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Constitutional liberties best endure when we understand the history and values that sustain them. As we discussed in the first article of this three-part series, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have long emphasized the importance of religious freedom for all. Most recently, in a video released for a fifth Sunday lesson in May 2026, President D. Todd Christofferson and Elder Quentin L. Cook invited millions of church members to promote the Constitution’s underlying principles, including religious freedom. President Christofferson said that becoming informed is a good place to start so that we can “speak out of intelligent understanding and not just ignorance and emotion.” 

To support this invitation, in this second article of the series, we will discuss the history of religious freedom in the United States and the constitutional protections that grew out of that history. In doing so, we will be guided by President Dallin H. Oaks’s invitation to lovingly and respectfully “walk shoulder to shoulder along the path of religious freedom for all, while still exercising that freedom to pursue our distinctive beliefs.” 

Brief History of Religious Freedom

To fully understand our responsibilities today, we need to understand how our modern concept of religious liberty has evolved. For much of recorded history, there simply was no concept of religious freedom. Many societies pursued religious homogeneity in quest of social cohesion.  As the Israelites’ entrance into the land of Canaan makes clear, distinctive religious beliefs were seen as an existential threat. For example, in Exodus 23:31-33 the Lord says, 

And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.

To maintain religious homogeneity, monarchs typically imposed their own religious views on their subjects. However, a notable exception was the period of the Pax Romana, when the Romans allowed conquered subjects to continue worshipping their gods. Since Roman rule allowed a multiplicity of beliefs, Christ’s apostles could preach the gospel after His death throughout much of the Roman world. Though often facing significant persecution, Early Christians used this nascent religious freedom to spread across much of Europe and into parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Later, as Christianity swept the Roman world, it eventually coalesced into a single church following the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. Then, in AD 380, the Edict of Thessalonica made Nicene Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire, and with it, the ancient practice of requiring adherence to the ruler’s religion resumed. Splinter groups were labeled heretics, suppressed, and often punished. In AD 1054, the Christian church itself splintered into the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East. During this medieval period, monarchs in the West often ruled by consent of and coronation by Rome and frequently required their citizens—legally and socially—to be baptized as Roman Catholics. Authorities viewed nonbelievers as a threat to public order. If discovered, they could be convicted as heretics and even burned at the stake. 

The quest for homogeneity finally ruptured in 1517 when Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation in Germany. Other Protestant groups soon formed throughout Europe. Most famously, King Henry VIII split with the Roman Catholic Church in 1534. But even in this quest for additional religious liberty, if a king adopted a Protestant tradition, his subjects were obliged to do the same. 

The legal principle governing required religious adherence in Western Europe was termed Cuius regio, eius religio, meaning “Whose realm, his religion.” This principle was formally codified by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. It gave rulers the legal right to dictate the religion of their realm. Those who did not agree with their sovereign’s religious preference were required to sell their property and immigrate to another territory that aligned with their religious beliefs.

Later acts of Parliament specified that repeated offenses would be considered high treason and authorized offenders to be executed. As a result, a group of these Separatists, now known as the Pilgrims, left for Holland to escape these persecutions and then famously immigrated to the New World in 1620. Their search for religious freedom in America is one of the most important founding stories of our nation. However, the Pilgrims would later repeat the pattern of religious intolerance when they punished and even banished dissenters from their faith. In response, the colonies of Rhode Island, New York, and Maryland adopted policies to welcome many of these outcasts. 

During this colonial period, people with diverse religious preferences continued to arrive in the New World. Within a relatively short time, the original Thirteen Colonies were populated by many people with differing religious allegiances. When the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, the United States had become a unique, religiously pluralistic country with no single dominant sect.  

To protect this religious diversity, the drafters of the Constitution purposely included religious freedom as the first freedom mentioned in the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The two parts of this protection, often called the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, inaugurated a revolutionary experiment that rejected the assumption that social cohesion could only be fostered by religious uniformity. Instead, the Constitution adopted what was then a radical idea: deep loyalty and social stability could be fostered by protecting everyone’s religious beliefs. This principle was summarized by President Oaks, who said, “The key to stability and harmony is not homogeneity in religious or other foundational beliefs, but shared assurance that everyone will be secure in following his or her foundational beliefs.”

Now, after 250 years of experience, the once-radical idea of a government that protects diverse religious beliefs is widely accepted across much of the world. This principle was made explicit in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 of that Declaration states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

This strong, yet aspirational, statement of religious freedom has become a widely recognized international human-rights norm. Even some states and religions that originally questioned religious diversity have come to champion religious liberty. For example, the Roman Catholic Church reversed centuries of teachings promoting religious homogeneity in 1965 when it published Dignitatis Humanae. It declares that religious freedom is a civil right directly rooted in the God-given dignity of the human person and that this right protects everyone from being coerced in religious matters. 

Our nation continues to promote religious freedom worldwide. Under the provisions of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the U.S. government carefully monitors religious freedom in every country and annually publishes its findings. Under this Act, the world’s worst violators of international religious freedom norms are designated as “Countries of Particular Concern,” and the President is then authorized to impose diplomatic or economic actions intended to encourage greater religious freedom for their people. Thus, our nation’s foreign policy is directly tied to the degree to which each country upholds the modern principle of religious freedom.

In sum, the long history of religious intolerance and forced homogeneity in Europe led to America’s pluralistic understanding of religious freedom, first explicitly recognized in the Bill of Rights. Religious pluralism contributed directly to the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the United States, as well as the protection of countless believers of other faiths. This is undoubtedly a significant reason why President Oaks has called our Constitution “this nation’s most important export.” As the Lord stated in Doctrine and Covenants 98:5, “that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.”

Constitutional Protections of Religious Freedom

Although the ideal of religious freedom for all was established at our nation’s founding, 250 years later, we are still working to fully realize this constitutional right. Both parts of our “first freedom”—the prohibition on an established religion and the promise of the free exercise of religion—have been the subject of numerous Supreme Court decisions that have tested the meaning of those protections. A brief summary of some notable decisions follows.

Establishment Clause Protections

As originally written, the Establishment Clause was unquestionably intended to prohibit a federally established religion while still allowing state-established churches. Remarkable as it may seem today, many states had established churches during the founding era of our country. In fact, it was not until 1833 that Massachusetts became the last state to disestablish its state church.

Based on this understanding, an intrepid Supreme Court seemed to embark on the project of expelling religious influence from government. In the landmark 1962 case Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court interpreted the Establishment Clause to forbid government-prescribed prayers. A year later, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the Supreme Court banned devotional Bible reading, a mainstay of public schools since the early 19th Century and the primary textbook of the earliest colonial schools. 

In subsequent years, the Supreme Court developed the so-called Lemon test to analyze whether a government action improperly breached the wall of separation between church and state. This test asked if government action had a primarily secular purpose that did not advance (or inhibit) religion, and whether the action avoided entanglement with or endorsement of religion. Since religious expressions are not typically secular and can often be seen as advancing religious sentiments, few religiously motivated expressions could pass this test. As a result, many religious symbols and actions were challenged, such as Christmas nativities and displays of the Ten Commandments on government property. However, despite the Lemon test’s built-in bias, the Supreme Court stopped short of all its implications. It refused, for example, to bar prayer before legislative sessions, and it sidestepped the question whether our nation’s motto, “In God We Trust,” or the statement “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the Establishment Clause. 

In recent years, the tide seems to have turned. In 2022, the Supreme Court announced in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that it would no longer use the Lemon test to determine when the so-called wall of separation had been breached. Instead, the Supreme Court announced it will now rely on the original meaning and history of the Establishment Clause and decide Establishment Clause cases based on the “historical practices and understandings” of the Founders. Since the Founders allowed numerous religious expressions by government, presumably this new approach will more generously allow religious expressions in government that fall short of establishing a religion.

