Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Mormon Christianity: A Sympathetic View

Stephen H. Webb's Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn From the Latter-day Saints (OUP, 2013) has a lot to offer both LDS and non-LDS readers. My acquaintance with Amazon titles on Mormonism makes me think it would have attracted a much larger non-LDS readership had it been titled How I Escaped From Mormon Christianity. Happily for mainstream LDS readers, the book is listed at Deseret Book, where an author search under "Webb" sorted by popularity puts the book just above Melodie Webb's 250 Ways to Connect With Your Family and just below the ebook version of Isabelle Webb's The Grecian Princess. I suppose a title like 12 Ways Mormon Christianity Can Make You Rich would have pushed it higher on the Deseret Book popularity list. All this to say I'm not sure how many from either potential audience will actually read this book. But you should.

Mormon Christianity: A Little Bit Catholic

I'm about a third of the way through Stephen W. Webb's Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn From the Latter-day Saints (OUP, 2013). Webb is a Catholic professor of philosophy and theology turned writer. His Catholic perspective on LDS doctrine and his evident sympathy for the LDS approach to Christianity make this insightful outsider treatment of LDS theology quite refreshing. I will no doubt post a longer discussion of the book in a week or two, but here is a quotation highlighting some similarities between Catholic and Mormon approaches to Christianity (apart from both traditions being the target of historical Protestant animus, of course):

Evangelicals Need Inoculation Too

I hope you have seen the recent public announcement of the initiative to use the Gospel Topics section of LDS.org to essentially do what we have been calling "inoculation" for the last ten years (see here for a list of links to Bloggernacle posts on the topic). The three short video interviews of General Authorities listed at the top of the Gospel Topics page (identified with titles like "How will Gospel Topics be enhanced?" rather than identified as GA interviews) give additional details about the initiative. While there is a lot of ground to cover, this is a very promising development. We should nominate whoever championed this initiative for Mormon of the Year.

Mormons, Evangelicals, and Mockery

I was gratified to read a piece posted at Patheos last week by Timothy Dalrymple titled "Why Evangelicals Should Defend Mormons From Mockery." The argument, of course, runs both ways: neither group should employ mockery as a tactic or quietly cheer its use by third parties when directed against the other. The author is quite frank about the problem, while also noting it is getting better:

High-level evangelical-Mormon conversations are taking place even now and are clearly edifying both sides. Mormon leaders have been receptive to evangelical experts in historical theology, and have learned why the church historically has avoided some of the formulations Mormons use. The trajectory of Mormonism’s development is a positive one. Yet evangelicals have also, before and alongside these more charitable recent efforts, caricatured Mormons and perpetuated falsehoods about the official doctrines and teachings of the LDS Church.

Mormon Peacemakers

And Evangelical peacemakers, too, both discussed in Evangelicals vs. Mormons: Blessed Are the Peacemakers at First Things. The short post touches all the usual bases (How Wide the Divide, the Millet-Johnson partnership, Ravi Zacharias, politics makes strange bedfellows), then details some local activities that have promoted Evangelical-Mormon understanding in the Salt Lake City area. The LDS writer concludes:

It is a powerful thing, we discovered in each other’s churches, to be embraced by people with tears in their eyes who have connected with you as a fellow child of God after years of suspicion and presumption.

A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation: Idaho Falls Edition

I took the two-hour drive to Idaho Falls last night to hear Greg Johnson and Robert Millet present their friendly conversation on Mormons and Evangelicals to an audience of six or seven hundred. Johnson is an Evangelical pastor who runs the Standing Together ministry in Utah; Millet is a Professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU. Together they coauthored Bridging the Divide: The Continuing Conversation Between a Mormon and an Evangelical back in 2007. Their live presentation covers some of the same ground as the book, but also takes questions from the audience.

The Possibility of Joseph Smith

Here's a second post [see Part 1] on Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (OUP, 2009). I didn't find the second and third sections quite as strong as the first section, although I liked Richard Bushman's essay "Joseph Smith and the Creation of the Sacred." But I'll talk a bit about Richard J. Mouw's essay "The Possiblity of Joseph Smith: Some Evangelical Probings." Some of what Mouw has to say rubs me the wrong way, but at the same time I'm grateful that this Evangelical theologian continues to make sincere attempts to engage with Mormonism.

Nope, Not a Cult

John Mark Reynolds posted "On America, land of cults," leading off with this provocative statement: "An American cult is what happens when radical individualism meets religion and philosophy." I was expecting the usual treatment when he got around to the Mormons, but was pleasantly surprised to read the following later in the post.

A Minister Speaks to Mormonism, Faith, and Logic

A Disciples of Christ minister with an LDS girlfriend posting at an LDS group blog: "Faith and Logic: Finding and Navigating an Individual Balance." The short summary: personal religious experience is good, but so is clear thinking; temper your sense of certainty with open discussion and listening.

Mormon Scripture

This is the long overdue second post on Craig Blomberg and Stephen Robinson's How Wide the Divide: A Mormon & an Evangelical in Conversation. [See the first post.] This post talks about the Mormon view of scripture, with reference to the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, volumes of scripture that, along with the Bible, are part of the LDS canon.

The Mormon Trinity

This is the first of several posts on Blomberg and Robinson's How Wide the Divide: A Mormon & an Evangelical in Conversation. The format of the book is its biggest strength -- each chapter contains a joint conclusion in which the authors summarize the exchange, with an emphasis on restating the many points of belief that both share (despite the often confusing use of different terminology by Mormons and Evangelicals). That seems like a nice way to approach an interfaith exchange and accounts, I believe, for the success and continuing relevance of the book.

Three Rules of Religious Understanding

Krister Stendahl died earlier this year (hat tip: Lehi's Library). He was a Swedish scholar and theologian, and also served for a period as the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm. In LDS circles, he is fondly remembered as the author of three rules of religious understanding, which he propounded during public debate critical of a planned LDS temple in Sweden. They are good rules to follow in any religious or interfaith conversation. Here are Stendahl's three rules.

• When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.
• Don't compare your best to their worst.
• Leave room for "holy envy." (By this Stendahl meant that you should be willing to recognize elements in the other religious tradition or faith that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own religious tradition or faith.)

Originally posted with comments at Beliefnet.

Reading About the Divide

At Clean Cut, a short post praising How Wide the Divide?, the first and still, I think, the best Mormon-Evangelical interfaith dialogue book. Says Clean Cut, "I think it should be an absolute required read for any Evangelical and for every Latter-day Saint."

Response to the McDermott-Porter Dialogue

At the Summa Theologica blog, a long commentary on the recent interfaith dialogue exchange between Gerald R. McDermott (a professor of religion) and Bruce D. Porter (an LDS General Authority), recently published at First Things under the predictable title "Is Mormonism Christian?" [The First Things post was discussed last month in a Times & Seasons post.]

Ph.D. versus Sci-Fi

Beliefnet is hosting an online debate of sorts on the topic (and I'm sure you've never seen this one before) "Are Mormons Christian?" Albert Mohler, who holds a Ph.D. (in systematic and historical theology) and is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, titles his post "Mormonism Is Not Christianity." Orson Scott Card, an award-winning science fiction writer and an active Latter-day Saint, replies with "Who Gets to Define 'Christian'?" I'll take one paragraph to talk about Mohler, one paragraph to talk about Card, and one paragraph to talk about the mixed bag of comments to Card's post.