Mormons and Muslims—and evangelicals, too

Christian Century, May 31, 2003 by John Dart

One Saturday afternoon this month, a larger-than-expected turnout of 300 religious volunteers in Pasadena, California, packed nearly 10,000 personal hygiene kits for relief shipments to Iraq. A third of the volunteers were Muslims and the rest were church folk--not mainline Christians but members of the Mormon Church.

Items like towels, soap, combs, toothpaste and the kits themselves were provided by the Utah-based church's worldwide Humanitarian Aid Department. But joining the Mormon volunteers were family members from at least six southern California Islamic organizations. Mercy Corps International was to truck that shipment and others into northern Iraq.

The joint Muslim-Mormon effort was hardly a breakthrough interfaith event. Mormons have been long active in regional interreligious councils, notably in western states. Shabbir Mansuri, executive director of the Council on Islamic Education, a research institute in Fountain Valley, California, said he has had contacts for at least six years with Dallin Oaks, a member of the top-level Quorum of the Twelve at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Also, Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena hosted in April an evangelical-Mormon conference, "Thinking Theologically About America," funded by the Louisville Institute. Fuller President Richard J. Mouw said it was fair to say that "evangelicals have been Mormonism's most antagonistic critics." The three-day conference was part of a larger move to "tone down the rhetoric and engage in a more civil dialogue," Mouw said.

Growing religious pluralism in the U.S. has allowed LDS churches to blend in with Buddhists, Hindus and Bahais in interreligious programs once dominated by traditional Christian and Jewish groups. Moreover, analysts say, Mormon leadership has been reexamining its 20th-century mode as the paragon of American patriotism and politically conservative culture. That was evident in LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley's relatively evenhanded speech on war in early April when bombing and battles were under way in Iraq.

"He finally comes down in the end [of his speech] to say we have to support the nation because leaders know more than anyone else," said historian Jan Shipps, a non-Mormon expert on Mormons in America. "But he reminded people that there are mothers with sons on both sides, and he warned about the dangers of imperial ambition," she said.

Citing the Ottoman, Roman, Byzantine and British empires, Hinckley told his church's semiannual conference that there was "a darker side to every one of them" entailing subjugation, repression and astronomical cost in life and treasure. Hinckley said "the peace of the gospel" and a Mormon text that calls followers to "renounce war and proclaim peace" had to be balanced against loyalty to one's government and the need to defend liberty.

Shipps said Hinckley, in leaving open the possibility that there are two sides, gave a speech "so different" from what the Mormon Church said in the World War I and II eras. "This is a reflection of its being a worldwide church, not simply an American church," she said. Its global membership reached 11.7 million by the end of 2002, up from 11.4 million the year before.

The Mormon Church's American presence is growing, too. Stateside totals went from 6,083,924 in 2001 to 6,311,004 in 2002--putting Mormons well beyond the size of the 5.1-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and approaching the official 8.2-million membership of the United Methodist Church.

Mormon scholars regularly give papers at sociology of religion meetings and other academic settings, but conferences focusing on Mormon thought have been rare at mainstream Christian campuses. But preceding the conference at Fuller Seminary, Yale Divinity School brought Mormon and non-Mormon scholars together on March 27-29 to discuss "God, Humanity and Revelation." Shipps, one of the speakers, said the event arose from a proposal by a Mormon graduate student there.

The Fuller conference grew out of longer dialogue spurred by a book co-authored a few years ago by Denver Seminary's Craig Blomberg and Brigham Young University's Stephen Robinson, How Wide the Divide: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation (InterVarsity Press). A small group of evangelical scholars has met with Mormon counterparts in a series of theological discussions.

For Fuller's recent public conference, a historical, comparative-religion analysis of the United States was chosen rather than doctrinal topics risking confrontation. Like Mormons, evangelicals have dealt with "our understanding of the role of the American nation in God's providential economy," Mouw said.

Some BYU officials recently asked the seminary president to review Fuller's policy of barring LDS students, including those interested in the seminary's school of psychology. Mouw said he decided to continue the prohibition--despite endorsing the educational dialogue and continuing to work "side by side in promoting some common goals regarding public morality."