Over the 194 year history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there have been many warm moments of affection and respect between Latter-day Saints and other Christian faiths. But there has also been some lingering hostility and suspicion.
That’s what makes the effort among scholars and leaders to deepen understanding in recent decades so significant and heartwarming. One early example of bridge-building was evangelical scholar Craig L. Blomberg’s friendly dialogue and associated 1997 book with the late Latter-day Saint scholar Stephen E. Robinson, “How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation.” Former Dean of Religious Education at Brigham Young University Robert Millet, alongside Pastor Greg Johnson of Standing Together Ministries, also emerged as enduring fixtures in modeling and encouraging more openhearted exchange between faiths in a series of joint presentations across many years.
Their eventual book in 2007 was entitled, “Bridging the Divide: The Continuing Conversation between a Mormon and an Evangelical.” In 2015, Millet edited another book with evangelical theologian Richard Mouw, “Talking Doctrine: Mormons and Evangelicals in Conversation.”
Interfaith engagement among leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been extensive and growing over the last decade. In addition, there’s a noticeable flowering of other meaningful dialogues taking place between Latter-day Saint scholars and their Catholic, Muslim and Jewish colleagues.
Yet what’s perhaps especially unique about the evangelical-Latter-day Saint dialogue is its duration. The Deseret News reached out to Johnson and Millet to learn more about how this relationship came to be. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Deseret News: How did you both get involved in interfaith conversations?
Robert Millet: Even though I was raised in Louisiana, with Baptist, Methodist and Pentecostal relatives, I didn’t have many serious conversations with them, or read much of what they believed. But when I was appointed dean of religious education at BYU, Elder Neal A. Maxwell encouraged me very strongly to begin building bridges of understanding and friendship with other faiths.
So, that’s what I did. In doing so, I lost all forms of shyness. I remember finishing a book by prominent Catholic Richard John Newhouse, and thinking, “This is great. I’d like to meet him and talk more.” So, I called him. “You don’t know me, but I have read a number of your books. I will be in New York in a couple of weeks, and I wonder if we could meet?”
He responded positively, and we had a delightful, hour-long conversation. At the end of our chat, he said: “It’s long past time for Latter-day Saint Christians and Nicene Christians to begin talking respectfully with one another.”
That’s just one example. In all those years I contacted total strangers, I found it interesting that no one ever said “No.”
Greg Johnson: I was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a teenager, I embraced born-again Christianity after attending a youth Bible camp. Due to my own history, I’ve long been passionate about these two faiths engaging our theological differences through a friendly dialogue rather than hostile debating.
After Bob and I met, it would have been natural to just move on and say, “Well hey, that was enjoyable; I appreciate your time, but we’ve done all the talking we need to do.” We didn’t plan to start a Bob and Greg roadshow, we just kept getting invitations. We never billed ourselves, promoted ourselves, or asked people to put up posters. It just kept going. As Bob and I would both say, the hand of God has been over this.
DN: As you look back over your experience talking together and encouraging interfaith dialogue for so many years, what are some of the most important lessons learned?
RM: The most important thing I learned — and this didn’t take long — was the quality of people we were working with: God-fearing, Christ-affirming people. It wasn’t difficult to see that good things were happening throughout the world, through all religious persuasions. We felt that again and again.
Elder Orson Whitney said in his 1928 general conference address, “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of His great and marvelous work. … It is too vast, too arduous for any one people.” He added that we have no quarrel with those of other faiths who love the Lord. “They are our partners in a certain sense.”
GJ: The spirit of our dialogue is to honor and recognize theological differences, without fear and certainly without minimizing or distracting from those differences. But people can often draw very small theological circles and cry “heretic, heretic.”
This isn’t a liberal dialogue, which would say “all truth is equally valid” and “believe what you believe, we’re all good.” No, I think the evangelical-Latter-day Saint dialogue has shown itself as a robust, healthy dose of both conviction and civility, without compromising on truth or doctrine.
Some people might think that we’re too convicted and not very civil, while others might think that we’re too civil. But I’m confident we’ve upheld what Martin Marty calls “convicted civility” throughout our public and private dialogue. Paul encourages the same thing in asking, “Am I your enemy because I tell you the truth?”