Free Exercise Protections

The Free Exercise Clause has an equally volatile history. The Supreme Court’s first free exercise case was decided nearly 100 years after the Bill of Rights was adopted. In Reynolds v. United States, the Court ruled that the Free Exercise Clause only protects religious beliefs—not actions—when it refused to protect members of the Church from criminal prosecution for engaging in religiously motivated polygamy in the territory of Utah.

Then, 85 years later, the Supreme Court altered its approach. In the 1963 decision Sherbert v. Verner, the Court implicitly rejected its constrained view of the Free Exercise Clause originally adopted in Reynolds. The Court ruled that laws substantially burdening religious practices would be invalidated unless the government could show a “compelling interest” for its purpose and could prove it had used the “least restrictive means” possible to accomplish that purpose. 

This “strict scrutiny” analysis was applied in free exercise cases for several decades until the Supreme Court abruptly changed course again. In 1990, in the infamous case Employment Division v. Smith, the Court announced that our nation could no longer “afford the luxury” of this heightened protection of religion. Instead, with some enumerated exceptions, the Court announced that “neutral and generally applicable laws” would be upheld even if they substantially burden religious practice. In other words, laws that unintentionally impede religious practice would generally be allowed because their burdens on religious people are simply the “unavoidable consequence of democratic government.” 

This result was shocking. How could the free exercise of religion—the first freedom in our Bill of Rights—be so cavalierly discarded as a “luxury?” How could the Supreme Court say that religious minorities would have to depend on legislative protection instead of constitutional protection when the express point of the Bill of Rights was to protect against majoritarian rule? 

The Supreme Court responded to RFRA by ruling that its strict scrutiny protections were unconstitutional as applied to state and local laws. State legislatures then mobilized in response.  Nearly 30 states passed their own religious freedom restoration acts, and many state supreme courts began interpreting their state constitutions to provide strict scrutiny protection. Congress also doubled down by passing the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 to provide strict-scrutiny protections against both federal and state laws in land-use regulations and prisons. 

Another irony of this situation should be noted. Not only did the Founders assume that majoritarian impulses would need to be checked by a Bill of Rights, but they also assumed each of the three branches of government would attempt to assume greater authority at the expense of the others. Yet in Smith and with RFRA, the judicial and legislative branches of the federal government attempted to pass authority over free exercise decisions to the other branch as though it were a hot potato. 

Ultimately, the Supreme Court relented and assumed its traditional role as a protector of fundamental freedoms. In multiple decisions over the past two decades, the Court reinterpreted its notorious Smith decision by increasingly limiting what it considers to be a neutral and generally applicable law. If a law is not neutral—because the law targets religious practices—or if the law is not generally applicable—because the law allows for important exceptions in other contexts—then the general rule of Smith, which is not accommodating toward religion, will not apply. Since laws burdening religion are often neither fully neutral nor generally applicable, the unaccommodating standard in Smith is becoming increasingly rare in practice. As a result of the powerful responses to Smith in both case law and legislatures, today many (if not most) laws are again subject to strict scrutiny protection under some combination of the Free Exercise Clause, state constitutions, and federal or state statutes.

Yet the seeming equanimity between the judicial and legislative branches of government pertaining to religious freedom did not last long. The rise of LGBTQ rights has severely tested Congress’s commitment to protecting religious freedom, despite RFRA’s near-unanimous passage just a few decades earlier. Beginning with the question of same-sex marriage and continuing with protections of LGBTQ individuals in housing, employment, and public accommodations, free exercise rights began to be viewed by some as authorizing discrimination by religious individuals and religious organizations. 

In the third and final part of this series, we will explore how the tension between religious freedom and LGBTQ protections has played out in society. In this national debate, we will also explore the prominent leadership role of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in upholding the moral choices of others, including choices with which the Church may disagree. As we explore these topics, the responsibility of Latter-day Saints to simultaneously uphold religious freedom and fairness for all will come into stark focus.

Read the first article in this series, The Importance of Religious Freedom, here.

The post The Legal Framework of Religious Liberty appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

We recently sat down with Professor George to talk about what Fidelity Month is all about. This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and Professor George has approved the edits.

Public Square Magazine: For readers who may not be familiar with Fidelity Month, what is it and how did it start?

Robert George: Back in the spring of 2023, I happened to read a report in the Wall Street Journal. It included polling data showing that the belief of Americans in certain core values—values that had traditionally been sources of unity and strength for Americans—had very considerably diminished over the past decade or decade and a half. I’m talking about values such as religion, family, and patriotism. And these values have indeed been sources of our unity and strength in the United States of America because we are not a nation who can look to a common racial heritage or ethnic heritage, or even a common religious tradition or cultural heritage for our unity and strength. We Americans come from many, many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. We come from different traditions of faith. Our cultural histories are very different. So what do we have in common? What binds us together? Especially when times get tough—what are our sources of unity and strength?

Historically, they’ve been a shared commitment to the principles of our civic order, the principles of our Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. But also, very critically, they’ve been a shared belief in the importance of fidelity to God. Whether we’re Jewish or Christian, whether we’re Protestant or Catholic, Orthodox, LDS, we share, at least historically have shared, a commitment to the idea that there is a superintending deity: a God who creates us, indeed creates us equal, and endows us with certain unalienable rights. These rights don’t come from government; they don’t come from kings or parliaments or presidents or congresses; they come from a more than merely human source. And therefore, no merely human authority can legitimately violate those rights or take them away. So we’ve had that in common historically.

In fact, the polling showed that one value had increased in importance in the minds of Americans, and that was money. Religion went down, family went down, country went down, but the belief in the importance of money went up. Now, I’m all for people being prosperous. I want everybody to be financially secure. I want people to have enough money to take care of themselves and their families, and have a few luxuries, and all that. But money, as important as it is, is not on the same scale of importance with God, family, and country.

So, I really was concerned. And I thought, “How can we go about the business of reviving and restoring our fellow citizens’ commitment to the principles that once were the sources of our unity and strength that once bound us together?” How do we rebuild faith in God, a deeper commitment to spouses and families, a sense of the importance of patriotism and love of country? So, I said, initially to myself, well, we have a day for this, and a week for that, and a month for the other thing. How about having a month that’s dedicated to fidelity? To fidelity to God, fidelity to spouses and families, and fidelity to our country and communities.

And so I did what you do these days. I went online. I went to my Facebook account and my Twitter account, and I announced: “By the power vested in me by absolutely no one, henceforth the month of June will be Fidelity Month.” And that’s how it all began. And then, fortunately, people read the social media posts, and a number of people said, this is a great idea. We want to get behind this. And the next thing you know, we had Fidelity Month up and going. It’s entirely a grassroots movement. It’s not a top-down directed thing. There’s no budget, there’s no staff, there’s no administrative structure, there’s no president. I guess I’m the founder, since it was my idea, and I floated it on social media, but there’s no official structure for Fidelity Month. But it’s grown as a grassroots movement.

And I was really delighted, that for this month, for June of 2026, the governors of both Utah and Arkansas have proclaimed, officially, their states’ recognition of Fidelity Month, as has Michigan’s House of Representatives. So, it’s a growing movement.

PSM: This seems to be catching on. Why are people interested in this idea?

Robert George: Because at the end of the day, there are some things that money can’t buy. And there are some things that are more important than money. That’s not to deprecate the importance of material things. As I say, I really do want everyone to prosper financially. I want everyone to have a materially good life. But that’s a secondary consideration, or should be a secondary consideration. And I think even if things have gotten a bit out of whack, and people are tending to value material things over the more-than-merely-material things, people feel the want or the need for something greater, something beyond ourselves, something beyond the material.

And that’s when faith in God, the importance of fidelity to the family, the importance of patriotism and love of country and community come to the fore. Of course, people sometimes just need reminding. There’s an old saying that people more often need reminding than instruction. And I think that’s true in this case. People know in their hearts that there are some things that money can’t buy, there are some things that are more important than the material things of life, and they have a pretty good idea of what those things are. But sometimes, folks need to be reminded. So Fidelity Month is a reminder for all of us.

