Do We Misrepresent Mormonism?

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. As you know, Mormonism Research Ministry has been around since 1979, and one of the accusations that we do take very seriously is when a Latter-day Saint states that we are misrepresenting their faith. It certainly is not our intention to misrepresent anyone, and we actually think that's quite wrong to do that. Now, Eric, you had an incident happen not too terribly long ago where you were interviewed with Sean McDowell, and Sean McDowell was the co-editor of the book Sharing the Good News with Mormons that came out in 2018, and this individual felt that you were misrepresenting Mormonism in the things that you said in that interview with Sean. Why don't you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, on Wednesday, December 9th, 2020, I was interviewed on a live YouTube program by Sean McDowell, and we were talking specifically about the Gospel Topics Essay.

So we were getting into a variety of topics based on these essays that were written between 2013 and 2015. The next day, after that live podcast, Sean writes me, and he explained how a Latter-day Saint named Scott Adams contacted Sean and, quote, wanted to correct the record on some of the issues that we discussed. And Scott gave his credentials that he was a high priest in the priesthood, he served in many various positions in the church, including a youth leader, a gospel doctrine teacher, a stake high counselor, and currently he's a counselor in his bishopric.

Can I stop you there, because that might sound very impressive to a lot of people, to show all the positions that you hold in the Mormon Church, but as far as I know, a lot of those positions really are not based on how much in-depth knowledge you have of either Biblical theology or even Mormon theology or even a good grasp of Mormon history. In other words, if you're a faithful Latter-day Saint, it's not impossible that an individual can get a position such as some of these in the LDS Church and really not know a whole lot about the church that he belongs to. And we've seen that in our personal experiences talking with Latter-day Saints, they'll often say things like, well, I'm this and I'm that, and I go, okay, well, what about this? And they don't seem to have a clue what you're talking about.

They'll come back with something like, well, I'm not a scriptorian. That's a phrase that we used to hear a lot when talking with Latter-day Saints. So he gives you this long list, and I would say that sounds pretty impressive for an average member in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But does that necessarily guarantee that this individual really understands the depth of his own faith? I've talked with Mormon scholars before, and sometimes I wonder if they even have the depth that's necessary to have that title of scholar. What does that really mean anymore?

So go ahead and explain what happened. Well, Sean asked if I would be willing to go on an additional show to have Scott on there as well. And Scott Adams is a nice guy. He really is. He seems genuine. He seems to be a very faithful Latter-day Saint.

I don't know him besides talking to him for an hour and a half on the podcast, but I agreed. I don't normally like to get involved in debates. And so I told Sean, I'll do it as long as we don't call this a debate and rather we deal with it as a dialogue. And what I would like is to have Scott list the things that I said or that Sean may have said that needed to be corrected, because he said that we were mischaracterizing what Mormonism taught. And Bill, that's a very serious accusation, because the type of ministry that we do is based on reaching out to the Mormon people. And if we are taking Mormonism and making half-truths of it, then nobody should believe anything we have to say.

So I want to say the integrity is very important. So I agreed with Sean to do that. We did it on December 29th and we ended up going longer than the 60 minutes.

We went for close to an hour and a half. And I didn't feel that anything that he was saying was showing how I had mischaracterized Mormonism at the end of the show. And I don't have the exact quote, but he said, well, many of the things you say are true. It's just that I don't like the way that you say them. They seem mean-spirited and I certainly don't intend to be mean-spirited.

I get very passionate about this. And right now I'm talking with a very high voice. Somebody might say, well, that's mean-spirited, but I wanted to know what did you have that I should correct? I told them at the end of the show, I have nothing to correct. And you can go onto our website if you want to watch both of the YouTube videos that were done, but also I have responded to some of the things that Scott has written on what he felt I had mischaracterized and showed how I was actually very accurate in my presentation. Go to mrm.org slash Scott. You can listen to both of the YouTube programs and you can see my articles.

I have written a lot on that page. And so anybody who would like to learn more, it was, it's important for me to defend what we say Mormonism teaches. And I don't think it would do us any good to purposely try to misrepresent the LDS faith. I mean, when you've been around for over 40 years, you don't usually hang around that long by constantly misrepresenting the people that you're trying to educate people about and even trying to reach in an evangelical way. I think you're right. Sometimes Mormons will hear things and because they disagree with what you're saying, assume subjectively that somehow you're trying to be mean because it may even offend them in what you brought out.

