Several of the top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have PhDs from Ivy League schools. If you want to call those groups cults I will not argue with you.īut Brigham Young University is a world-class educational institution, with professors who’ve earned doctorates from some of the best universities in the world. They don’t sponsor a law school or offer graduate-level courses in world religions. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, haven’t established a university. Nor do they promote the kind of scholarship that works alongside others in pursuing the truth. They don’t like to engage in serious, respectful give-and-take dialogue with people with whom they disagree. Their adherents are taught to think that they are the only ones who benefit from divine approval. Religious cults are very much us-versus-them. It’s worth noting that people have wondered whether I belong to a cult, with a reporter once asking me: “Evangelicalism, is that like Scientology and Hare Krishna?” I have studied them and taught about them for a long time. But we have also found that on some matters we are not as far apart as we thought we were. We evangelicals and our Mormon counterparts disagree about some important theological questions. We have talked for many hours about key theological issues: the authority of the Bible, the person and work of Christ, the Trinity, “continuing revelations” and the career of Joseph Smith, the 19th century founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), better known as the Mormon Church. Because Romney is Mormon, they say, to cast a vote for him is to promote the cause of a cult.įor the past dozen years, I’ve been co-chairing, with Professor Robert Millet of Brigham Young University – the respected Mormon school - a behind-closed-doors dialogue between about a dozen evangelicals and an equal number of our Mormon counterparts. Some prominent evangelical pastors have been telling their constituents not to support Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidential nomination.
Mouw is President of Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical school in Pasadena, California.
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