Please note that these editorial articles do not necessarily reflect the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the personal opinions of the author and he is alone responsible for them.

by W. John Walsh

12/14/97

On December 13, 1997, I attended a live chat on the America Online network called Can a Real Mormon Believe in Jesus?, featuring Dr. Richard Mouw. Dr. Mouw is president of Fuller Theological Seminary, North America's largest seminary.

The format was as follows:. The forum was divided into two areas: the audience and the stage. The audience was divided into rows containing 16 members each. You could listen to the people on the stage and also anyone speaking on your row. In addition, you could ask questions by sending a message to the moderator.

I found the chat interesting from several respects. First, Dr. Mouw did not use the typical vehement rhetoric used by many Evangelicals (i.e., Mormons are Satanists who will burn in Hell forever). Instead, he seemed sincerely interested in establishing a real dialogue with people who have different views than him. He did not seem to believe it was necessary to agree with a person in order to hold a civil conversation.

In fact, Dr. Mouw reproved some of the tactics used by his fellow Protestants against Latter-day Saints. He even quoted the Biblical teaching against bearing false witness against others. To me, this is a major step forward. One of the things that has always disturbed me is not so much the misrepresentation used against us (See The Exclusion by Misrepresentation by Dr. Stephen E. Robinson), but the lack of reproval by other Protestants. So I found his public censure against this tactic rather refreshing.

On the other hand, there were a few things that bothered me about the session. While it was advertised as a public discussion, it was really more of a propaganda meeting for the Protestant side of the issue. This was demonstrated in at least two ways.

First, the moderator allowed no questions from Latter-day Saints, the people under discussion. Can you imagine a forum discussion on Blacks where Blacks were purposefully excluded? Think of the session title: Can a Real Mormon Believe in Jesus? Well, I am a real Mormon. Let's discuss what is possible for me to believe.

However, in and of itself, this was not really the major issue to me. After all, while it was a public session, it was being sponsored by Christianity Online, an AOL forum. [The name is a little bit of a misnomer. It really should be called Protestant Online]

If this group only wanted to accept questions from those unfriendly to Latter-day Saints, that was certainly acceptable, since they were sponsoring the event. What really bothered me was the deception that was used by the group. They were pretending to take questions from all audience members. In reality, any question that did not have an anti-LDS attitude went immediately into the trash. And when I say anti-LDS, I don't mean anything not pro-LDS. For example, I asked the following question: What did Dr. Mouw think about former President Carter's recent statements about Latter-day Saints? I think most people would be interested in his view on this issue. [For those who did not hear about this in the news. Earlier this week, President Carter, a Southern Baptist, said that Latter-day Saints were Christians. This became a hot national issue because the leaders of his denomination proclaim that we are not.] Did Dr. Mouw agree or disagree with President Carter's comments? And why or why not?

When I noticed what was happening, I asked other people sitting in my row if they also noticed the pattern of questions being accepted. I found that I was not the only one who had noticed the hoax being played. It's important to note that this type of game would not have happened in an LDS sponsored forum. We would have accepted questions from all sides or at least have publicly stated that we were not doing so. In fairness, I should also mention that Dr. Mouw's may not have known about the hoax.

The second thing that was disturbing was that the sponsors had a "ghost person" join the stage shortly after the session began. By "ghost person," I mean someone joined the stage and was never identified. During the session, whenever Dr. Mouw started talking about an issue. This "ghost person" would begin making comments expounding upon Dr. Mouw's statements. He attributed various beliefs to Latter-day Saints, at times quoting from LDS secondary material [i.e., not official teachings]. As you can imagine, his one sentence propaganda statements were not completely accurate statements of our beliefs.

If they wanted someone to explain the LDS doctrine under discussion, then why not simply ask a knowledgeable Latter-day Saint? I or any one of the LDS participants on AOL would have been more than happy to elaborate on our beliefs.

In summary, there were some good things that came out of the session. First, the president of North America's largest seminary publicly condemned bearing false witness against Latter-day Saints, saying in effect, "That's not what the Bible teaches us." If we can get the other side to actually start following the teachings of the Bible, then we will have made great strides in eliminating the hatred and bigotry against Latter-day Saints. On the other hand, the subtle gamesmanship exhibited [as discussed above] shows that we are not quite there yet.

I used to be a Protestant and I know that the majority does not really share the views of the vocal minority. Our biggest challenge is to get them to stand up and say so. It's a lot like getting Americans to vote.

(See Interfaith Relations home page; Reflections home page)