CAROL STREAM, Ill. -- Robert Millet would do things differently if he were carefully strategizing how fellow Mormons could best pursue interfaith contacts.

"I probably wouldn't have started with evangelicals," said the Brigham Young University (BYU) professor, considering the antagonism between the two groups since Mormonism's beginnings. "If we can have more civil and respectful relations with evangelicals, we can do it with anyone."

Not many years ago, evangelicals would have deemed substantive contact with Mormonism equally improbable. Yet since 2000, small scholarly teams of Mormons led by Millet and evangelical teams led by Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw have managed to hold 17 intense, closed-door dialogue sessions. The latest, held in mid-October at Wheaton College, centered on proselytism, a topic on which the two sides are intense rivals.

Millet said this is the only ongoing doctrinal dialogue with any outside religious group that occurs with the knowledge -- though not yet public authorization, much less participation -- of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' (LDS) top leaders, whom Millet advises on ecumenical strategy.

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