In my previous post to this blog, I presented my review of Robert Millet and Gerald McDermott’s book Claiming Christ: A Mormon—Evangelical Debate. As I noted, this was a review originally written for Christianity Today, which rejected the review. The history behind this event is perhaps even more interesting—and troubling—than the book itself.

Christianity Today is supposedly the flagship periodical of American evangelicalism. Billy Graham founded the magazine in 1956. Among its contributors in years gone by were Walter Martin and John Warwick Montgomery. The magazine continues to publish informative and illuminating articles on a wide array of subjects of interest and concern to evangelicals. Its handling of these subjects has, however, become increasingly controversial among its American evangelical constituency. My purpose here is not to rehearse these other controversies or to attack the staff of Christianity Today. Rather, in good narrative-theological style, I simply wish to tell my story.

My story begins with an online article in Christianity Today entitled “Mitt’s Mormonism and the Evangelical Vote,” posted on May 31. In the article, Brigham Young University professor Robert Millet and Roanoke College professor Gerald McDermott argued that evangelicals ought to be able to vote for Mitt Romney (a Mormon) to be President of the United States despite the theological differences between evangelicals and Mormonism. Oddly, the article never states openly that Millet is a member of the LDS Church. (One might guess that he is from his position at BYU.)

Like many others, no doubt, I wrote to CT criticizing the article, though not for its suggestion that evangelicals may vote in good conscience for Romney. Instead, I took issue with the authors’ claim that “Mormons hold firmly to the deity of Christ.” On June 4, I received a reply from an associate editor at CT assuring me that they remained strongly committed to orthodoxy and that they planned to address the theological issues in future articles. (I see no particular value in divulging the names of the editors with whom I had contact unless the accuracy of what I say is impugned.) In response, I offered to submit an article to CT on the theological differences between evangelicalism and Mormonism. In that email (also June 4), I wrote in part:

“It would go a long way toward demonstrating your commitment to upholding orthodoxy if you would publish an article that adequately represents the concerns and observations of evangelicals (like myself) who have labored in the ministries of discernment and apologetics for years. There are several ways that you could do this and I do not presume to tell you how to go about actually doing it. However, I would like to offer to help you in any way I can. In fact, I would be happy to write an article on the subject for CT—free of charge. . . . I am known for taking a comparatively irenic approach while still representing the concerns of evangelicals involved in countercult and other ministries of discernment and apologetics.”

It took just over a month for CT to decide against accepting such an article from me. My editor contact told me in an email on September 6 that their reason was that one of their editors planned to write an article on the theological differences between evangelicals and Mormons. The editor suggested that I might submit to their book review editor an article reviewing Millet and McDermott’s new book Claiming Christ. I obtained a copy of the book on September 27 and submitted my review article to CT on October 8. Although the book review editor stated that he expected to know by the end of October if they would use the article, I did not receive news of their decision until November 20. The decision, as I noted in my previous post, was negative. According to the book review editor, another editor on staff “familiar with the issue and with the book . . . decided that some of [my] opinions weren’t accurately based on what the book actually says.” He offered no specific examples or explanations. I do not know what opinions expressed in the article might have been based on an inaccurate understanding of the book, since I carefully documented the points I made in the review (far more so than is typical in a CT book review). Every other sentence in the review, after the introductory paragraph, gives one or more specific citations from the book.

I cannot judge the motives of those who decided not to run the review. I certainly don’t take it personally—publishers have the prerogative not to accept submissions, and that goes with the territory of being a writer. Nevertheless, it is clear that the review article was rejected because of the perspective it takes on Mormonism. Frankly, I’m not surprised. The review article would have contradicted the opinion piece by Millet and McDermott that CT had published earlier in the year. That opinion piece claimed that the theological divide between Mormons and evangelicals is not as wide as most evangelicals think because, supposedly, Mormons affirm the deity of Christ and salvation by grace. But McDermott himself admitted in Claiming Christ that “evangelicals and Mormons disagree on what these things mean” (60). As I point out in the review article, if we disagree on what these affirmations mean, then we don’t agree about them after all.

This incident is merely a minor skirmish in a larger ongoing struggle within evangelicalism to define its stance toward the Mormon religion. It is important that we speak clearly, accurately, and forthrightly on this issue. We ought to be able to do so without coming off as shrill or reactionary. McDermott’s contribution to Claiming Christ illustrates the fact that the struggle involves not only properly understanding and assessing Mormonism, but also properly defining and defending the historic doctrines of the evangelical Christian faith.

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