PSM: For you, is there an important distinction between “fidelity” and related concepts like “commitment” or “loyalty”? Was it important for you for this to be Fidelity Month?

Robert George: Well, there are certainly related concepts that are very important, and that are aspects of fidelity in some cases, but I think the term fidelity is the right term. What we need to revive is faith. Now, part of that is what we usually mean by faith, namely, faith in God. But we also need greater (and richer) fidelity in marriage and in the family. And we also need a revival of patriotism—fidelity to our country and communities. Being faithful involves being grateful—and that is another related concept. We’re faithful when we’re grateful. And fidelity does require gratitude, and gratitude does prompt fidelity, or reinforces fidelity. We should be grateful to live in this country, where we have, by the standards of history and cultures, an almost unique measure of liberty, opportunity, and security. Most people, in most places, at most times, would give their right arm for the opportunity to live in a place like the United States of America. And we don’t often appreciate enough what our country makes available to us and makes possible for us. Therefore, sometimes we’re not grateful; but we should be.

PSM: I think many people can easily get on board with the idea of fidelity to God and fidelity to family, but fidelity to country might be harder for some people. When many people hear patriotism, they immediately link it to nationalism. Could you walk us through how you think about patriotism?

Robert George: When some people hear the word “patriotism,” what they think is being evoked is a kind of chauvinism. But patriotism is not that. Patriotism is not thinking, because I’m an American, I’m better than you because you’re Japanese, or Indonesian, or French, or whatever. Even the concept of American exceptionalism, which I think is an important concept that I’ll talk about in a minute, is not a matter of beating on our chests and saying how wonderful we are and how much better we are than other people. That’s not it at all. Patriotism is simply a matter of being grateful and therefore being loyal. In other words, faithful to the country.

And patriotism itself is concern for one’s community—recognizing that one is not an island or an atomistic individual. So that’s the respect in which America is an exceptional place. No, it’s not that other people don’t believe in God, or think the family is very important, or believe in patriotism. People, wherever they are, should love their country for the gifts that their country gives them and makes available to them. They might not love their regime, they might not love their government. But patriotism is not love of your government. And it does not require us to adopt the position, “my government right or wrong.” Patriotism is love of one’s country.

Now, for those of us who are religious believers, certainly for those of us who are Christians, we recognize that love of country is secondary. Our first loyalty is to God. And our second loyalty is to our family. But to recognize that our first loyalty is to God and our second loyalty is our family is in no way to suggest that we don’t also need to be grateful to, and loyal to, our country and our community. It’s true that love of country can go haywire. And the nation can become an idol. But anything can become an idol. Anything can replace God. We have to be careful of that, no matter what the other thing is. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t properly contribute to, believe in, uphold, and be loyal to our country and our family.

PSM: I’m curious what threats you see to fidelity both in culture and in the ways that laws are changing. Where are these threats coming from, in your view?

Robert George: There are plenty of threats; there are always plenty of threats. As I said, anything can become an idol. The human condition is such that human beings—we frail, fallen, fallible creatures—are always vulnerable to the temptation to put something in God’s place, to put something first above God. Those of us who are Christians, of course, believe that there is nothing that comes above God or before God. The trouble is, we can put other things first. We can put money first. We can put fulfilling or satisfying our desires ahead of God—making our desires into idols. We can put fame or celebrity first, replacing God with those idols. Power, wealth, status, all of those things can become idols.

And we today, in 2026, here in the United States and throughout the world, are as vulnerable to those temptations to idol worship as anybody has ever been in the history of the human race. We are as prone to idol worship as were the people who bowed down before stone outcroppings or worshiped golden calves in ancient times. So that’s number one.

Now, what are the threats? Well, the threats are everywhere. Promiscuity. The divorce culture. Everything that came out of the sexual revolution. You can date the sexual revolution in different ways. You know, once you start trying to trace these things back, the next thing you know you’re in the Garden of Eden with the serpent and the apple and Adam and Eve. But certainly in the 1940s Alfred Kinsey’s widely hyped and quite phony and fraudulent so-called sexuality “science” became a kind of justifying theory for breaking traditional norms of sexual morality. And then in the 1950s, we had the mainstreaming of pornography, so-called softcore pornography, beginning with Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine and his whole empire. Then the 1960s counterculture normalized promiscuity and made it socially acceptable. With that came the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and massive fatherlessness, especially in some of the most vulnerable communities, or sub-communities of our country. And then the sexual revolution continued to the point at which you now have people claiming that being male or female is not an objective biological reality. Instead, it’s said to be a matter of some subjective alleged “gender identity” that you have invisibly somewhere inside you. So, there are very significant threats to the family today.

And then with patriotism and love of country, it’s so easy to fall into thinking, well, my country owes me, or my community owes me, but I owe nothing back. I’m here for them to serve. And I need to just focus on getting everything I can from the common stock or the common pool. And, I don’t have any responsibility to give back, to serve, to do my part, to be a contributing member of the community. And I think, again, we have to fight back and push back against such attitudes. We need to remind people of the importance of being contributors and not just takers.

PSM: I’m curious, if you could have this grassroots movement grow in an ideal fashion, which institutions would be the most important for this to take hold? I know it’s exciting to see some states adopting it, but what about families, religious groups, or other groups? How do we spread it to those who maybe aren’t already inclined toward faithfulness?

Robert George: I like grassroots building. I want this to be a grassroots movement. I don’t want to try to direct everything from the top. So, I’d like to see it begin in the family, with Mom and Dad teaching the kids—not just by precept, but by example too. Precept is important. It’s important for parents and teachers and pastors to preach a little bit, to talk. But even more important is setting an example. So, Mom and Dad, set the example for your children of worshiping God and putting God first. That’s what my parents did for me. It’s the greatest gift they gave to me and my brothers.

Second, parents should model fidelity in their love and concern for each other. And by fidelity, I want to make clear, I mean more than merely avoiding having adulterous affairs. That’s important, obviously. But that’s only the beginning of fidelity, not the whole of fidelity in marriage. The whole of fidelity in marriage means serving your husband or wife. Serving your spouse. That’s why we think of marriage, rightly, as a vocation. Vocation is not a career; vocation is not a job. Vocation is a way of serving, and in marriage, husband serves wife and wife serves husband. Marriage is a way of serving. And of course, husband and wife, as father and mother, serve their children. So, I think it’s important for men and women as husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, to model fidelity in its richest sense in marriage.

Third, parents, again, by precept and example, can model patriotism. They can take their civic responsibilities seriously and thereby encourage and teach their children to take their civic responsibilities seriously. Vote. Contribute to campaigns. Get behind the causes you believe in. Contribute time as well as money to serving the civic interest. Be willing to run for office. It doesn’t have to be President of the United States. How about the local school board? How about the county commission? Or support friends and neighbors who you think would be good office holders in their efforts to be a county commissioner, or a school board member, or mayor, or whatever it is.  I think those are some of the ways, and they all involve teaching by both precept and example. People can begin in the family to promote fidelity.

Then, what’s next? Churches and synagogues and mosques and other houses of worship all over the country should be promoting these values. I would love the churches—all denominations and traditions, because they basically share the same set of principles—I’d love to see them get behind Fidelity Month, recognize Fidelity Month. The pastor should preach a sermon about fidelity at least once during the month. Preach on fidelity. Maybe you could do three Fidelity Month sermons: One on faithfulness to God, one on faithfulness in marriage, one on patriotism and love of country, and why that’s legitimate and not idolatrous, unless you go about it in an idolatrous way.

And remember, this is all about reminding people of what they already know. We’re not teaching something new. This is not some new ideology. It’s not some new philosophy, it’s not some new theory. It’s just reminding people that there are some things that really matter, that ultimately matter.

