Who are Christians?

There's an excellent article, "What is Tolerance?" by Bruce Nielson, one of the writers of the LDS Blog, Mormon Matters. One of the things Bruce said that caught my attention was how "the word 'tolerance' is in the process of no longer meaning 'to tolerate' something. Instead, we regularly tell people they are being 'intolerant' if they disagree with us or if we don't like what they are saying."

This reminded me of a similar explanation of the word "Christians" from the book "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. In the preface Lewis explained how some people objected to his "use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity.... We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors want us to use it" (HarperCollins edition, 2001 xii). He then went on to explain this concept with the history of the word 'gentleman' and how it originally was used to describe a man who had a coat of arms and owned land. He said:

"When you called someone 'a gentleman' you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not 'a gentleman' you were not insulting him, but giving information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an M.A. But then there came people who said... 'Ah, but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should?... To call a man 'a gentleman' in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is 'a gentleman' becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's attitude to that object.... As a result, gentleman is now a useless word.... [and] if anyone... wants to use it in its old sense, he cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose.

"Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say 'deepening', the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word."

C.S. Lewis then explained how the "name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts 11:26) to 'the disciples', to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles."

There's a time in the history of the Book of Mormon (before Christ's visit to the Americas) when the people who believed in Jesus Christ were called Christians:

"And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come" (Alma 46:15-16).

Thus when people say Mormons aren't Christian, it has more to do with their thoughts about our religion and not the fact that we believe in Christ and are his 'disciples'.