Evangelicals and Mormons dialogue

From Richard Ostling in Christianity Today...

Robert Millet would do things differently if he were carefully strategizing how fellow Mormons could best pursue interfaith contacts.

"I probably wouldn't have started with evangelicals," said the Brigham Young University (BYU) professor, considering the antagonism between the two groups since Mormonism's beginnings. "If we can have more civil and respectful relations with evangelicals, we can do it with anyone."

Not many years ago, evangelicals would have deemed substantive contact with Mormonism equally improbable. Yet since 2000, small scholarly teams of Mormons led by Millet and evangelical teams led by Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw have managed to hold 17 intense, closed-door dialogue sessions....

The talks are not the only breakthrough. LDS president Thomas S. Monson and his two counselors permitted Standing Together, an alliance of 90 Utah evangelical churches, to use the historic Salt Lake City Tabernacle for a September 13 revival meeting. Throngs of evangelicals and Mormons enjoyed gospel songs and prayed together....

Two dialogue books from evangelical publishers were pivotal. Blomberg laid early groundwork for closer relations in 1997 when he co-wrote How Wide the Divide?: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation (InterVarsity Press) with BYU's Stephen Robinson. In 2005, Mouw contributed a friendly foreword and afterword to Millet's A Different Jesus?: The Christ of the Latter-day Saints (Eerdmans).

I read the Blomberg/Robinson book and it was key in changing the way I related to Mormonism. (I have a similar but more recent book by Millet and McDermott-- Claiming Christ-- but have not yet read it.) When I was in Texas for grad school, I met a lot of Mormons, studied it thoroughly, rejected it, but was attracted to debate the "weirder" aspects of the faith and to argue about the veracity of its additional Scriptures.

In contrast, the Bloomberg/Robinson book focused on core doctrines-- rather than the secondary (but still important) stuff. I read the book and then read/studied through it again with a Mormon colleague who was the primary teacher in his local ward. He attended my Bible study on campus. And as far as I could tell, he is a Christian.

Another influential data point was a 2001 Barna survey on key doctrinal beliefs by self-professed religious identity. In that work, Barna found that Mormons were as likely as Catholics-- and twice as likely as Episopalians-- to embrace the core doctrines of the evangelical Christian faith. After that, I grew fond of joking: "if the Mormons are a cult, what are the Episcopalians?"

In any case, all of this points to the need to talk with individuals about their faith-- rather than relying exclusively or even mostly on what their denomination "believes".

The rest of the article gets to this tension:

...preceded in 2004 by LDS officialdom's remarkable go-ahead for an address in the Tabernacle by well-known apologist Ravi Zacharias. His theologically orthodox presentation of Christianity, which some Mormons attended, was overshadowed by Mouw's introduction. He declared that "we evangelicals have often seriously misrepresented" Mormon beliefs and practices. "We have sinned against you," he said.

This offended many evangelicals, particularly those in ministries dedicated to opposing LDS doctrine and seeking converts. For instance, Bill McKeever, veteran director of the Utah-based Mormonism Research Ministry, attended the Zacharias address and issued a lengthy rebuttal to Mouw. McKeever says while he doesn't oppose dialogues as such, they must be "brutally honest" in addressing historical and theological problems.

Mouw explains that individual Mormons may have "genuine faith in Christ" but that he "could never give endorsement to Mormonism as a Christian theology" due to its "significant departures from the Christian tradition and Christian orthodoxy, by its own testimony." Likewise, Johnson is "open to the possibility" that individual Mormons "have a relationship with Christ," but said, "Mormonism does not legitimately receive the label Christian."...

Mouw is not alone in perceiving that Millet and other "neo-orthodox" thinkers at BYU have been migrating closer to belief in salvation by grace alone apart from human works. However, McKeever contends that Millet and other BYU professors may "want to sound evangelical" but that they carry no doctrinal authority, and that traditional LDS beliefs still emanate from headquarters....