EAllusion wrote:Daniel Peterson, at least as long as I've known him, is infatuated with evangelical apologetics and tends to incorporate the themes and arguments of evangelical apologetics in the bulk of his work.
The baseline for LDS apologetics is one of "Them vs Protestantism." Even here, it is mostly a baseline of "athiest-ism vs Protestantism." The LDS church, even if they deny it, wants to be recognized as a mainstream protestant faith. The term "Mormon Christian" was a common correction on the old boards to a EV, like myself, from DCP and others.
To both the LDS church, and vocal atheists, Evangelicals, for lack of a better term are "the boggie man." I know this from experience. Even though I rarely bring up my faith here, there are many here that have a need to force it into any argument about most any subject.
Dan's earliest battles were those of defending the LDS church as a Christian church with EV's.
We have to also understand that the Mormonism has it roots deep into Protestantism. The early converts were protestants, and believed in the Trinity. The evil church in the 1st vision was the protestant church. And maybe most importantly the Book of Mormon was written with a protestant baseline, just tweaked and twisted a bit...then later dismantled by revelations by Joseph Smith as his story grew.
Interesting subject.