• Ensign, February 2017, Elizabeth Lund "Finding Peace in Imperfection"

The religion's canonized scripture provides the basis for mormonism's unique works-based theology:

[Moroni 10] ^35 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

[Alma 34] ^34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world. ^35 For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.

[D&C 1] ^31 For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance; ^32 Nevertheless, he that repents and does the commandments of the Lord shall be forgiven;

Evangelicals offer these counterpoints

[Ephesians 2] ^8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: ^9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

[Romans 3] ^23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

The modern leaders continue to offer mixed messages from the pulpit, especially at general conference. A few recent speeches from Holland, Cornish, Uchtdorf, have attempted to present mormonism as part of the evangelical school. However, the heart of mormonism is in the admonition: "for I the lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance." One of the latest hard line speeches was given by Joy Jones last week. She held up childhood indoctrination as essential in the relgious war. Children must learn to live up to their commitments, especially their baptismal commitments. I doubt most eight years olds know they're essentially deciding to live the life of a Catholic priest or nun upon officially joining. There is a reason eight year olds can't sign legal contracts; they don't have the tools to evaluate the totality of what they're getting themselves into. Parents are supposed to be there to protect children, and some liberal mormons have started insisting to be present whenever the bishop would like to quiz their children in private. However, the hard edge and depressing nature of the totality of mormon theology eventually comes to the foreground. There is no room for error. Perfection is possible. The bishop is often the gatekeeper and applies mormonism's many worthiness tests and is prepared to set the faithful on a repentance program that will often include public shaming. They're supposed to hate their human nature and simply set it aside.

[Mosiah 3] ^19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

No two ways about it: that is a depressing hard edge and a key part of Smith's new Abrahamic religion. The evangelicals present a much less depressing idea that we should not dwell on our sins and accept our fallible human nature.