‘I do not believe that we are going to heaven together, but I do believe we may go to jail together.’
Albert Mohler — president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, who has made no secret that he considers the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints not to be a true Christian church — spoke to a Mormon audience at Brigham Young University on Monday.
Mohler said despite their differences of beliefs, evangelical Christians and Mormons share a battle against the growing secular ethos of the age.
Some excerpts of his talk:
”To many people, shaped in their worldview by the modern age and its constant mandate to accommodate, it will seem very odd that a Baptist theologian and seminary president would be invited to speak at the central institution of intellectual life among the Latter-Day Saints.
‘But here I am, and I am thankful for the invitation. The wonderfully prophetic Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor rightly warned that we must “push back against the age as hard as it is pressing you.” I have come to Brigham Young University because I intend with you to push back against the modernist notion that only the accommodated can converse. There are those who sincerely believe that meaningful and respectful conversation can take place only among those who believe the least—that only those who believe the least and thus may disagree the least can engage one another in the kind of conversation that matters. I reject that notion, and I reject it forcefully. …
‘I come as a Christian theologian to speak explicitly and respectfully as a Christian—a Christian who defines Christianity only within the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church and who comes as one committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the ancient and eternal Trinitarian faith of the Christian church. I have not come as less, and you know whom you have invited. I come knowing who you are—to an institution that stands as the most powerful intellectual center of the Latter-Day Saints, the most visible academic institution of Mormonism. … We do not enjoy such friendship and constructive conversation in spite of our theological differences, but in light of them. …
Mohler, said evangelicals and Mormons face common foes in the trends toward secularism and sexual liberation. He alluded to researchers who said that restraint on sexuality through marriage is a fundamental prerequisite of civilization, said the move toward individual choice on sexuality and marriage, including same-sex marriage, is ominous: “In our times, the fires of sex and sexuality are increasingly unbanked and uncooled.”
‘…Heterosexuals did a very good job of undermining marriage before same-sex couples arrived with their demands. … Once marriage can mean anything other than a heterosexual union, it can and must mean everything. It is just a matter of time.”
Mohler alluded to cases in which photographers and other vendors are losing discrimination cases for refusing to do work for weddings of same-sex couples.
‘The conflict of liberties we are now experiencing is unprecedented and ominous. Forced to chose between erotic liberty and religious liberty, many Americans would clearly sacrifice freedom of religion. How long will it be until many becomes most?
‘…Your faith has held high the importance of marriage and family. Your theology requires such an affirmation, and it is lovingly lived out by millions of Mormon families. That is why I and my evangelical brothers and sisters are so glad to have Mormon neighbors. We stand together for the natural family, for natural marriage, for the integrity of sexuality within marriage alone, and for the hope of human flourishing.’
