Jewish state. Benjamin Netanyahu later wrote about it in his own book. Mormon pro-Israel politics isn’t borrowed from evangelical dispensationalism. Mormons invented American Zionism.
Lee believes that before Jesus returns to Jerusalem in the End Times, he’ll land first at Daviess County in Missouri and be given the “priesthood keys” by the Mormons before then heading on to Israel (Doctrine and Covenants, Section 116, as explained by “Mormon Doctrine,” 2nd ed. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, p. 21). So before Jesus comes back to the Mount of Olives, he’ll make a Mormon pit-stop to get permission right quick.
This is who POTUS just appeased by scuttling “Christian” as a category.
The United States does not need, nor should it want, space cultists in a bizarre, 19th-century polygamist End Times sect to serve in political office, bringing their Zionist religious fetish into our political system. If you have a problem with Muslims serving, you should have a problem with this. As demonic a religion as Islam is, it is infinitely closer to Christianity than Mormonism. It’s at least monotheistic and doesn’t teach Jesus and Satan as brothers, and God is married to a space goddess.
The Federal Government would not let Utah into the Union until it banned polygamy. The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 authorized the Feds to confiscate their property for being polygamous perverts (Edmunds-Tucker Act is 24 Stat. 635, 1887), at which point, the Mormon “church” immediately got a vision from God to end the practice. But in 2020, the State of Utah went back and reduced polygamy from a felony to a citation with the same penalty as a traffic ticket, to allow them to get around the 1887 law.
President Trump found a workaround, which was to de-list “Christian” altogether. This is the corrupting influence of Mormonism in a nation designed in its DNA to be Christian. Congrats, Mike Lee.