On November 14, 2004, well-known Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias appeared in Salt Lake City’s Mormon Tabernacle. What might have been a remarkable opportunity for interfaith dialogue between Mormons and Christians was seriously damaged when Dr. Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary issued a controversial apology that seemed to portray Evangelicals as commonly bearing false witness against Mormons. Evangelicals present at the event, even some of those sitting on the stage, went away with the clear impression that Mouw was aiming his criticism at them, and excluding only the small group of out-of-towners brought in by Greg Johnson’s ministry, Standing Together, which sponsored the event.
Let me make it clear that I agree that some Evangelicals have certainly been unkind to Mormons and have been guilty of inaccurately portraying Mormon beliefs. But this does not characterize the attitudes and actions of most evangelical churches and ministries, which is what made Mouw’s blanket apology inappropriate.
In the days following the event Ravi’s powerful preaching was radically downplayed, as Mouw and his apology moved to center stage. The LDS Church News carried an article entitled “Ravi Zacharias Speaks at the Tabernacle,” that dedicated more than a third of its three columns to Mouw’s remarks and only a single paragraph at the end to Ravi’s message. The official LDS Church web-page reported the event as if Richard Mouw had been the main, and indeed the only speaker at the event, making no mention of Ravi Zacharias at all. I include here the entire story as it appeared on the official LDS Church website (www.LDS.org/newsroom) on 29 Nov. 2004:
Evangelical Calls for Greater Understanding. Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, one of the largest in North America, spoke at Salt Lake Tabernacle November 14 during an ‘Evening of Friendship.’ At the event Mr. Mouw said, ‘I am now convinced that we evangelicals have often seriously misrepresented the beliefs and practices of the Mormon community. …We have told you what you believe without making a sincere effort first of all to ask you what you believe.’
The story is accompanied by a photograph of Dr. Mouw along
with a link to Beliefnet.com, where his entire remarks on
that occasion are found under the heading: “‘We Have Sinned
Against You.’ A leading evangelical speaks at the Mormon
Tabernacle and says evangelicals have spread lies about LDS
beliefs.”
Richard Mouw is credited with posting the remarks, but the
introduction speaks of Mouw in the third person. In that
introduction the Southern Baptists are specifically named as
representing (apparently) the kind of thing Mouw was
attacking in his remarks. This despite the fact that South
East Baptist Church was one of the sponsors of the
Tabernacle event, and its Pastor, Mike Gray, was included
among those seated on the stage.
It’s hard, in light of this reporting, not to view the LDS
Church as somewhat self-serving in its backing of Ravi’s
appearance. Acting as if it wished to engender good
relations between Mormons and Evangelicals before the event
(which was co-sponsored by the Richard L. Evans Chair of
Religious Studies at BYU), the LDS Church seemed to quickly
drop any interest in Ravi once it was over.
Some Christians in Utah were surprised and disappointed by
the apparent bad faith reflected in the LDS Church’s
post-event coverage; others, including myself, expected it
on the basis of the conviction that, contrary to the belief
and hope of many Evangelicals, the LDS Church does not
appear ready for, nor does it seem to really desire,
authentic dialogue with Evangelicals. What the LDS Church
certainly does seem to desire is mainline respectability. It
is clearly interested in finding room at its events for
those Evangelicals who are willing to publicly disparage
their own brethren, and so lend a hand to its own project of
marginalizing (rather than interacting with) careful and
credible critics like Jerald and Sandra Tanner, the
Institute for Religious Research (IRR), and others. As such,
the Mormon Church appears to be interested in “dialoguing”
only with Evangelicals who lack an in-depth knowledge of
Mormon history and doctrine, and who are thus more likely to
take at face value the representations of its PR people.
