Can you be a Christian in the Mormon Church?

"Are Mormons Christian?" is an unproductive question for Mormons and for members of Christian denominations.  It results in a stand-off between statements of belief ("Of course.  I am a Mormon and I believe in Christ, therefore Mormons are Christians") and statements of theology ("Mormon doctrine on the nature of God and the nature of heaven is so heterodox that Mormons cannot be Christian.")

But as I sat meditating during church today, another question occurred to me.  Can you be a Christian in a Mormon Church?  By this I am asking whether a person who holds sees himself predominantly as a Christian, who thinks that Christ's teachings outweigh in authority other teachings and that Christ's disciples laid out the way for the church to be, and that the Christian tradition contains helpful examples of people trying to be Christian, could fit comfortably in a Mormon congregation.

This is an important question for me, because though I was born a Mormon and continue to be an active, though unorthodox Mormon--attending church, paying tithing, etc.--I identify more strongly as a Christian than as a Mormon.  Christ's words and actions in the New Testament speak to me in a way that Mormon teachers do not.  I am more inspired by the example of Peter than that of Joseph Smith; I feel Christ's call to community and social justice, or Paul's description of the body of Christ, to be more inspiring than Mormon teachings about family or service.  And I find there to be much to learn from the history of Christianity that Mormons miss when they assume a great apostasy that withdrew religious meaning from the period between Constantine and Joseph Smith (with a few begrudging nods towards Luther, Calvin, Wycliffe, and American Patriots.)

I suppose one answer to this dilemma would be to say no, you can't be a self-identified Christian in the Mormon Church, and therefore someone who feels this way ought to leave.  But there are two difficulties with this view.  First, I am culturally and by way of identity, Mormon.  Mormonism has been in my family for generations, so to just leave would be to abandon significant parts of who I am and what I have done.  Second, to leave is to accept two notions--first, that Mormons cannot influence their churches (or that Mormonism belongs to the leadership, not membership of the church), and second, that Christians are strangers everywhere but in traditional Christian denominations.  I'm not ready to accept either of these beliefs, since they feel false and are are historically inaccurate.

So until I am ready to give in to these beliefs, I will stay with the question of whether I can be Christian in the Mormon church, hoping for an answer, but not sure what it would be.