Book of Mormon at Regent University

Regent University is a nondenominational Evangelical school in Virginia Beach, Virginia, consisting of graduate schools of psychology, counseling, education, communication, divinity and law, and a new undergraduate program. It is closely associated with CBN, and Pat Robertson, who founded both of them, and continues to serve as President and Chancellor of the university.


While one might expect a monochromatic campus scene, that's not quite so. I think I heard Pat Robertson say last year that the student body is 22 percent African-American and 9 percent Hispanic despite the lack of an Affirmative Action admission policy. And there is ideological and religious diversity as well: There were Obama bumper stickers in the parking lots last year (albeit vastly outnumbered by Republican stickers), and there is an active Newman Club. Last year, three of the four Constitutional Law professors were Catholic.


It was nevertheless surprising to witness the Latter Day Saint (Mormon) activity on campus. Young white-shirted "elders" bicycle into the Regent student housing areas to serve members and - presumably - to present scripted flip-chart introductions to LDS basic beliefs. On a fairly regimented campus (due, at least in part, to post-9/11 security concerns), it's unlikely that this activity is occurring under the radar. Campus officials, including Chancellor Robertson, are almost certainly aware of it.


Despite the constant suggestions by mainstream media that Evangelicals and Mormons are antagonistic, there is evidence that alliances forged during the Culture Wars are mutually acclimating the two, and that there is a sort of de facto ecumenism at work. I noticed before I came to Regent that Constitutional litigator Jay Sekulow, who could be described as a Robertson lieutenant, supported Mitt Romney, who is at least nominally Mormon, in the Republican presidential primaries.


I'm starting this blog, not as a broad-brush survey, but as an electron microscope for a look into the capillaries of the encounter between Mormons and Evangelicals at Regent University. So far as I can tell, this is not occurring in the School of Divinity but in the School of Law. Close friendships are forming in the family housing area, as some fairly parochial but bright students from the Bible Belt encounter real Mormons for the first time, as neighbors and prayer partners instead of caricatures.


For the Mormons, however, it's not a first encounter. The males have served two-year missions among the non-Mormons, and may have attended secular undergraduate universities. There is no particular Evangelical outreach to nor, so far as I know, any apologetic encounter with Latter-Day Saints, other than some muttered cliches. But Latter-Day Saints are preoccupied with proselytizing non-Mormons, including Evangelicals. It will be interesting to see how this unequal encounter plays out at Regent University.


This blog will be a companion site to a Facebook group of the same name. The space restrictions on posts to Facebook might skew the discussion toward sloganeering, which I want to avoid. So I hope posters will use Facebook to summarize their blog comments and refer group members to this blog. I'll invite some of my LDS and Evangelical classmates on Facebook. At this point I hope to confine the Facebook group to the Regent community, and that my classmates won't sic "pro" apologists (strangers) on one another. That's partly because I want to keep it civil (there's an awful lot of polemics and even flaming on the general subject of LDS apologetics) and partly because we already care about one another here at Regent. It's a tough sell asking busy students to read and respond to stuff from strangers.


Full disclosure: I was an adolescent or young-adult convert to Mormonism. I lasted about five years. Although I can't accept the theology anymore, I left without any bitterness or antagonism against the LDS people, and in fact, I still miss them. A few days ago, an LDS classmate and friend saw me in the library and told me he has been assigned to be my "home teacher." It's a grass-roots assignment within the Priesthood Quorum at the lowest level, not considered evangelism but service to your peers. According to their books, I'm still a Mormon, despite multiple written requests over the past three decades to remove me. How mad can you get at people who want to save your soul? I still love these people, and I guess it's kind of neat that they still love me, too.

I think we Evangelicals have a lot to learn from Mormons about how to raise our families, and especially how to manage the adolescent phase. I have LDS in-laws and multiple close LDS friends, not just at Regent. But I do yearn for Mormons to shed certain distinctives, which we can discuss in later posts and comments, and to join the historic "orthodox" stream of Christianity.

That's not to say I want to change them all into Southern Baptists; I consider the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Copts and Messianic Jews to be "orthodox" Christians, no less than Evangelicals and Pentecostals. I hope to live long enough to add the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to that list. There's no reason Mormons couldn't retain most of the features of their liturgy and church culture that they cherish while returning to orthodoxy. But there would also be some painful repudiation of theology and ritual.

I believe there is some appetite for this in the LDS Church. We Evangelicals would probably do more harm than good by butting into internal (LDS) "family" discussions. But there have been some external signs that Mormons at the highest levels want to be considered Christians in the same way that we Evangelicals consider Catholics.

About 13-14 years ago, a Deseret Bookstore opened near my home in Las Vegas. As I was browsing the shelves, I was astonished to see a book by Chuck Swindoll, a Reformed pastor and president of Dallas Theological Seminary. This never would have happened back when I was an LDS member. In my day (about 30 years ago) LDS exceptionalism would never have admitted that a "gentile" like Swindoll merited shelf space better devoted to formulaic LDS exhortation.

More recently, I saw Larry King interview LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley (since deceased). Hinckley referred to the LDS church as "the Church of Jesus Christ." That was encouraging. One can only hope that it is the tip of an iceberg. Perhaps, behind closed doors in Salt Lake City, the church Presidency (three men) and the Quorum of the 12 are gathering their courage or awaiting demographic shifts that will embolden them to return the church to the historic Christian faith.

This sort of thing is not unprecedented. Churches that have strayed can be recalled and reclaimed by the Great Shepherd. The best example in our lifetime was the return of the Worldwide Church of God (Garner Ted Armstrong, Herbert Armstrong) to orthodoxy in the 1990s under the guidance of Joseph Tkatch and Hendrik "Hank" Hanegraaff. Google it. It's quite a story.

There is a fine line between Evangelical outreach to Mormons and Evangelical anti-Mormon activism. I've seen examples of both online. On this site and in the Facebook group, I hope we Evangelicals can confine ourselves to the former, and avoid the latter. I probably don't have to give the same speech to my Mormon friends on the site; you guys are almost always on your best behavior. Maybe I need to give you the opposite speech: Let 'er rip. Tell us how you REALLY feel. What are the barriers to full, unrestricted fellowship between Mormons and Evangelicals?