ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

Note: This is part 2 of a multi-part post. See the end of the post for links to the other parts.

Before I can continue the story of my interfaith marriage, I need to briefly establish a few of my positions on the LDS faith:

1) I disagree wholeheartedly with many of the defining principles of LDS theology. I respect Latter-day Saints, their religion, their history and their efforts to do good in this world, but that does not change the fact that when it comes to who God is, I believe they get some critical things wrong.

2) I disagree with the methods of a significant number of evangelical countercult ministries. In theory there is nothing wrong with wanting to teach people what Mormons believe and how it differs from what evangelicals view as the truth, and I do not believe there’s anything wrong with seeking to convert Mormons to evangelical Christianity; Latter-day Saints pull converts from the ranks of more conventional Christian churches all the time. However, very often the actions and attitudes of the people involved in and influenced by these ministries have caused more harm than good. Furthermore, many of these ministries use outdated material and have failed to update their responses to interact with the replies being put out by capable LDS apologists.

3) I reject the notion that all Latter-day Saints are going to hell. I believe in some degree of individual soteriological inclusivism, meaning that while I affirm that a saving relationship with Christ is necessary for salvation, I believe it is possible to have that relationship in spite of having some facts wrong about God. The account of Emeth the Calormene warrior from C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle illustrates this view. Suffer it to say that I view some Mormons as Emeths.

All three of these points can be contentious issues and are deserving of in-depth blog posts of their own, but that will have to do for now.

I had attended Brigham Young University for three semesters when I first met my future husband. I was the president of the school’s evangelical Christian club at the time and living in the on-campus housing at Heritage Halls when he moved into my student ward in the building next to mine. Paul and I noticed each other and became friends throughout the year, and he began attending my Bible study and occasionally coming to church with me. I’d been pretty strict about not dating Mormons in any serious capacity though, and with the LDS church’s teachings on marriage there weren’t a lot of LDS guys lining up to court an evangelical girl who wasn’t going to budge on the subject. I think most of the interested parties would get to know me, see that I was not going to change my mind on the issue anytime soon, then move on.

But with Paul . . . well, there was just something about Paul that I could not get out of my head. He was the only one who had really shown more than passing interest in learning about what I believed, and he was quickly turning into my best friend and one of the few people I could confide in when it came to my frustrations as an evangelical attending a university that was 98.6% LDS. Towards the end of my fifth semester we began dating. Eventually I asked him if he thought he could ever get married to someone outside the temple. He said he would have to pray about it.

I’ve told my husband many times since then that all he had to say that night was “Not a chance,” and I’d have ended things right there and we could have gone our separate ways. He always replies that he has never regretted it.

We both had a lot of thinking and praying to do about the issue. My greatest struggle came from 1 Corinthians 6:14-15 and whether or not marrying a Latter-day Saint constituted marrying an “unbeliever.” In the end, I decided that a Calormene warrior was not the same thing as an unbeliever. I also had to accept that if I married Paul, our children would be raised in both religions and might become LDS. The thought finally dawned on me that there were many, many worse things out there that could happen to my children than them becoming Mormon, and that was that.

I think Paul had the harder end of the deal. It must be a shocking disappointment to come to a school where 99% of the students are LDS and fall for the one non-LDS girl there. And while there is considerable latitude on biblical interpretation within the evangelical community, the LDS church teaching is clear on the issue: you should not marry a non-member, and if you do your spouse and children will not be sealed to you (unless they convert at a later date or are sealed to you post-humously). However, the LDS church does teach and practice personal revelation, which some would argue allows a person to go against the established church doctrine in exceptional cases, such as Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice Isaac. Paul believed God had pointed him to me against everything he had been taught, and he obeyed.

The story of our preparation for marriage and how we are raising our daughter will continue.