NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — When Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints missionaries arrived in this mostly Christian east African nation 44 years ago, they were met with suspicion and some hostility. While many Christian churches urge their faithful to evangelize, LDS missionaries were more aggressive, going door to door and even approaching people on the street.Other Christian groups shunned the LDS as cultic and anti-Christian. In particular, they disapproved of the LDS’ rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity, in which God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are believed to be three persons in one deity.
“Their mode of evangelism and doctrine were viewed by mainstream churches as veering away from the evangelical mainstream doctrine,” said the Rev. Martin Munyao, a senior lecturer at the Daystar University in Kenya.
But while the Rev. John Gaturo Gatu, an educator in the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, agreed that Christians considered the LDS to fall outside the faith because of its non-Trinitarian doctrine, he said, “There is a generation which is looking for something different.”
Indeed, the LDS church, which gained legal approval from the Kenyan government to operate as a religion in 1991, is finding wide acceptance and now has 57 congregations and two missions in the cou …
Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source
“Their mode of evangelism and doctrine were viewed by mainstream churches as veering away from the evangelical mainstream doctrine,” said the Rev. Martin Munyao, a senior lecturer at the Daystar University in Kenya.
But while the Rev. John Gaturo Gatu, an educator in the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, agreed that Christians considered the LDS to fall outside the faith because of its non-Trinitarian doctrine, he said, “There is a generation which is looking for something different.”
Indeed, the LDS church, which gained legal approval from the Kenyan government to operate as a religion in 1991, is finding wide acceptance and now has 57 congregations and two missions in the cou …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]