You know, I sometimes say to my students, and to my kids (and to myself, to be honest with you) that there are some things that matter, but at the end of the day, not all that much. And then there are other things that really matter. So, what are the things that matter, but at the end of the day, not all that much? Things like wealth, power, influence, status, prestige, celebrity. Those aren’t bad things. It’s not bad to want those things. In fact, they can be good things because you can use them for good. You can use money for lots of good things. You can use power, if you have it, in a good way, for good things, to do good things. You can use influence for good. You can use celebrity for good.

But those things, though they matter, are not, at the end of the day the things that really matter, because things like wealth, power, status, influence, prestige, and celebrity are not ends in themselves. They’re not things that we want just for their own sake. They’re things that are means to other ends, and they have their value only as means to other ends. And they need to be contrasted with the things that really matter, the things that are not mere means to other ends but are desirable for their own sakes—things like faith, family, friendship, knowledge, beauty, integrity, honesty, decency, and compassion. Those are the things we want, not just as extrinsic instruments to get something else that they will make it possible for us to obtain or attain. They are the things you want for their own sakes. They are the things that really matter. They’re the things that ultimately matter.

David Brooks has a good way of illustrating the difference. He asks, what do you want on your tombstone someday? We all have just a short period of time on this earth. If you live 100 years, that’s a really old age, but it’s a blink of an eye in the history of the cosmos. What do you want on your tombstone for whatever number of years you have? Do you want it to say something like, Summa Cum Laude, Princeton? Goldman Sachs partner? No. What you want is something like “faithful husband, loving father and grandfather, loyal friend.” From the perspective of death, we can see more clearly the difference between the things that really matter, such as family, friendship, faith, knowledge, beauty, integrity, from the things that matter but not all that much.

PSM: Are there other ways that people can get involved if they are interested in doing more?

Robert George: Yes. I’d like everybody to go to the Fidelity Month website, www.fidelitymonth.com, because there at the website, you’ll be able to see what you personally can do to be part of this grassroots movement. There aren’t going be people upstairs who are doing stuff. Everything about Fidelity Month is grassroots, so if you go to the website, you can see what you can do to promote Fidelity Month.

Number one, you can say the Fidelity Month Prayer, which is a prayer that people in all traditions of faith can, in good conscience, say to ask God’s blessing on us, that we may be truly faithful to Him, faithful to our spouses and families, loyal and faithful to our country. Number two, you’ll be able to access the Fidelity Month logo for free. Use it for the month of June for your social media accounts. Use it on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever social media accounts you have. Number three, it has suggestions about what you can do in your local community, like hosting a speaker for Fidelity Month, maybe at your church, maybe at your community center, or having a panel discussion. You can also go to the merch section of the website, and you can buy at cost (we don’t make any money on it, it’s just sold at cost) the Fidelity Month flag, or a Fidelity Month cap or tee-shirt. Those things help to get the message out. People see the cap, they see the shirt, they see the flag, and they ask, hey, what’s that about? And boy, there’s your opportunity to witness to the importance of fidelity. And there are many other suggestions about how just everyday people, just ordinary folks, in every walk of life, from every tradition of faith, with every background, can spread the word about fidelity and be part of this movement to remind people about the things that really matter.

The post Robert P. George on Fidelity Month appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

But Professor Lindholm also came to research why his co-author, Professor W. Cole Durham Jr. so tirelessly promoted religious freedom. At bottom, he wanted to know the motives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the founding sponsor of BYU. 

To his delight, and perhaps surprise, he learned that The Church of Jesus Christ promotes the doctrine of religious freedom to bless everyone. In his own words, “You really believe this.”

Indeed, we do. But what is the doctrine of religious freedom, and why is it so important?

This three-part series will explore these questions. In this article, I discuss the importance of the doctrine of religious freedom in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the fundamental rights that facilitate it, the blessings it confers, and the prophetic invitations for Latter-day Saints to teach and promote it. In the next installment, I will discuss the history and constitutional protections of religious freedom and explore our responsibilities as church members to ensure the doctrine of religious freedom endures to bless all God’s children. 

Religious Freedom is Important Church Doctrine

President D. Todd Christofferson has taught that church doctrine does not come through “a statement made by one leader on a single occasion.” Rather, as Elder Neil L. Andersen explained, Church “doctrine is taught by all 15 members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve.”

By that definition, religious freedom is unquestionably an important doctrine of the Church.  Indeed, members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have frequently taught the principles of religious freedom. 

In particular, President Dallin H. Oaks, president of the Church, has defended religious freedom throughout his apostolic ministry. This is significant because, as President Christofferson has noted, the President of the Church has a “preeminent role” in promulgating church doctrine.

To make that ultimate choice, religious freedom is required. Without religious freedom, we cannot choose “to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience” nor, as stated in the eleventh article of faith, can others choose to worship “how, where, or what they may.”

As a Church, we celebrate the Constitution of the United States that the Lord “suffered to be established” for the “rights and protection of all flesh” precisely because it sets forth “just and holy principles” allowing “every man” to “act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I [the Lord] have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.” Thus, the Church champions the universal doctrine of religious freedom not merely for its own benefit, but because it is key to accomplishing God’s purpose in allowing everyone to exercise their moral agency.

The importance of this doctrine of religious freedom is now on full display as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of America. Earlier this year, the First Presidency issued a letter instructing all church wards and branches to hold a fifth Sunday discussion on May 31, 2026, on how the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution “support religious freedom and our God-given agency.” In addition, for the Church’s scheduled fast on July 5, 2026, the First Presidency invited all “to participate in a unified fast to express gratitude for religious liberty and to pray that it be strengthened throughout the world.” 

In support of these worldwide initiatives, the Church has created a specialized curriculum on religious freedom available on Gospel Library. This curriculum emphasizes the doctrine of religious freedom as taught by the Lord and His servants.

In addition to these resources, church members can find a repository of addresses given by Church leaders available at the Religious Freedom Library. 

Rights of Religious Freedom

Given the importance of the doctrine of religious freedom, it is appropriate to ask which legal rights are most important for enabling the moral agency it aims to protect. President Oaks and Elder Wickman, a former general counsel of the Church and General Authority Seventy, suggested an answer by identifying the following rights as necessary protections for individuals and religious organizations:

1.   The right of freedom of conscience
2.   The right of worship
3.   The right to assembly
4.   The right to self-government
5.   The right to communicate with church members
6.   The right to legal entity status and action for religious organizations
7.   The right to declare religious beliefs publicly
8.   The right to travel freely
9.   The right to full participation in society
10.   The right to freedom from retaliation.

These protections are examples of what Elder Wickman terms the “innermost core” of rights that should be available under our doctrine of religious liberty. Because there is little room for compromise on this core, they form the highest priority in our hierarchy of religious rights. 

Elder Wickman also explained that near this core is “the right not to be punished, retaliated against, or excluded from one’s employment based solely on one’s faith.” In addition, “freedoms related to religiously important nonprofit functions carried on by religious organizations and religious schools, colleges, and universities” are near the core rights that should be protected. These rights include “the freedom to hire based on religious criteria” and to “establish honor codes that reflect religious teachings.” These “near core” rights have occasionally been threatened in recent years. Examples includfe repercussions to religious believers for morally objecting to same-sex marriage and threats to BYU because its Honor Code requires traditional chastity and virtue.

Beyond this core are rights in commercial settings in which “our expectations of unfettered religious freedom must be tempered.” In such settings, we “must be willing to make prudential compromises.” This is an area of churning dispute. The Supreme Court has recently supported a variety of religious freedom claims in commercial settings, exempting cake makers and website owners from having to provide artistic services to same-sex weddings, and permitting counselors to provide counseling consistent with a patient’s biological sex in accordance with their religious convictions. On the other hand, many other courts have denied religious claims in commercial settings. For example, many courts have upheld employers’ COVID-19 vaccination requirements even though employees have sought exemptions for religious reasons. Additionally, a public school teacher was recently required to remove a private crucifix from her classroom when a student objected. 