I don't know. It's hard to know unless you have specific examples to go by, but you and I both have had those same experiences where we have had people say, well, you're misrepresenting my faith. And many times what it is is we might be misrepresenting their personal faith because I don't know what they believe as a Latter-day Saint, because we know that we've talked to lots of Latter-day Saints who don't seem to believe the Orthodox teachings of Mormonism that they probably should be believing.

They have their own personal type of belief. Well, remember folks, we are Mormonism research ministry and that word Mormonism has a meaning. It has everything having to do with the subject of the Latter-day Saint movement.

Excellent point, Bill. And the idea that an individual Latter-day Saint may not agree with Russell M. Nelson and the other leaders of the church, that's very much in play. So as Christians, what are we to do to be able to understand Mormonism? You and I are quoting regularly from the standard works, the four scriptures of Mormonism, as well as from the correlated curriculum, the inside magazines, and the other official publications of the church to be able to say, this is what Mormonism teaches. Now you certainly as an individual Mormon may disagree. This is why you never want to tell a Latter-day Saint what he or she believes. Rather always ask the question, what do you believe about agency? What do you believe about the preexistence?

Let them tell you. And if it's different from what the leaders have taught, then certainly you can say, well, that's not what they have said, or it is what they have said. But I think Mormonism has a meaning to it and it can't just be individually interpreted by every single member. And yet we do have Latter-day Saints that think we should be catering to their unique understanding of their own faith.

When we have to do that, we're going to be clear that we are talking about an individual's perspective and not necessarily something that I would say the first presidency, for instance, would get behind. Certainly some Latter-day Saints do have their own private understandings of their faith, and I can't take that away from them. They're certainly allowed that right, but it would be wrong for them to say, well, this is what I believe. And so therefore you're misrepresenting the LDS faith. And that's not going to be true because we try very hard to stick very closely to what LDS books and sermons and conference messages, you might say, and things like that. We are quoting from their own sources.

How in the world can that be faulted if we are citing the things that the leadership wants their people to believe? We must understand that we don't have to make any of this up because Mormonism stands on its own. And I think it would be easy for critics of ours to be able to show us exactly how we have misrepresented Mormonism. But when you take a look at what the church teaches, we want to be as accurate as possible.

What motive do we have to lie or to give half truths or to give improper conclusions? Now, I'm not saying that a Latter-day Saint will agree with our conclusions. Of course, they're not going to agree because they're Latter-day Saints, and they want to hold on to whatever they think is true. But we're saying, well, this is what this doctrine teaches, and here is why it is not true. We'll go to the Bible, we'll go to logical reasoning to be able to show why we think Mormonism is wrong in this area and why biblical Christianity is true. And I think we need to keep that in perspective, that when a Latter-day Saint accuses you of saying something that's wrong, that it's probably very pertinent to ask, well, what specifically are you talking about?

Why do you think that what I said is not really accurate? Now, this is not to say that a Christian or anybody talking to a Latter-day Saint could be wrong on what they believe. They could be. I don't think that's a habit we're trying to have.

That's for sure. We're very critical of doing that, and we certainly would not want to do that. And fortunately, we don't get a lot of Latter-day Saints saying that we have misrepresented their faith. We just don't.

I'll be quite honest with you folks. There are some who have said we've done that, but when we've responded to them, they seem to understand that we had a good reference point for what we said. I remember one Latter-day Saint years ago who was critical of me because I had said that Joseph Fielding Smith, the 10th president of the church, had said some very racist and derogatory things about blacks being an inferior race. Well, he came back and said, well, that's not what Joseph Fielding Smith said because he says in this one reference that we're not saying that they're an inferior race. Well, I responded to that quotation with another quotation from Joseph Fielding Smith where he very definitely calls them an inferior race. So what we have is not me being inaccurate, but actually we have a Mormon prophet, the 10th president of the church, contradicting himself.

Well, what can I do in a situation like that? He did say what I said, even though he said what this gentleman said. I acknowledge that. I says, I know he said both things, but he definitely did call blacks an inferior race. Real quick, Bill, 8th president George Albert Smith said in the Journal of Discourses, volume 14, page 216, if a faith will not bear to be investigated, if its preachers and professors are afraid to have it examined, their foundation must be very weak. And another quote comes from the first presidency, J. Reuben Clark. He says, if we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.

I mean, we're just going off of what the leaders have said. If we're wrong, please show us specifically how we're mischaracterizing Mormonism. If we're right on this, then you need to determine if what we're saying, when the teachings get compared to what the Bible teaches, how we somehow are wrong and how you as a Latter-day Saint are right. I think this is very important to be able to take a look at what Mormonism teaches and then determine, is this something that ought to be followed? Thank you.