Perhaps a candidate's faith, gender, or ethnicity should not make any difference in an election, but the exit polls in this year's primaries indicate that they still do, though far less than they did in the past. By the time that you read this column, the selection of each party's nominee for President may be "all over except for the shouting," and I certainly am not trying to tell anyone how to vote, but I'd like to reflect on a particularly strange moment that occurred a few weeks ago.

Our Constitution prohibits any religious test for elected office. Politicians proclaim their loyalty to God, Mom, and the flag but seldom get into theological debate. This year, however, a Mormon running for President tried to convince evangelical Christian leaders that he was more or less one of them, while a former Southern Baptist preacher, was called a bigot for asking if Mormonism teaches that Jesus and Satan are brothers. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints does, in fact, teach that Jesus and Satan are "spiritual brothers." You can look it up on their Web site.) Which do you find most offensive, to distort your beliefs to make them more palatable to voters or to make your opponent's faith a campaign issue? Which is worse, to call the truth a smear or to expect candidates to agree with your doctrine before you will vote for them?

Perhaps it is time for some serious dialogue about the issue that underlies this brouhaha: who owns Jesus anyway? Does a Mormon have a right to say, "I am a follower of Jesus Christ?"

Drawing boundaries and limits is distasteful to many people, but as my Dad often reminds me that, "The problem with being too open-minded is that all your brains may fall out." It does not advance either Christian unity or interfaith understanding to pretend we have no disagreements. Most Christian theologians and most sociologists of religion see the LDS as a movement that grew out of Christianity but departed from orthodox doctrine, in much the same way that Christian Science and Rev. Sun Myung Moon's church evolved into something different from Christianity and the way Christianity grew out of Judaism into something new and distinct.

Asking whether Mormons are Christians may offend them, but it is nonetheless a fair question, just as it is fair to ask me, "Are United Methodists Christians?" Perhaps the most honest answer is, for either Mormons or Methodists, "Some are." The LDS does not rely on a professional class of full-time preachers and scholars, so we should not expect Mormons to be experts in their theology and doctrine-which not many Methodists are, either. No denomination, sect, or individual congregation is made up entirely of people who believe exactly what their tradition teaches. Sometimes this leads the faithful into error and sometimes it keeps them away from it. We should be cautious about judging what is in the mind and heart of a neighbor who lives across the street or sits in the next pew.

Every denomination has some beliefs and customs that look odd to outsiders, and outsiders often misunderstand what is said on the inside, particularly if a sect's rituals are secret, but when it claimed that The Pearl of Great Price is the Word of God and that deceased Jews should be baptized by proxy, ex-post-Auschwitz, the LDS moved from oddity into heresy. It may be impolitic to say this, but just because you are a heretic doesn't mean that you are wrong. After all, pagans probably thought monotheistic Hebrews were infidels and Christianity began as a Jewish heresy.

Mormons are angered at being labeled non-Christian but I would ask them to remember how their founder viewed all other churches: apostates in need of his restoration. If you say that yours is the one true embodiment of the faith, others will naturally conclude that yours is some other faith. One of Goodhue's Laws states that whenever you believe you have a monopoly on the truth, you probably haven't found it. As I learned from the Apostle Paul and painful personal experience, when I think I know it all, I am an idiot.

Does having an unorthodox theology mean that somebody loves Jesus less? Some Jews, Jains, and Hindus I know study the Gospels more seriously than most Christians. Many Muslims, Bahais, Sikhs, Unitarian Universalists revere Jesus, though not necessarily the same way that I do. Nor is it right to assume that Buddhists are not Christian. Buddhism, like yoga, is more a practice than a theology: it is possible to be Jewish or Christian or agnostic and also a Buddhist. One local Catholic priest, in fact, is a respected teacher of Zen Buddhism. Some Buddhists and Unitarian Universalists are Christians, though I have noticed that they tend to be considerably more broadminded than the rest of us.

Mormonism does not teach exactly the same things about Jesus that orthodox Christianity does, and Muslims have different beliefs about him than most Methodists, but they could be right and I could be wrong. I want others to be honest about these differences, but they have every right to expect me to acknowledge that they honor him in their own fashion. Just because Mary Baker Eddy, Brigham Young, and Sun Myung Moon departed from orthodox Christianity - as Christian Science does in rejecting medicine, the Mormons do in elevating the Book of Mormon to Holy Writ, and the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification does in ascribing something like divinity to Rev. Moon - does not mean that they are not striving to follow Jesus. Or that I have nothing to learn from them. Some of the most exciting and insightful Bible study groups I have ever experienced have been with people of other faiths, and even heretics may know something I don't know. Besides, as Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, suggested recently, it is better to call Mormonism not heretics, but rather another Abrahamic religion alongside Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Baha`i Faith, Unitarian Universalism, and others.

In John 4, Jesus is described as knowing Samaritan doctrine well enough to talk theology with the woman at the well. He also may have appreciated the hospitality he found among Samaritans so much, A. J. Jacobs reports in The Year of Living Biblically, to cast one of them as the hero in one of the best stories he ever told. What would Jesus do if he met a Mormon woman at the well? Members of the LDS believe he would embrace them as his true followers, perhaps his only true followers. I, on the other hand, suspect he would engage in interfaith dialogue - and that he would begin by asking questions.

Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax,
Tom

EASTER SUNDAY
March 23, 2008 - 6:30 A.M.