Evangelicals Crusading in Mormon Utah

In what may be the largest single effort by one denomination to challenge the beliefs of another, thousands of Southern Baptists are fanning out across the Salt Lake Valley--here in the heart of Mormon territory--urging acceptance of a traditional Christian understanding of salvation.

The massive evangelism campaign on the eve of the annual national meeting of the 15.8-million member Southern Baptist Convention, which opens here Tuesday, is being both hailed and decried by other Christian leaders--and greeted with equanimity if not bemusement by officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as the Mormon church.

“Since we’ve got 60,000 of our own missionaries out around the world, we can hardly complain if they come here, I suppose,” said Elder Alexander B. Morrison, a high-ranking LDS authority.

But Morrison, who became a Mormon convert 50 years ago, said he doesn’t worry about losing members in the face of the Southern Baptist crusade. “We are used to opposition and adversity in this world,” he said. “We’re not a lot of sugar candy.”

Known as “Crossover, Salt Lake City,” the Southern Baptist evangelism campaign comes two years after the nation’s largest Protestant denomination--and one of its most evangelical--placed new emphasis and committed financial resources to try to convert Jews to Christianity. And it comes a year after it began a nationwide boycott of the Walt Disney Co. because the worldwide entertainment and media company provides benefits for the same-sex partners of employees and produces films that Southern Baptists charge threaten family values.

‘Crossover’ Campaigns

While Southern Baptists have mounted annual “crossover” campaigns since 1987 in whatever city they choose for their national convention, this year’s focus on a competing faith is unprecedented and has renewed concerns about proselytism and religious tolerance.

By Sunday, after volunteers had been pounding the streets for just a few days, officials reported that more than 500 individuals had accepted the traditional Christian formula for salvation--Jesus as savior. They said they didn’t know how many were Mormons. By the convention’s end they hope to start three to four new churches here. So far, they have visited 9,000 homes.

More than a few Southern Baptist missionaries appear to relish the prospect of turning the tables on the Mormons by launching a Southern Baptist door-to-door evangelism campaign in the shadow of the Mormon Temple. After all, as Morrison points out, nearly 60,000 mostly young, white-shirted Mormon missionaries annually ply the streets of the nation and the world, winning about 318,000 converts annually to the Mormon church, the church reports. It claims 10 million members worldwide.

“I wouldn’t call it payback time,” Phil Roberts, director of the Southern Baptists’ program for interfaith evangelism, said with a trace of mirth in his voice. “I would say it’s just an opportunity for [Southern Baptists] to do a little missionary work in Mormon territory.”

Indeed, Southern Baptist missionaries were seen walking onto the grounds of the Mormon Temple--with its gilded statue of the angel Moroni--and passing out tracts to young Mormon missionaries. A block away, two Mormon missionaries on bicycles were talking to two Bible-toting Southern Baptists, prompting one incredulous bystander to ask, “Who’s converting whom?”

About $600,000 has been spent by the Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board on a media and advertising campaign here. Salt Lake City is being saturated with billboards and radio and television spots. Southern Baptist tabloids have been mailed to 250,000 homes in the Salt Lake Valley, including one emphasizing family values--a major theme of the Latter-day Saints. Even the Bible tracts that Southern Baptists are handing out intentionally use the King James translation because that is the translation Mormons prefer.

Meanwhile, Southern Baptists have produced a critical video, titled “The Mormon Puzzle,” which has been sent to all 14,000 Southern Baptist churches in the nation. The denomination’s Sunday School Board also has just printed 12,500 copies of a new book titled, “Mormonism Unmasked.”

Southern Baptist officials this week staunchly insisted on describing their efforts as evangelization, not proselytism. They said they want to win people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, not necessarily make Baptists out of Mormons.

‘Counterfeit’ Faith

But there is little doubt that in the hearts and minds of Southern Baptist missionaries here, the primary target of their efforts are members of the Mormon church, whose doctrines, Southern Baptist believe, are part of a “counterfeit” faith and, theologically speaking, a “cult.”

That point was hammered home Sunday during a sermon at a pre-convention pastors’ conference by Mark Coppenger, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo.