The lowest level in this hierarchy consists of religious rights that conflict with others’ rights, including those of government. “In these areas, religious beliefs should be reasonably accommodated, but other governmental interests may significantly limit the degree of accommodation.” As an illustration, Elder Wickman suggested that if your government job is to issue marriage licenses, your freedom to refuse to issue “licenses for marriage that are contrary to your religious beliefs may be very limited.”

Thus, while religious liberty is ultimately intended to protect our rights, properly understood the doctrine of religious freedom recognizes that not all rights have equal weight. We acknowledge that we must be willing to temper our expectations based on the circumstances, according to the hierarchy of the religious rights involved. 

Blessings of Religious Freedom

President Christofferson began his argument by acknowledging:

It is becoming increasingly common for people to think that religion and religious freedom are some kind of burden on society. That is simply not true. Religion is fundamental to societal well-being, and freedom of religion benefits not only believers but all of society, whether they know it or not. Therefore, all have an interest in protecting this freedom, whether they are believers or not.

President Christofferson then noted that some of the many universal benefits that religion and religious freedom provide include protection for other fundamental rights and increased societal goods. He noted that “rich scholarship” suggests that “[c]ountries with strong religious freedom tend to be more stable and prosperous,” have increased moral virtues and habits of good citizenship, have less crime and violence, have increased civic involvement, give more time and resources to humanitarian causes, have increased marital stability, and have healthier children with lower rates of depression and suicide and less “anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, sadness, delinquent or illegal behavior, pornography, drug and alcohol abuse, and other addictive behaviors.”

At a subsequent international conference, President Christofferson enumerated additional social benefits derived from the doctrine of religious freedom. He noted:

1.  “Religious liberty is the oldest and most deeply rooted freedom in international human rights law and is essential to the entire structure of human rights.”
2.  “Religious liberty is essential for protecting human dignity.”
3.  “Religious liberty promotes pluralism and peace.”
4.  “Religious liberty facilitates a proper separation of church and state that avoids any justification for secular hostility toward religion.”
5.  “Religious liberty allows diverse faith communities to continue providing critical services to society and its most disadvantaged members.”
6.  “Religious liberty enables all of us—whether religious or not—freely to pursue truth and the meaning of life, and to live accordingly.”

This impressive list of benefits accrues because those who enjoy religious freedom can freely choose to follow their faith, allowing them to be “blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual.”

To secure such blessings for ourselves and others, the Lord has encouraged the Church and its members to “befriend[] that law which is the constitutional law of the land.” In doing so, the Church and its members increasingly engage with others in “supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges.”

Examples of this engagement include BYU’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS), which hosts the Annual International Law and Religion Symposium. Now in its 33rd year, the Symposium has hosted over 1,500 government, academic, and religious leaders from 138 countries to learn more about religious freedom principles applicable in all countries. Additionally, ICLRS and the Wheatley Institute at BYU co-host the Religious Freedom Annual Review, in which academic and government leaders from many faith traditions, as well as members of the public, gather to learn about religious freedom within the United States. Similarly, the Church acts with others in supporting the G20 Interfaith Forum, which brings together scholars, faith leaders, and government officials to ensure public policy appropriately supports religious freedom principles.

All these efforts, and many more, are intended to bless mankind. As Joseph Smith emphatically stated in 1843:

If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing to die for a ‘Mormon,’ I am bold to declare before Heaven that I am just as ready to die in defending the rights of a Presbyterian, a Baptist, or a good man of any denomination; for the same principle which would trample upon the rights of the Latter-day Saints would trample upon the rights of the Roman Catholics, or of any other denomination who may be unpopular and too weak to defend themselves. It is a love of liberty which inspires my soul—civil and religious liberty to the whole of the human race.

Invitation to Teach and Promote the Doctrine of Religious Freedom

The living prophets and apostles have abundantly taught us the doctrine of religious freedom, the rights needed to facilitate it, and the great blessings it bestows. President Oaks has invited us to learn this doctrine and promote its principles. Speaking to an audience at BYU–Idaho, he said:

I invite you to march with me as I speak about religious freedom under the United States Constitution. There is a battle over the meaning of that freedom. The contest is of eternal importance, and it is your generation that must understand the issues and make the efforts to prevail.

Fortunately, we have a unique capacity to promote religious freedom. Years ago, when I began working on religious freedom issues, I invited a former professor not of our faith to visit the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU. After spending several hours learning about the Center’s work, he looked at me and said, to the best of my recollection, “What your church is doing to protect religious freedom is amazing. You must continue because your people are in the best position to carry forward the message of religious freedom to the world. Because of your history of religious persecution and because you sincerely advocate religious freedom for everyone, you speak from a position of tremendous credibility and authority.” His encouragement to me applies to all Latter-day Saints because we share a common heritage and responsibility to promote the doctrine of religious freedom.

As part of our country’s 250th anniversary celebration, I hope we all feel renewed motivation to learn and promote the doctrine of religious freedom as we heed the First Presidency’s invitation to unitedly fast and pray that religious freedom “be strengthened throughout the world.”

The post The Importance of Religious Freedom appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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We are living in a troubled world with prophesied “wars and rumours of wars” and death, devastation, and suffering on every side. We are witnessing the formation of a new world order with shifting alliances, and economies thrown into spasms by the rising price of oil and the transforming power of AI. The outbreak of war in the Middle East, on the heels of several existing armed conflicts, has posed all of these questions with even greater poignancy.

In a changing world, the thoughtful observer may wonder if God is still at the helm. Does God influence the unfolding of history? 

Latter-day Saint providential history is an approach to history that acknowledges that He does. Anchored in scripture and the teachings of modern prophets and apostles, Latter-day Saint providential history explores the divine role in human affairs in ages past and affirms that He will continue to influence the unfolding of events in days to come!

In the Latter-day Saint optic, providential history views history within the perspective of Heavenly Father’s plan for the salvation of His children. The thesis is that God, working through human agents, has shaped world history for the accomplishment of His purposes. As Moroni proclaimed: “The eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled.”

In the great work of salvation, God’s chief purposes in the modern era include (1) the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and (2) its dissemination to all the world in preparation for the Second Coming of the Messiah. Christ’s millennial reign will then be ushered in, and the great redemptive work of administering saving ordinances for the untold myriads who have lived on earth without a knowledge of the gospel will be accomplished.

This article focuses on God’s hand in advancing His salvific purposes. It reserves for another discussion questions about the problem of evil or God’s apparent nonintervention in the face of suffering, and it does not seek to excuse horrifying wrongs that have been committed in history. Rather, it considers how God, even through imperfect people and circumstances, has prepared the way for the fulfillment of His divine purposes.

Themes of God’s Influence

Modern prophets and apostles have attested that the hand of God has been at work in several aspects of Western history, including the intellectual awakening of the Renaissance, the discovery of America, the religious renewal of the Reformation, the development of representative constitutional government and human rights in Britain, and the rise of freedom in America. 

While several themes emerge when we view the modern era in the light of divine purposes, two emerge as prominent. First is the rise and spread of freedom, which will be the focus of this article. Among these developments, the rise of freedom in America has long been identified as a necessary preparation for the Restoration. As The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has extended its reach across the earth, this theme of freedom has taken on even broader meaning. The development of freedom in the Western world—the United States, in particular, but also in other countries—and its spread in one form or another to the peoples of the earth, has facilitated the worldwide preaching of the gospel.  

A second theme that has taken on greater importance is the unparalleled disbursement from heaven of scientific and technical knowledge in the modern era. This heavenly endowment has blessed all of mankind and greatly accelerated the Lord’s work. It has provided systems of transportation and communication for a worldwide church, information technology for spreading the gospel and administering church affairs, and resources for family history research and temple work—to mention but a few.  (This aspect of divine intervention will be treated in a subsequent article.) The hastening of the Lord’s work as manifested by the rapid progress of the Church has allowed it to assume by degrees its worldwide mission of spreading the gospel “unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, until it has filled the whole earth.”

