Elder Perry: World Religion vs. Religion of “The World”

Elder Perry’s talk reflects on his visit to the Colloquium on Marriage and Family held at the Vatican last November. This event gathered representatives of 14 different faiths—and as such, the participation of Church leaders raises once again the question of whether Mormonism is a world religion. Elder Perry does not address this question directly, but his use of the word “world” in ways that both harmonize with and run counter to usual LDS usage suggests that answer might be “yes,” albeit not for reasons we might usually suppose.

After recounting his delight and finding common ground with people of so many faiths, Elder Perry rearticulates the relationship between LDS teaching and “the world” in a way quite different to the frequently heard oppositional approach:

Now, you might be asking, “If the majority felt that similarity of family priority and beliefs, if all of those faiths and religions essentially agreed on what marriage should be, and if they all agreed on the value that should be placed on homes and family relationships, then how are we any different? How does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints distinguish and differentiate itself from the rest of the world?”

Here is the answer: While it was wonderful to see and feel that we have so much in common with the rest of the world in regards to our families, only we have the eternal perspective of the restored gospel.

What the restored gospel brings to the discussion on marriage and family is so large and so relevant that it cannot be overstated: We make the subject eternal! We take the commitment and the sanctity of marriage to a greater level because of our belief and understanding that families go back to before this earth was, and that they can go forward into eternity.

Here Elder Perry follows President Hinckley’s optimistic approach to the world—”Bring all the good that you have and let us see if we can add to it.”

This claim that teachings about eternal families distinguish Mormonism from other religions is interesting in light of the treatment of world religions by religious studies scholar Stephen Prothero in his book God Is Not One. There, Prothero argues that different religions offer different answers to the question “What is wrong with humanity?” and that religious teaching and practice follow from how the religion proposes to address that problem. In Christianity, for instance, the problem is sin, and the answer, in short, is Jesus. From this perspective, Elder Perry seems to be saying that for Mormonism, the problem with humanity is not only that we all too often fail to form enduring social bonds, epitomized in the family, but that these bonds cannot endure in mortality without some sacralizing component.This focus is not new to Elder Perry. Joseph Smith, after all, worried about his connection to his brother Alvin, who died before the Restoration of the gospel, and the Lord comforted Joseph on this point in D&C 137:5-10. Might this paradigm, more than Mormonism’s affinity with traditional Christianity, form the basis of a claim to be a world religion?

This possibility raises questions about Mormonism’s Christianity. In his talk, Elder Perry only mentions Jesus in the name of the Church and in the standard closing in Jesus’ name (there are a couple of references to “God”). Mormonism certainly teaches that sin is a problem and Jesus the solution—and I trust, this Easter weekend, that we will hear Jesus preached—but if, as Elder Perry said twice in his talk, “the restored gospel centers on marriage and family,” we need to consider how this theological centrality might enrich our understanding of who Jesus is and why He matters. We are, after all, by divine revelation, called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not The Church of Eternal Families. This being the case, let’s do the theological work required to understand how our teachings about family keep our faith rooted in Him whose Resurrection we celebrate tomorrow.