Coppenger told of visiting with a Mormon woman Saturday who failed to accept Christ as her personal savior. “As she stands in the judgment,” Coppenger declared, “God will say [to her], ‘Where were you on June 6? You did not hear this [message]. You stand accused!’ ”

Even as Southern Baptists decry the LDS church as heretical and non-Christian, Mormon doctrine says that all other churches are “apostate,” having fallen away from the authentic gospel of the primitive church in Jesus’ time.

Latter-day Saints believe that theirs is the only true and “restored” church and that heavenly beings appeared to their prophet and founder, Joseph Smith, in Palmyra, N.Y., in the 1820s. In 1823, they believe, the angel Moroni directed Smith to golden plates inscribed with hieroglyphics that he translated into the Book of Mormon.

Not all non-Mormons, or for that matter all Baptists, agree that Mormonism is a cult or that Baptists should be trying to convert Latter-day Saints. Among the critics is former President Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist.

“Among the worst things we can do as believers in Christ is to spend our time condemning others who profess faith in Christ and try to have a very narrow definition of who is and who is not an acceptable believer and child of God,” Carter said late last year when asked about Baptists coming to Utah.

Other critics include the Rev. Eileen Lindner, associate general secretary for Christian Unity with the National Council of Churches in New York. Although she defended the Southern Baptists’ “right and responsibility” to evangelize, she said that calling the Mormon faith a cult is “unwarranted” and “unkind.”

“They are absolutely saved,” said Lindner, a Presbyterian. “Does God intend the very best for all his children? No question about it. Are Mormons children of God? Of course they are.”

That, however, was not the message that about 2,000 Southern Baptist missionaries were carrying with them here. Like soldiers preparing for a holy war, earnest Southern Baptists girded themselves to carry the traditional Christian gospel into this Mormon heartland.

They took crash courses in Mormon theology. They prayed. They were given pointers on how to draw Mormons into a conversation without being aggressive. They laid plans to go door-to-door with their message of salvation. Also in the works were sports clinics and neighborhood block parties.

In what typified the door-to-door canvasses, two-member teams in Roy, Utah, on Saturday sought out those they believed to be unsaved. Not all those they met were Latter-day Saints. It is estimated that 70% of Utah residents belong to the LDS church. In Salt Lake City it is thought that slightly less than half are Mormons. Southern Baptists said that 20% belong to no church.

But there was no doubt in the minds of Southern Baptist missionaries such as Mike and Wendy Butzberger of Shelby, N.C., and Charles and Betty Sams of Cincinnati, Ohio, that they were in Mormon country.

Some Mormons Seem Surprised

Despite advance publicity, some LDS members seemed surprised that Southern Baptists would be knocking on their doors.

“I just thought they would be in Salt Lake, not here in Roy, Utah,” said Scott Rogerson, 21, who interrupted his lunch to answer the doorbell. As the Southern Baptists spoke, Rogerson, himself a returned Mormon missionary, listened impassively and then thanked the Southern Baptists for their visit.

Not far down the street, another Mormon, Tony Owens, said his biggest concern was that LDS members would be rude. As for the Butzbergers, Owens said, “They were a beautiful couple and extremely friendly. To tell you the truth, they’d make great neighbors.”

The problem from the Baptist perspective, Mike Butzberger said, is that the LDS church stresses that both good works and God’s grace are necessary to achieve eternal life. By contrast, he said, Baptists hold that one need only believe that Jesus is the son of God and accept him as savior to be saved. Once that happens, he said Christians do good works in response to God’s love, but good works are not a prerequisite to heaven.

That was the word that the Sams carried to a woman several streets away who was running a yard sale. It turned out she was a lapsed Baptist. While cars of customers pulled up to her curb, the Sams prayed with her. With one eye on her goods, she said she accepted Jesus Christ as savior.

Not all encounters were as easy. Baptist missionary Bob Rogers of Poplarville, Miss., said he was speaking to a “sweet lady” when her husband drove up in his pickup truck. “He hopped out and he said, ‘Are you one of those Christians? I thought so. You’re one of those people trying to do something to Mormons.’ ”

When he knocked on another door, Rogers said, a woman opened it and said, “I know who you are, I don’t want any of it,” and slammed it shut.

In the weeks leading up to the evangelism campaign, leaders of both churches pledged to be good hosts and courteous guests. But they said they worried that individual members might involve themselves in angry debates or confrontations.

But as of Sunday, no major problems were reported. Southern Baptists said that most of the Mormons they met listened courteously--even if they weren’t buying.