The Rise of Freedom  

The extension of the Church across the world has been closely correlated with the extension of religious freedom worldwide. The maps below demonstrate this. In several countries, including some areas in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, which have limited religious freedom, the Church has a recognized presence, with branches and members, but without missionaries and proselytizing. In other countries, without religious freedom, there is no recognized Latter-day Saint presence. The spread of freedom among the nations of the earth is a prerequisite for preaching the gospel. A comparison of the maps, Global Religious Freedom and The Global Church, is highly instructive on that point.

Modern prophets and apostles have offered insight into the divine role in the spread of freedom. President John Taylor affirmed that “There is an inherent principle of right planted in the human bosom, which God has placed there . . . an innate, inalienable principle of justice and equity, in every age and among all nations.” President Joseph F. Smith likewise declared that God has inspired “all who have in ages past contributed to the progress of civil and religious freedom.”

By prophetic witness, the rise and spread of freedom has involved many nations, several of which prophets have identified by name. While the prophetic record does not allow us to identify specifically the spread of freedom to every country around the world as divinely inspired, we do have the general reflection of President David O. McKay that “The history of the world with all its contentions and strife is largely an account of Man’s effort to free himself from bondage and usurpation.” Obviously, there are no perfect purveyors of liberty among the nations of the world, and the histories of those which have been so identified are sometimes fraught with much injustice and oppression. But God appears to have used imperfect nations, just as He has used imperfect people, for the accomplishment of His purposes. A few of those nations and regions that prophets have identified are described below.

Britain

At the rededication of the London Temple in 1992, President Gordon B. Hinckley acknowledged the divine hand in the development of British liberties which have spread worldwide: “We recognize that it was at Runnymede, in this county of Surrey, in the year 1215, that the Magna Charta was signed. . . . Through all of the centuries that have followed, these rights have been preserved, implemented, and enlarged. They have spread from here and have been incorporated in the constitutions and charters of other nations across the earth. . . . Freedom to think, to speak, to assemble, and to worship is basic to the happiness of mankind. We acknowledge thy divine hand in the establishment and preservation of that freedom in this the United Kingdom.”

The United States

Prophets have also identified that America has a special mission to perform in the spread of freedom. With amazing prophetic insight, Joseph F. Smith taught in a 1903 General Conference about the future destiny of America at a time when the United States had not yet entered the realm of the great powers. He said: “This great American nation the Almighty raised up . . . . His hand has been over this nation, and it is his purpose and design to enlarge it, make it glorious above all others, and to give it dominion, and power . . . to the end that those who are kept in bondage . . . may be brought to the enjoyment of the fullest freedom and liberty of conscience possible . . .”

This prophecy has been realized by degrees in the course of the twentieth century, as the United States evolved from an emerging great power to a world superpower and has championed the cause of freedom around the world. The United States played a particularly significant role in advancing freedom after the Second World War and during the fall of the Iron Curtain. But, as the Book of Mormon has revealed, alternate blessings and cursings are upon the Americas. For the inhabitants to be “free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations,” they must “serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ.” The warning is severe. Should the inhabitants of the land sink to “the fulness of iniquity,” they will be “swept off.”

France

Another of the “great democracies” alluded to by President Hinckley, France, has played a significant role in the spread of freedom across the world. Highlighting France as a purveyor of freedom, John Taylor observed that the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was “almost verbatim” to the inspired American Declaration of Independence, which affirmed the eternal truth that “all men are born free and equal and have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Latin America

The countries of Latin America have likewise been favored of God. In 1979, Elder Ezra Taft Benson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, taught the Saints in Bolivia that “God raised up wise leaders among your progenitors which afforded Latin American countries political freedom and independence. . . . I believe it was very significant that when independence came to the countries of South America, governments were established on constitutional principles–some patterned after the Constitution of the United States. I believe this was a very necessary step which preceded the preaching of the gospel in South America.” 

Spreading the Gospel

Evil is rampant in the world, and vice and evil often flourish simultaneously with the extension of freedom. Yet God, with foreknowledge, has used the extension of freedom to enable the preaching of the gospel, proving that God’s “wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil.”

The fall of the Iron Curtain and the spread of freedom in Eastern Europe in the almost bloodless revolutions of 1989 was a dramatic manifestation of this principle. The miraculous fall of the Iron Curtain and the consequent extension of freedom, allowing populations previously under communist rule to hear the gospel, was lauded in 1990 during the First Presidency Christmas Devotional by President Gordon B. Hinckley, then First Counselor in the First Presidency, as a manifestation of the divine will. “The Spirit of Christ is brooding over the whole earth,” he said. “We have witnessed miracles undreamed of only a short time ago. Like a glorious sunburst through dark clouds, there is emerging freedom of worship, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression.”

The last two decades of the twentieth century also saw a resurgence of freedom in Latin America and Africa as a bevy of authoritarian regimes were swept aside and more democratic regimes were installed. One of the most significant moments in that resurgence was the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 and the subsequent adoption of a new constitution in 1996, which extended equal rights to all citizens.

The expansion of missionary work largely mirrored these developments of freedom. The 1978 revelation on the priesthood opened missionary work in much of Africa and accelerated it in Brazil, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. At the same time, expanding political freedom made possible the preaching of the gospel in Eastern Europe, Russia, other former Soviet states, and throughout Latin America and Africa.

By 2000, Freedom House reported that “almost 60 percent of the world’s population live[d] in free societies, where basic rights and religious freedom flourish. . . that whereas 100 years ago, no nation on earth had universal voting rights for its citizens, now 119 of 192 nations have elected representatives. The group could find only 18 nations in which civil liberties were suppressed the year previous (1999) by the military or their rulers.” Freedom House also reported that when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, 69 countries were democratic; by January 2000, that number had grown to 120. Although the number has fluctuated since then, it has largely hovered near 120.

In the Middle East and Northern Africa, widespread popular uprisings dating from the Arab Spring in early 2011 forced autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, and Libya to relinquish power, but many of these countries have returned to autocratic rule. More recently, the U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran and the ensuing war in the Middle East provides a prospect of increased freedom of democracy, but the struggle for freedom in the Middle East and elsewhere is an unfinished story with much still to be done. Those areas where there is no formal Latter-day Saint presence, as shown on the map, which include much of North Africa and the Middle East, still lack the necessary freedom for preaching the gospel, although small groups of Latter-day Saints are found in several of these countries.

The last decade-and-a-half have seemingly seen the rise of more autocratic regimes. We must trust that this is only temporary, for as Joseph Smith declared in the Wentworth letter, the gospel message will go forward until it has been preached in all nations, “and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” 

The rise of freedom, despite its accompanying challenges, is a major theme that prominent secular historians have identified in the development of the modern world. This theme is intertwined significantly with the rise of Western society and the spread of its political and social ideals, its technology and economic models, and, in many cases, Christianity. The imperialistic spread of Western society over the centuries has tragically entailed many injustices and suffering, death, and destruction on a massive scale. 

Yet even amid injustice and wrongdoing, God has frequently brought good from evil. The development of parliamentary government, democracy, and human rights stands among the lasting fruits. In the long term, the integration of these more positive aspects of Western society, it may be argued, has in large measure prepared the way for the accomplishment of the Lord’s work of salvation.

God’s Plan to Deliver the Saints in the Latter Days

When we discern God’s hand in history, we gain confidence that He will continue to direct events according to His purposes. Even so, the promise of the coming “great and dreadful day of the Lord” with its foretold calamities can stir anxiety. But reflection on His past deliverance provides assurance that His sustaining care will remain with His Saints in the days ahead.

As Christ spoke with His Apostles about the events preceding His Second Coming, He predicted a time when “nation shall rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilence, and earthquakes in divers places.” During his second visit to Joseph Smith on the night of September 21, 1823, the Angel Moroni similarly told Joseph of “great judgments which were coming upon the earth, with great desolations by famine, sword, and pestilence.”