This was dramatically illustrated for me at the 2004
regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and
American Association of Religion held at BYU. After the
event Dr. James Wakefield and I were talking with another
Evangelical scholar visiting from Fuller Theological
Seminary. All three of us had presented papers. Suddenly a
senior Mormon scholar and apologist very deliberately and
ceremoniously reached his hand between Dr. Wakefield and me
in order to introduce himself to the scholar from Fuller. He
displayed no interest whatever in speaking to Dr. Wakefield
or myself, this despite the fact that he had sat intently
taking extensive notes during my entire paper, and also,
that I had recently published an article in Dialogue: A
Journal of Mormon Thought that had interacted with, and
challenged, some of his writings.
Many pastors in Utah, including those supportive of the
Tabernacle event were deeply disappointed by Dr. Mouw’s
apology. On December 3, 2004, some twenty-five pastors and
other Christian ministers met with Standing Together
director Greg Johnson to discuss the event. A number of
those present (including myself) had come from ministries
that had financially supported the event. Some had even been
present on the stage during the event. There was, I think it
is fair to say, a solid majority that felt Dr. Mouw’s
apology was both ill-advised and inappropriate; a
significant number of those present (again including myself)
felt it was highly inappropriate.
After Greg Johnson had assured them that there had been no
way to know beforehand that Mouw would make his unfortunate
remarks, the gathered pastors’ naturally expressed surprise
at learning that the faculty of Salt Lake Theological
Seminary (SLTS) had communicated with Dr. Mouw in August
2004 and expressed concern that he avoid following the
pattern he had established in writing and public events
during the past few years of disparaging earlier Christian
efforts to reach Mormons for Christ. Regrettably, Dr. Mouw
ignored the SLTS faculty’s concern. Nearly all those present
at the meeting understood Mouw’s accusation to be directed
at ministers in Utah in general.
Unfortunately, Dr. Mouw’s disparaging remarks towards his
fellow Evangelicals at the Tabernacle are not the first
example of this kind of behavior in an event sponsored by
Standing Together. The difficulty is that Evangelicals
associated with that ministry have developed unhealthy,
lopsided relationships with the Mormon apologists. Several
years ago I came up with a name for this “evangelistic
strategy” – the “Pander/Slander” method: “If you want to
pander to the Mormon apologists not ready for real dialogue,
the cost is going to be a willingness to slander the
Christian brethren that went before you.” Anyone who has
read How Wide the Divide? by Evangelical Craig Blomberg and
Mormon Stephen Robinson, a project spurred on by Standing
Together’s Greg Johnson, will have noticed that Mormon
scholar Stephen Robinson very quickly wraps himself in a
cloak of victim privilege and makes sure Blomberg
understands he is going to regard any challenges to his
idiosyncratic expressions of Mormon doctrine as persecution.
He acts, in other words, as a victim-bully. Once the book was
out there, anyone who criticized Blomberg for not
challenging Robinson’s evasions was denounced by Mormon
apologists. So the cloak of victim privilege was thrown over
the shoulders of Blomberg too. So also now with Richard Mouw
and Standing Together.
In saying this I must stress that Craig Blomberg is an
excellent scholar and the fact that he behaved in a more
scholarly and gentlemanly manner than Robinson did in that
exchange should surely not be held against him.
As early as 2002 I cautioned Greg Johnson against belittling
earlier Christian efforts at reaching Mormons as a way of
buying credibility with Mormon apologists. In 2001 I
similarly cautioned Carl Mosser and Paul Owen, two of the
editors of The New Mormon Challenge, a work with a Foreword
by Richard Mouw, in which he again declares himself
“ashamed” of fellow Christians who have labored in the field
before him.
