Earlier this week, the 2015 Parliament of the World’s Religions came to an end in Salt Lake City. One of its highlights occurred on Sunday night in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square when Elder Edward Dube of the Seventy welcomed a capacity audience to a varied program of music and dance from the world’s major religious traditions on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The evening began with Native American chanting, followed by the Muslim call to prayer, the blowing of Jewish shofars, and Quaker and Episcopalian invocations.
Thereafter, to mention just a few of the evening’s highlights, the Grammy Award-winning singer Yangjin Lamu represented Tibetan Buddhism, Hindus and Cambodian Buddhists performed traditional dances, and Aashish Khan displayed his virtuosity on the lutelike Indian “sarod.” A Sikh quintet shared a sacred song from their heritage. A Catholic choir sang a text by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and the classical singer Kummar Chatterjee represented Jainism.
A Baha’i choir, singing a text by Baha’u’llah in the style of a black spiritual, and a drum group from Burundi delighted the audience, and an LDS Institute of Religion choir from Orem sang Richard Elliot’s arrangement of “Let Us All Press On” by Evan Stephens. Finally, at the end, Sufi mystics of the Mevlevi order (founded by Jalal al-Din Rumi in the 13th century) took the stage with the music and ritual dance that give them the nickname of “whirling dervishes.”
And all this was done in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, built by 19th-century Mormon pioneers.
There must surely have been some who were surprised that a “Parliament of the World’s Religions” would be held in Salt Lake City — precisely because of Utah’s religious reputation. However, if any among the Parliament participants imagined Mormons to be a narrow-minded and intolerant group, they were probably surprised by Sunday’s program, which was produced by the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable in partnership with the Parliament.
And yet it reflected something remarkable and very Mormon.
Back in 1999, a New York Times religion writer named Gustav Niebuhr (scion of an illustrious family of Protestant theologians and scholars) contacted me, struck by the fact that Brigham Young University had launched an Islamic Translation Series. Why were the Mormons, of all people, publishing Islamic texts? Didn’t that clash with our self-understanding as “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:30)?
I explained to him that while Latter-day Saints are very “exclusivist,” we’re also deeply “inclusivist.” That is, we unabashedly proselytize, believing that we’ve been given both the restored gospel of Christ and the unique authority of the priesthood. However, we also happily recognize truths, goodness and inspiration well beyond our community. And we always have.
“I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts,” says Doctrine and Covenants 137:9.
The Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “God judges men according to the use they make of the light which He gives them” (see "History of the Church," vol. 5). In an 1833 letter to his uncle Silas Smith from Kirtland, Ohio, Joseph explained that “Men will be held accountable for the things which they have and not for the things they have not. … All the light and intelligence communicated to them from their beneficent creator, whether it is much or little, by the same they in justice will be judged, and … they are required to yield obedience and improve upon that and that only which is given” (see “The History of Lucy Smith, Mother of the Prophet," by Lucy Mack Smith).
On Feb. 15, 1978, the First Presidency issued a vitally important statement affirming, among other things, that “The great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammed, Confucius and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato and others, received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals. … We believe that God has given and will give to all people sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation, either in this life or in the life to come.”
“There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,” begins one 19th-century non-Mormon hymn. Mormonism’s openness to other faiths and its belief in postmortem evangelization and salvation clarify and manifest that wideness — and are surely among the most satisfying of the many gifts of the Restoration.
Daniel Peterson teaches Arabic studies, founded BYU’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, directs MormonScholarsTestify.org, chairs mormoninterpreter.com, blogs daily at patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson, and speaks only for himself.