By MIKE SOUTHWORTH

As Southern Baptists plan their Salt Lake City convention and proselytizing efforts, today's BYU Devotional will echo President Boyd K. Packer's declaration Sunday that the LDS Church is Christian.

Robert L. Millet, BYU dean of religious education and professor of ancient scripture, said he will complement President Packer's theme by sharing his message: "What We Believe."

"It's been the rage for the last decade or so to point out that Latter-day Saints are not Christian," Millet said.

Millet said having confidence in what members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe, and how that attests to their Christianity, will be the focus of his address.

"It's an interesting day. We're on the verge of being visited by persons not of our faith come June as representatives of the Southern Baptists come to visit us. The idea isn't that we need to be on the defensive. President Hinckley said it well -- we need to be accommodating, loving and sweet -- just like we would like them to be to our missionaries; and yet, at the same time, we ought to be wise; we ought to know who we are and who we're not," Millet said.

Millet said he will explain how Latter-day Saints can say they are Christian and still believe in certain things regarding the scriptures, God, Christ and salvation.

"Most of us have or will in the future be approached by people not of our faith and be asked questions, some easy, some difficult about our beliefs," he said.

"I would hope, one, that people will feel some degree of confidence in our religion, in the sense that there are historical roots for what we believe; and two, most importantly, that we know what we know because God revealed himself to Joseph Smith. That's how we know," Millet said.

He said much of the misunderstanding in modern Christendom stems from a "vocabulary issue" -- the need to educate ourselves as to what our friends mean.

"If someone says to me 'have you been saved?', if I know they mean have you accepted Jesus as savior in your life, made him the lord of your life, then we're fine, we're talking the same language. For them it's almost as if we have to equate their word 'saved' for our word 'converted'. For them the conversion process begins with salvation. For us, salvation represents the end of the conversion process," Millet said.



Copyright Brigham Young University 2 Feb 1998