Many personal and online conversations about the Church involve the phrase “One True Church”.  Here’s an important consideration.

The key word in the phrase “One True Church” is not “One”, and it’s not “True”.

It’s “Church”.

‘Church’ is not the same as ‘Gospel’, even though they are often conflated together too closely.  A ‘Church’ in this context has its definitional foundation in two primary elements:

Authority: the priesthood authority to perform holy ordinances.

Organization:  namely, prophets and apostles and the other parts of the Church hierarchy.

The LDS claim to the “One True Church” label lies on having the “One True” organization and authority that represents Jesus Christ’s church.  This, by itself, is not a terribly controversial claim, given that the majority of Christian churches don’t claim to have, nor even believe in at all, modern revelation or special authority to perform ordinances.

The reason why understanding what the phrase ‘one true church’ really represents is important, is that using it to mean something it is not makes the scope of LDS theology appear more exclusive than it really is.

In fact, I would argue the opposite: LDS doctrine is far more inclusive than most other religions this side of Buddhism.

Interpretations of specific doctrines aside, any Church that believes in Jesus Christ and the New Testament cannot be called ‘false’ because it contains a great many ‘truths’.  Even a statement that "they have some truth, but we have all truth" doesn't fit, because it's obvious there are many truths that remain unknown.  (Heck, we don't even have two-thirds of the Book of Mormon.)  In reality the difference between the LDS Church and other Christian churches is not that vast.  And that statement doesn't undermine anything the LDS Church claims to be--in fact, that *is* exactly what it claims to be.

Likewise, the same principle applies for many non-Christian churches—see, for example, this statement from the LDS First Presidency in 1978:

“The great religious leaders of the world such as Muhammad, Confucius, and the Reformers...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.... Consistent with these truths, we believe that God has given and will give to all peoples sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation, either in this life or in the life to come... “

It is completely consistent with LDS philosophy to accept and believe that other people outside of the Church do and have been receiving God’s “light and knowledge” since the beginning of human history.  Given the above statement (and the obvious fact that Muhammad led his people far closer to what, from the LDS perspective, is the ‘truth’ than they were originally), no Latter-Day Saint, for example, should reasonably be able to say to a Muslim that they are followers of a “false prophet”.  The fact that Muhammad and Joseph Smith may have played fundamentally different roles in the spiritual progress of man throughout history does not make the former ‘false’ by any logical analysis.  How many other Christian churches have such an easy time including Muslims in their ‘circle of truth’?

The concept of ‘hell’ presents another important difference that, were it to be analyzed and fully understood by members and non-members alike, emphasizes the inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness of LDS doctrine.

An “exclusive” religion says: ‘if you are not a member of our church, you are going to hell.’  There’s certainly no shortage of those!

But what does “hell” mean, from an LDS perspective?  Is there any context by which a statement from a Church member of the form “If you’re not LDS, you’re going to hell…” makes sense?

If we’re referring to “outer darkness”—the closest equivalent to a permanent exile from God’s presence to the dominion of the devil—there’s no doctrinal support for that state being broad enough to encompass all non-LDS, or even more than a handful of humanity at all.

If we define ‘telestial glory’ as ‘hell’—probably the most logical conclusion, given that D&C 76 directly refers to telestial dwellers as “they who are thrust down to hell”—that still presents a different, more compassionate view of ‘hell’ than the standard Christian interpretation, given the scriptures indicate said spirits will suffer for their own sins temporarily but will still inherit a minor form of glory and be “redeemed from the devil” and resurrected…eventually.

How about the rarely discussed middle kingdom, the “terrestrial”?  Here we have the one location that has absolutely no equivalent in standard Christian doctrine.  From D&C 76, terrestrial people are those who “died without law”, and/or were “honorable men [or women] of the earth, who were blinded by the craftiness of men”, and/or were “not valiant in the testimony of Jesus”.

Who does that refer to?  Well, it sounds like it could cover a great percentage of the world’s population: possibly including, respectively, people who live and die in China where opportunities to encounter the gospel are small, members of other Christian churches who are deterred from investigating the Book of Mormon because of, say, discussions of polygamy, and any number of people who live their lives peacefully without God, but keep basic moral standards, love their families, and don’t possess any major character flaws on their spiritual resume.
 
So, from an LDS perspective, the worst case scenario for these people (remember that the X factor of the preaching of the gospel in the spirit world will still theoretically open up the entire realm of celestial glory for these spirits, regardless) is winding up in a place where they are redeemed through the power of the Son and receive a great portion of God’s glory, just not the fullness.  That doesn’t sound like any reasonable definition of ‘hell’—in fact, that sounds like most churches’ definitions of ‘heaven’.

Whether LDS doctrine presents then, from an outsider’s perspective, a ‘super-heaven’ in terms of celestial glory, doesn’t change the fact that the LDS view of the destiny of non-LDS is decidedly more optimistic and positive than any number of comparable religions towards their ‘non-members’.

God loves all His children--we know that.  And the Church is a tool in His hands to bring about the 'immortality and eternal life" of mankind.  Recognizing that the Church, as that tool, is not as 'exclusive' as it may seem in regards to its view of mankind's eternal destiny--inside or outside of the Church--is important in setting the right tone for understanding what the Church represents: what it claims to be, and what it doesn't.