An Open Letter to Evangelicals from a Latter-day Saint

The following articles was adapted with permission from a post by Krissy Brower. You can find her Instagram account here.

About a dozen Evangelical Christians walked into my institute class and asked if they could join us. “We just want to learn about your church,” they said.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. Too often, conversations between people of different faiths feel more like debate than discipleship. So we braced ourselves to defend, explain, clarify, and protect, but that’s not what happened.

What happened instead was one of the most meaningful experiences I’ve had in my classroom.

For ninety minutes we opened scripture together, we talked about Jesus Christ, we asked questions, we listened, we laughed, and we learned from each other.

A Latter-day Saint offered the opening prayer and an Evangelical offered the closing prayer, which sounds like a great set up to a joke – except it was sacred, and sincere, and beautiful.

Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I kept thinking, “This is what it should be like!” Not agreement on every doctrine, not pretending our differences don’t exist, but genuine love between people who sincerely want to follow Jesus Christ.

As a Latter-day Saint, I know there are misunderstandings about my faith. I also know there are misunderstandings many Latter-day Saints have about Evangelicals, But when sitting in that room together, none of those things felt bigger than what we shared.

We shared a love for scripture. We shared a belief that prayer matters. We shared a desire to follow the Savior. We shared a hope that God is still working in the lives of ordinary people. Most importantly, we shared kindness.

I think sometimes we underestimate what can happen when believers stop approaching each other as opponents to defeat, and instead as fellow seekers trying to love God in a complicated, divisive world.

I have been strengthened by good people from many traditions. I’ve seen Evangelical Christians demonstrate incredible courage in sharing their faith, with a deep devotion to the scriptures, and a boldness in talking about Jesus that genuinely inspires me.

I hope there are things my faith tradition offers in return too. Things like deep-rooted love for scripture, sacred emphasis on the family, a love for holy places, a deep belief that God still speaks, and funeral potatoes. (If you know you know.)

I believe there is goodness, light and truth scattered more generously across the earth than we sometimes admit. I think heaven is pleased anytime people talk about Christ with sincerity.

To my evangelical friends, thank you! Thank you for walking into a room full of strangers. Thank you for being respectful and courteous. Thank you for listening. Thank you for loving Jesus enough to spend your night talking about him with people different from you. That kind of love is not small.

In a world increasingly fueled by outrage and suspicion, maybe one of the most radical things believers can do is simply sit in a room together and talk about Jesus. We did that and it was beautiful. Thank you.

Orson F. Whitney said, “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of this great and marvelous work. The Latter-day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous for any one people… Again I say, the Lord’s work has need of auxiliaries outside as well as inside, to help it along. Many are kept where they are, where the Lord has placed them, and can best use them for the good of all. (Orson F Whitney, April 1928 general conference)