The mighty works of God in the past provide us with reassurances of His comforting and guiding hand in the future. Nephi declared that he “read many things [to his people], which were engraven upon the plates of brass, that they might know concerning the doings of the Lord, in other lands, among people of old.” Knowing of the Lord’s doing in times past strengthens our faith. As God has taught in the Words of Mormon 1:4 and Isaiah 46:9-10, having fulfilled his promises in times past, He will certainly fulfill those yet to be fulfilled.

President Russell M. Nelson warned that there are difficult times ahead and that the time will come when Saints can only survive the cacophony of conflicting voices if they have the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But he also predicted a time of great manifestations of the Lord’s power prior to the Second Coming. He taught, “Our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, will perform some of His mightiest works between now and when He comes again. We will see miraculous indications that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, preside over this Church in majesty and glory.” 

Who can doubt that the redefinition of the Church’s mission as home-centered and church-supported, just prior to the Covid pandemic, was other than providential? 

While providential history cannot supplant the prophetic voice in providing comfort to a troubled age, the compilation of prophetic statements of God’s intervention in human affairs can increase our faith and provide reassurances that He is still much interested in our welfare, and that He has been much involved in human affairs, in many ways we may not have fully appreciated. A fuller awareness of divine intervention in times past will provide assurance that His guiding and protecting influence will be over us in the troubled times yet to come.

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These bright young students were highly engaged. We had fruitful discussions about the concept of equal justice in the abstract, as well as its potential applications to modern issues in law. In those discussions, a recurring problem arose: What, if anything, does equal justice demand once rights protections are in place? Is it enough that government refrain from infringing rights, or does the pursuit of equal justice call for citizens to defend and facilitate the rights of others as well?  

These questions lie at the intersection of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. What follows is a brief exploration of these questions. Considering the Constitution in light of the Declaration of Independence, these documents suggest that equal justice might involve more than formal legal equality. It requires not only the protection of rights through the rule of law, but also a continuing commitment to the conditions that make liberty genuinely available to all.

A Divinely Inspired Constitution 

In his April 2021 general conference address, Oaks identified at least five “divinely inspired principles” in the Constitution. Two of these principles are strongly tied to equal justice. One is the “vital guarantees of individual rights and specific limits on government authority in the Bill of Rights.” Another is that “We are to be governed by law and not by individuals, and our loyalty is to the Constitution and its principles and processes, not to any office holder. In this way, all persons are to be equal before the law.” This principle can be summarized as the rule of law.

A few months later, Oaks published an article in the Deseret News in which he noted that “America has been blessed by an inspired Constitution that aims at equal justice and the advancement of all on the basis of merit.” He then followed this statement with a reiteration of the five divinely inspired principles from his talk, including the two previously mentioned (protection of individual rights and the rule of law). 

Oaks’s Deseret News article suggests that the Constitution contains additional divinely inspired principles beyond those he expressly identified. It also confirms that justice is a central theme in the Constitution’s divinely inspired nature. This might be deduced from careful consideration of equal justice’s relation to the earlier stated principles of protection of individual rights and the rule of law. The protection of each person’s rights and the equal application of the law are at the forefront of the Constitution’s aims. Together, these principles aspire to justice for all.

The Connection Between the Constitution and the Declaration

Oaks’s article also brings into consideration the Declaration of Independence. He mentions the Declaration and the “lofty principles” it espoused before expounding on equal justice.

Suppose the Constitution rests on a theory of justice grounded in natural rights. Although contested, this view is at least plausible given the context of the Constitution’s adoption. 

We are now coming up on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As I have argued elsewhere, the Declaration defends the legitimacy of the colonists’ separation from the Crown based on a claim to natural rights and human equality. The claim, at its most essential, is that all human beings are created equal in that they have certain inalienable natural rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government, the Declaration argues, is not legitimate unless it acknowledges and preserves these basic truths and protects these rights. 

The Declaration connects to the Constitution on this point. The Constitution was drafted, at least in part, to secure liberty and establish institutions capable of protecting natural rights. This is evident in its Preamble, which states that its aims are to, among other things,  “establish Justice . . . promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” 

Bringing these claims full circle to Oaks’s divinely inspired principles, it would make sense that they include “vital guarantees of individual rights” and governance by the rule of law such that “all persons are to be equal before the law.” The core of the Declaration’s bold claim of human equality and inalienable rights is central to what animates the inspired aspects of the Constitution.

Seeking Equal Justice

If we consider equal justice as an inspired principle, what does this add to Oaks’s previously established list of principles? It reinforces the notion that the Constitution protects the rights of all persons on an equal basis, thereby guaranteeing human equality. Equal justice, then, can be understood as the union of rights protection and the rule of law.

Notably, the combined words “equal justice” do not appear anywhere in the Constitution. In one sense, this is of little concern. There are ample rights-protecting provisions enumerated in the document. And with the adoption of the Reconstruction Amendments, which “completed” the Constitution’s commitment to equal justice, it is clear that, at least as a matter of law, all are to be protected equally before the law and all citizens are guaranteed protection in their rights.

In another sense, there remains a deep, ongoing ambiguity in the law. Though discernible in the text, equal justice remains notoriously difficult to apply in the broader scheme of American governance. 

Take this example from Oaks’s article. He recounted a story of his law firm declining to hire a young lawyer merely because the lawyer was Jewish. After Oaks and his colleague protested, the young attorney was hired and went on to become a managing partner. From this example, it is clear that Oaks had in mind, at a minimum, the idea that equal justice allows all to participate equally in civil life and proceed—whether they rise or fall—based on merit alone. (As noted below, equal justice was not compelled by law in this instance, yet the principle was operative nonetheless.)

In theory, equal justice seems straightforward. Whoever performs best ought to receive the best rewards. (For the moment we will bracket the question of who decides and by what metric.) The idea is that those who are naturally more talented or who work harder will simply rise to the top. After all, the Declaration’s—and, by extension, the Constitution’s—promise is that all will receive the blessings of liberty so long as they are governed by law and their rights are protected. 

But practical reality very soon gets in the way. Often in this nation’s past, those promises went not only unfulfilled but were actively frustrated, particularly for this nation’s black population. From slavery to Jim Crow, rights were perpetually violated and equal justice was a sham. The sort of rights deprivation that took place was certainly more than enough to justify revolution, at least by the Declaration’s standards.

Eventually, these wrongs were removed through the Reconstruction Amendments and later civil rights legislation. But were the wrongs ever fully remedied? Was there proper restitution? There remained the practical reality that a certain segment of the population had been deprived of every right imaginable and now had to find their way in America. The ever-present question, then, is whether the Constitution’s conception of justice would be sufficient to guarantee basic human equality.

The Reconstruction Amendments guaranteed equal protection of rights. They did not necessarily guarantee equal access to the conditions required to exercise those rights. If generations of injustice deprived some citizens of property, education, or opportunity, would the mere cessation of discrimination be sufficient to secure the Constitution’s promise of equal justice? Or does equal justice require more than noninterference? Or, alternatively, does the Constitution merely settle for the idea that, moving forward, rights would not be infringed? Is that equal justice?

Perhaps the answer lies in some other divinely inspired principle, as Oaks left open the possibility that there were others not listed. And, of course, even the ones identified are not self-executing. Are mercy, grace, or restitution divinely inspired principles conceivably within the bounds of the Constitution?

Oaks and his colleague did not need to stand up for the young Jewish lawyer; nothing in the Constitution required it. After all, equal justice does not demand that an individual be able to force another to employ him or her. But this shows the gravity of Oaks’s actions. He acted even though the law imposed no obligation to do so. He saw that justice required the firm to adhere to a higher principle in its hiring practices. This might suggest that maintaining equal justice is more than simply refraining from violating the rights of others. It might include actively ensuring that fellow citizens are treated with equal dignity and respect, as Oaks did in his example.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to delineate a carefully orchestrated political program to achieve equal justice in our political moment. But if equal justice means the protection of natural rights through the rule of law for the end of securing the blessings of liberty, there is much more that must be done than apathetically standing on the sidelines. Oaks provided one vision of that end as “the advancement of all on the basis of merit.” 