DN: How has your interfaith work affected how you see and feel toward those on the other side?
GJ: I did not enter this conversation with a hostile heart. And my heart as a follower of Jesus Christ is heavy for evangelicals who want to throw blows and cast insults. That’s how my heart has changed over the years of my ministry in Utah. I wanted to see dialogue replace debate between our faiths and remove the spirit of confrontation in our conversations. My love for Bob, for President Jeffrey R. Holland, my friends at BYU and the Latter-day Saint people in general is a personal life passion and something I consider a calling from God.
RM: I’ve enjoyed this dialogue as a way to learn more. Not only was I reading anything I could get my hands on, but also having worthwhile conversations with other people. And it was fun — we were learning a lot about them, they were learning a lot about us.
It was a new awakening for me to be able to discover commonalities that surprised me; saying, you know, “that’s not very different at all from what we teach.” I also discovered so many evangelical writers who express things so well that I found myself quoting them sometimes in my books.
GJ: I’ve enjoyed similar things in the other direction. I once had a chance to share with Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf my admiration of his 2015 conference talk, “The Gifts of Grace” and how I had passed it along to many evangelical leaders as an illustration of how grace is being talked about in the Latter-day Saint community these days.
DN: How has your work with other faiths been viewed by fellow members of your own faiths? Have they responded positively or negatively?
RM: On the whole, I would say that 90% of Latter-day Saints felt that what we were doing was just great. Every once in a while, someone would raise concerns. But overall, we’ve had very few negative reactions.
GJ: I’ve experienced a lot of support from evangelicals over the last 25 years. However, I’ve also experienced suspicion from people over the years too — with maybe 70-80% of evangelical folks supporting our approach, if I had to put a number to it.
Some are suspicious that any kind of friendly interaction or conversation with Latter-day Saints has to be some kind of a compromise. Yet even if someone was my enemy spiritually speaking, I’m supposed to love them according to the Bible. In this, Bob and I have both felt like we’re standing on a solid scriptural foundation.
To those who have been more critical of these dialogues — fearing them as theologically compromising — I just keep saying, “I don’t see it?”
DN: I imagine you’ve also experienced resistance within the dialogues themselves at times?
RM: Over the 20 years, we had a few members of our dialogue who felt strongly that we should be involved in fiercely defending our own religion and showing our friends of other faiths just how wrong they are. Because we held to our principles, they gradually disengaged from the dialogue.
GJ: We often hear there are two things you can’t really afford to talk about in a public setting — politics and religion. Well, I can’t speak for politics, but we’ve learned and demonstrated that we can talk about religion. It’s been amazing to see how people can come together in a spirit of respect and appreciation and love when your intent is not to prove the others wrong.
I would also add, if you don’t have a relationship before examining theology, it’s very easy to be offended and be suspicious of the approach — to think the worst of your counterpart, and not take them seriously.
We have tried to show our friendship as a model — not “the model” — simply a model of two people getting together and talking, and letting the Lord have the ultimate role in leading and guiding us. We earnestly talk about the differences and the similarities between our two faiths, while letting God do the ultimate transformational work in us and in others, whatever that needs to be.
If there was something Bob had that I could glean from and learn from, I wanted to be open to that. And vice versa, if there was something I had that he could take from me, I wanted him to embrace it. We both became open to that way of thinking, and we were not afraid of truth, wherever we would find it.
DN: Have you seen any evidence that some of the false stereotypes and misunderstandings between faiths have been allayed in the last two decades?
GJ: When I first came to Utah as a young pastor in 1992 from Denver Seminary, the tone between Latter-day Saints and evangelicals was mostly confrontational — “us vs. them.” There was so much more fear and antagonism in the past.
In certain segments of our evangelical culture, some may still be suspicious. But in so many other ways, changes have taken place. For instance, I think Utah evangelicals are more kind and more willing to build authentic friendships with Latter-day Saints.
We all began to understand that confrontation, hostility and name-calling was just not an effective way to share our faith. There is something that needs to take place before any deeper exploration of religious questions and differences can take place — namely, building bridges of friendship.