Acting, in my view, with similar lack of good faith in
relation to the publication of that book, the Mormons first
pretended to be supportive of the project and then quickly
panned it afterwards as just another Anti-Mormon effort. Not
only so, but after promising to appear at a public
book-launching event in Salt Lake City (The New Mormon
Challenge Conference), the major Mormon participants
cancelled out at the last minute, leaving only the
idiosyncratic Mormon maverick lawyer-theologian-apologist
Blake Ostler to represent the Mormon side. When the FARMS
Review of Books came out with its take on The New Mormon
Challenge in the winter of 2002, one of its authors, Louis Midgely, quoted one of the principles set out in Mormon
apologist Hugh Nibley’s 1963 “How to Write an Anti-Mormon
Book,” against the book’s editors:
‘A benign criticism of your predecessors will go far towards confirming your own preeminence in the field. Refer gently but firmly,’ Nibley admonishes, ‘to the bias, prejudices, and inadequate research, however unconscious or understandable, of other books on the subject.’ It should be noted that Mosser and Owen began their venture into Anti-Mormonism with an essay in which they neatly positioned themselves to come to the rescue of the evangelicals overwhelmed by the ‘new Mormon challenge,’ by doing what previous writers have lacked the skill and knowledge to accomplish.1
Midgely’s comments are interesting. Prior to the release of
the book, F.A.R.M.S. had singled out Mosser and Owen for
high acclaim as if they were the only Evangelicals that ever
deserved the name “scholar,” even at the time when neither
had their doctorates. It had even re-released and praised
the article Midgely now damns as “Anti-Mormon.” More than a
year before this review I warned Mosser and Owen that they
were being used and that all the apparent friendship and
support the Mormon apologists pretended to be giving them
then would suddenly vanish the moment they ceased being
useful. I had hoped I was being too cynical, that there
might have been a glimmer of something real in the Mormon
apologists’ relationship with Mosser and Owen. Sadly, my
fears subsequently appear to have been confirmed.
Mosser and Owen are fine scholars who should not be
condemned for being naïve. They are young and it is surely
forgivable that they would have wanted to assume that the
trusted leaders of a religious organization that claims to
represent Jesus Christ on the earth would act with greater
ethical integrity in its relationship with outsiders. Alas,
we must all live and learn.
In any case, The New Mormon Challenge did represent an
important bluff caller. For a long time previous to its
release Mormons had been complaining that no one with
scholarly credentials had critically and carefully
interacted with their scholarship. My own position on that
question was that it was incumbent on nobody to interact
with the work of Mormon apologists until they produced
something of real scholarly significance that could stand on
its own outside Mormon circles. I had read a good deal of it
and found that in the areas in which I had particular
expertise, their work was, with a few exceptions,
appallingly inadequate. The New Mormon Challenge at least
provided exactly the scholarly interaction the Mormon
apologists wanted, and yet since its release they have shown
themselves to be as disinterested in real interaction as
before. Their only long-term interest seems to be with
Evangelicals who, lacking a sufficient understanding of
their teaching, will pander to them without challenging them
with anything deeper than broad allusions to “serious
differences that divide us.”
With Dr. Mouw’s most recent apology at the Tabernacle, I am
concerned that Standing Together will become fixed in its
commitment to a strategy of disparaging earlier efforts to
reach Mormons. If this appearance is correct, it is not a
healthy development.
Dr. Mouw’s troubling comments at the recent Tabernacle event
have damaged not only his own credibility among ministers in
Utah, but also the credibility of the leadership of Standing
Together. This is regrettable because their role in
fostering Evangelical-Mormon dialogue is an important one.
Many Christians in Utah and elsewhere would long for an
apology on the part of Dr. Mouw to Utah pastors and
mainstream Evangelical ministries to the LDS community
affected by his comments. This is especially so in view of
his planned participation in a Joseph Smith bicentennial
event at the Library of Congress event in May 2005. Robert
Millet at BYU has had a leading role in planning this event
and the non-Mormon scholars who are participating in it have
apparently been carefully hand-picked for what they will not
say rather than for what they will say. We should be very
troubled if Mouw insists on offering another one of his
blanket apologies at that event, although I am concerned
that he may very well do so.
Meanwhile, I would urge those at BYU and the Library of
Congress who are planning the May 2005 Joseph Smith
Bicentennial event to include the participation of
legitimate Mormon and non-Mormon scholars whose work is not
necessarily “faith promoting.” My desire as a representative
of the latter group is to participate in dialogue that is
not only respectful, but also authentic.
Note
1. Louis Midgely, “Faulty Topography,”
FARMS Review of
Books, 14.1-2 (2002) 148.