Mormons have, on the other hand, not carried out any formal efforts to issue propaganda about other churches, or portraying the people in those churches as either culpably ignorant or conniving. You can go to LDS Sunday School every week, and you will never see a Church-endorsed video on the topic of the Satanic origins of Protestantism. To the contrary, Luther and the other people responsible for the Reformation are honored as good people whose work laid the foundation for eventual religious pluralism that allowed the LDS Church to be organized and thrive, despite opposition, rather than ruthlessly suppressed.

Mormons are more than happy to explain to other Christians (as well as Buddhists, which I did in Japan) what the Latter-day Saints believe. All of the literature that most people could read in a lifetime, explaining the LDS faith in detail, is available at no cost, both on the official LDS Church web site at www.lds.org, and its auxiliary, www.mormon.org, as well as at the BYU web page FARMS.byu.eduy, and the unofficial web site fairlds.org. This material includes not only the King James Version, with footnotes and cross references to other LDS scriptures like the Book of Mormon, but also the lesson manuals used to teach Mormons, the articles from over 30 years of LDS Church magazines, including the sermons taught at the semi-annual General Conferences, a complete book on LDS history over 300 pages long that is used to teach college-age students, and many complete books of scholarship written by LDS PhDs in ancient languages and history, such as Hugh Nibley and John Welch. Mormons are very open about what they believe. The only problem is that many Christians seem determined to create a “staw Mormon” that has the characteristics and beliefs that will please anti-Mormons who don’t care much about scholarly integrity, and avoid actually reading the massive amounts of first-hand information. Mr. Mouw’s comment about “secrecy” really does not relate to any doctrines; while the ordinances carried out in the LDS temples are not open to public view, and their details are held confidential among Mormons, the doctrines that underpin the ordinances are explicit in the published sources on the Web. As a young missionary, inside the walls of the Salt Lake Temple, and invited to ask an apostle questions about our temple experiences, the answers were provided by quoting public statements of Church leaders and the LDS scriptures. If you are not entering those covenants with God yourself, then you cannot regard them as sacred, and Mormons are not going to dishonor those experiences by laying them open to ridicule. But we are more than happy to talk about the general nature of the ordinances and point out at length the scriptural basis for them.

Other writings by Mouw and other Evangelical scholars have expressed a hope that maybe Mormons would, if they just spent enough time learning the gospel from Evangelicals, would come to agree with them and modify the distinctive Mormon doctrines. The attitude seems to be based on a view that Mormons are just a little naive. This latest essay, by acknowledging LDS scholarship, seems to back off of that posture.

Professor Flake is right in that the LDS Church is not going to convene a meeting that is expected to produce some kind of definitive statement of the areas of agreement and disagreement between Mormons and Evangelicals. For one thing, Evangelicals are actually pretty diverse on a lot of theological positions, such as the polarity between Calvinist and Arminian views on free will and the process of salvation, or the necessity of baptism over and beyond simply declaring faith in Christ. There is disagreement over the expectation of revelation to individuals today (a Christianity Today editor was excoriated by some ministers for telling how he heard a voice admonish him to write a book and donate its proceeds to help a student pursue the ministry; some Evangelicals don’t like God talking to people directly on even small matters).

The most important thing in a political context is that Mormons regard other Americans as perfectly entitled to pursue any religion they believe in, and not to be punished or limited in the exercise of theiur rights as citizens because of their choice of religion or faith or non-faith. This has been explicit since the earliest days of Mormonism, growing out of an experience with official persecution, and is summarized in the Articles of Faith and Section 134 of the Doctrine & Covenants.

By contrast, the attacks on Mitt Romney orchestrated by Huckabee and others implicitly argued that people who believe in the distinct doctrines of Mormonism should be barred from the opporutnity to hold the office of President, lest it make the religion “legitimate” in the eyes of other Americans, and make it easier for people to become Mormons and literally “go to hell.”

That attitude, that secondary effects on the salvation of unspecified people is sufficient basis to deny legal equality to Mormons, is a pernicious one, that violates the spirit of Article VI and the First Amendment. Any religion that believes those outside it are damned would be able to use that reasoning to place the members of all other churches in Dhimmitude, second class citizenship, just as Muslims seek to do under Shari’a law in some countires. That result is nothing less than a theocracy. To the extent that some Evangelicals seek that outcome, they fully deserve the epithet of incipient theocrats lobbed by those on the Left. The logic of making Mormons less than full Americans also applies to Jews, and Catholics, and Muslims, and Buddhists.

Frankly, when one hears certain Evangelicals talking about Mormons and members of other religions going to hell, the tagline implied is “and good riddance.” They seem to be looking forward to a heaven with a small population, perhaps in the belief it will increase the value of their “mansions” in Paradise if there are no lower class riff-raff like Mormons there. One is reminded of the explanation offered by SBC leadership for the fact that the membership of churches in the SBC dropped by 40,000 during 2007, namely that Baptists have developed a reputation for being judgmental of others, in other words, all too ready to send others to hell.

There are millions of Mormons all over America who vote for non-Mormons every election, such as George W. Bush, including in many cases even where a Mormon is an opposing candidate. Mormons can’t understand why some Baptists or other Christians don’t feel like they can return the favor.