Compared to 30 years ago, I think the evangelicals of Utah today find themselves loving their Latter-day Saint neighbors and friends, and very thankful and grateful to live in a state with the kind of morality embraced here. Evangelicals in the state today are more likely to be interactive at community parties and get-togethers. And I think that the Latter-day Saint community has done the same; there’s been a great effort in neighborhood gatherings, things like that.
RM: Only rarely have I had negative experiences. I was once invited onto a radio show to explain our beliefs. Unknown to me, the host had also invited an antagonist to be a part of the program. A question would be posed by the host and this other man would jump into the conversation and take over: “How can you possibly be a part of a religion that …”
After about 10 minutes, I said, “Look, it’s obvious here that what you’ve put together is an ambush, not a conversation. I have better things to do with my time. Good day.” I hung up.
Did that happen very often? No.
DN: Would you say this softening is more than just a local phenomenon exclusive to Utah?
GJ: Yes, it is. These dialogues have strengthened channels of communication.
Major denominational leaders have forged better relationships with Latter-day Saint leaders. I had the privilege of hosting a podcast with Dr. George Wood of the Assemblies of God and President Jeffrey R. Holland on our “Building Bridges” podcast, and they couldn’t have been more kind and loving to one another.
Does that spirit trickle down to every local church and evangelical in every region of our country? No. But I think a growing body of leaders and scholars are supportive of this kind of dialogue. So overall, I would say we’ve made a lot of progress.
RM: Yes, leaders of our church have been invited to participate in national and world conferences far more in the last 15-20 years than ever before. One leader of a family symposium said to me: “As we were discussing who we should invite, our team agreed that we simply couldn’t have this kind of conference without your church being involved.” There have been more and more of those moments.
DN: As the world gets darker and more chaotic, do you think we’ll see each other as greater allies?
RM: When it comes to family issues and religious freedom, we Latter-day Saints have many friends in Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and Islam. When we feel a need to join hands in combating creeping secularism, doctrinal differences are often set aside. There is simply too much at stake. We are “co-belligerents” in the fight against evil.
GJ: Our culture has certainly turned against traditional Christian values. As that keeps happening, we’re all realizing that we have to work together.
The fact that we have been able to work together on pro-traditional marriage efforts has been very positive and evangelicals have been grateful for our partnership with the church. I also find it very interesting when we are talking about cultural issues, that we evangelicals speak of “our Latter-day Saint and conservative Catholic friends” more and more these days.
DN: Are you optimistic about the future for evangelical-Latter-day Saint relationships?
GJ: Our conflicts have existed for over 100 years and our differences won’t be conquered in 30 years. But I do think the snowball is rolling down the right side of the hill, and it’s getting bigger and bigger. Goodwill is growing. Kindness is growing. And respect is growing among our two communities.
Our interfaith student dialogues on campus have never felt more sturdy. Our visits to BYU and Institutes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for dialogue events have been amazing. And consistently, the responses from both Latter-day Saints and evangelical university students have been incredibly positive.
These students are not afraid of each other, they’re not thinking the worst of each other. They still want to engage and influence one another over theological beliefs, but they are doing it with graciousness, respect and kindness.
RM: Yes, several hundreds of evangelical and Latter-day Saint students have participated in these dialogues over the last 21 years. And where are they now? They live all over the world. They have enduring friendships with Latter-day Saints and simply don’t look at each other the same way their parents did.
During all this time, we’ve also encouraged our dear evangelical friends to see us with new eyes. They may not see us as the same kind of Christians they are, but then again, we aren’t the same kind. We’re Christian, but different, and we hope to have a distinctive contribution to make within the Christian world.
DN: Is there anything else you’d like to share about what you’ve observed in this experience together?
GJ: I believe that we have enjoyed the providential divine hand of God, guiding us in a way that it would be unfair to say, “we figured this all out and made a plan and designed things to turn out the way they have.”
RM: There were many times in those dialogue meetings where the Spirit of the Lord was very strong — where we felt a kind of superintending presence, where we sensed, every one of us, that something important was going on.
There was a tremendous amount of love felt between us. There were those moments where the divide wasn’t so great between us — where we could agree that there are, indeed, other things that matter most, namely that we are all brothers and sisters and children of the same Father in heaven.