Whatever it might look like, it will require active assessment of our moment and whether equal justice demands more. It will take careful analysis and prudent action to determine whether prior rights deprivations have been remedied or whether current rights deprivations appear as the same old snake but in new skin. This nation has come a long way in seeking equal justice for all, and there is surely more that can and ought to be done. But the pursuit is just as critical as the end. If we diligently seek to realize the Constitution’s promise of equal justice, the Declaration can continue to serve as a standard for American self-government for the next 250 years.

The post Equal Justice and the Blessings of Liberty appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

They talk as though “Mormonism” were an ethnicity. As though there were something in the blood. As though having the right grandparents, the right zip code, the right memories of casseroles and church basketball and trek and EFY and green Jell-O and dirty sodas and ward culture means you retain some inherited authority to define what the Church is, what it should preserve, and what it owes the world.

The Church of Jesus Christ is not an aesthetic, it’s not an ethnicity, it’s not a regional brand, it’s not even a culture. It is a church.

It has doctrine, commandments, ordinances, priesthood keys, and covenants. It has admission requirements, and it has boundaries.

“Mormon” Isn’t a Culture

Beginning in the early- to mid-2010s, there was a tendency among online Latter-day Saint malcontents to claim they had a special say over what happened in the Church by listing their Latter-day Saint bona fides before they launched into whatever complaint they had.

It started to become an embarrassing cliche, but these critics would usually talk about callings in which they served, people they knew, and their heritage in the Church, as though this gave them some special authority to critique.

Perhaps the most groan-worthy example of this was when The Washington Post described James Huntsman, who at that point was no longer a member of The Church of Jesus Christ, as “Mormon royalty” because of who his family was. 

At the time, these complaints were usually focused on tensions between the critics’ progressive American beliefs and the positions of a worldwide church. And the attitude was imported from Reddit, a social media site that is designed to encourage groupthink, and condescension against those outside its own orthodoxy. 

At the same time, a trend began of conceptualizing a Latter-day Saint culture that was severable from the doctrine and practice of the Church, led by many of the mommy bloggers and eventual influencers. They showed their lives online, but often with the religious portions omitted or left on the edges to make the lifestyle content more broadly accessible. 

Increasingly, those who were in the space, but not faithful Latter-day Saints themselves, would use the word “Mormon” to describe themselves, their spaces, or their movement. In fact, on Reddit, they called the “subreddit” dedicated to criticizing The Church of Jesus Christ and its members “r/mormon.” 

This trend has continued as the Church’s actual membership increasingly lives outside Utah and the United States, among people who would be quite confused by carrots in Jell-O.

Why Would They Still Want the Name?

I understand why so many people want to associate themselves with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the “Mormon” name. 

For the purposes of marketing, “Mormon” clearly interests people. Latter-day Saints have incredible reputations worldwide. I can understand why those who don’t choose to support The Church of Jesus Christ or live by its covenants and doctrines still want to participate in the sense of community and identity it provided. I would also love it if I could keep getting paychecks from my employer without doing any of the work. 

But just because their desire to stay associated with the Church makes sense doesn’t mean that reasonable people need to abide by it. 

John Dehlin, for example, criticized the Church with false information for so long and so consistently that he was excommunicated over a decade ago. His podcast, “Mormon Stories,” is not about “Mormon stories,” nor has it been for a very long time. The podcast is, by all rights, about “Ex-Mormon Stories” or “Anti-Mormon Stories.”

So when he recently described himself in a podcast as “Mormon,” it makes sense, it’s just not true, not in any meaningful way. 

And we would do well to look at such claims the same way Europeans do when Americans claim European identity—with cringe. 

“You’re not Irish. Maybe your great grandparents were Irish, but then they left, and you’ve been in America for a very long time.” 

Names have incredible power, which is why they are protected under trademark law. I understand faith transitions can be difficult, and they implicate identity in difficult ways. But if you apostasize from your faith, you don’t get to keep claiming it. Or at least people should ignore you when you try to. 

The process of leaving a faith fundamentally changes the way you think about it, the way you talk about it, and the way you remember it. This is why the Washington Post’s reporting on James Huntsman was so harmful. If he were in fact a “Mormon” who chose to sue the Church, that would communicate something very different about what was happening than the fact that he was an ex-Mormon and chose to sue the Church. 

And that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of his point. But for someone on the inside to make certain kinds of claims is just different than when someone on the outside does the same. People understand this instinctively. 

So when someone uses “Mormon” to describe themselves or their community after they’ve actually left, they are trying to appropriate credibility they haven’t earned. 

I understand that many people desire to discuss their experience growing up within The Church of Jesus Christ even if they’ve left the Church. There is a simple, easy-to-understand way to describe this: “Ex-Latter-day Saint” or “Ex-Mormon.”

Didn’t You Give Up on the Name “Mormon”?

Let’s talk about the word “Mormon” for a minute. Latter-day Saints no longer choose to describe themselves this way. We choose to find every opportunity we can to refer to Jesus Christ and our membership in His Church. 

Some have attempted to argue that because Latter-day Saints no longer use the description “Mormon” for themselves, it is free for others to use. 

It’s not. 

Kentucky Fried Chicken has recently decided to no longer use that name for its restaurants; it is now called just KFC. 

When The Church of Jesus Christ announced a reprioritization of its name, there were several simple short plugins for existing nomenclature. For example:

• “Mormons” could be replaced with “Latter-day Saints”
• “Mormon Church” could be replaced with “The Church of Jesus Christ”
• “Mormon Tabernacle Choir” could be replaced with the “Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square”

But there was one common phrase that did not have an easy replacement: “Mormonism.” And as a writer who has had to deal with this limitation, the more I’ve worked through it, the more obvious it has become to me that this was not an oversight. 

In today’s Church, there is no single “Mormonism”; there are hundreds of cultures around the world as people live the gospel in their own countries and settings.

That thing we call “Mormonism” doesn’t actually do a good job of explaining the culture of all the people who believe in The Book of Mormon. There are lots of smaller cultures within it, and being left without an obvious word I’ve had to think more carefully about what I actually mean. Do I mean Word of Wisdom culture, or do I simply mean Utah culture. 

There is a culture, and it’s probably the culture you think of when I say “Mormonism,” but it is increasingly niche, and we need to find ways to describe it that do not implicate nearly 18 million people worldwide. It is a contemporary Utah-descended lifestyle culture that is downstream from an older pioneer world. It’s an evolved pioneer culture. It could be called “Utah culture” or “Intermountain West culture.” But it’s not “Mormon” culture, it’s not the culture of The Church of Jesus Christ, it’s one of many cultures within a worldwide gathering.

There’s nothing wrong with this evolved pioneer culture. I love funeral potatoes. But to suggest that Taylor Frankie Paul, the star of “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” is part of “Mormonism” because she drinks dirty sodas, even after she chose to leave, is offensive. 

So I, for one, greeted the news that The Church of Jesus Christ was suing “Mormon Stories” for trademark infringement with gratitude. 

Why Do You Care Who Calls Themselves “Mormon”?

I should be clear: the Church isn’t suing John Dehlin simply because he’s using the word “Mormon” to describe his podcast. The Church is suing him because he uses the word in conjunction with visual imagery specifically to trick people into listening to his podcast, and he refuses to include a disclaimer. 

The fact that most people will quickly be able to tell, after clicking on his podcast, that he is a malcontent doesn’t change the underlying lie. I still couldn’t start a restaurant called “Kentucky Fried Chicken” even if it sold hamburgers to prevent confusion. Trading on that company’s identity to get people in the front door is a problem in itself.

But just because The Church of Jesus Christ is not going after Dehlin solely for using the word “Mormon” doesn’t mean that people of good faith shouldn’t.

This is especially important because it causes incredulous media to turn to these folks as experts on The Church of Jesus Christ, and it can impact members and investigators who are not frequently online. 

Mormon may not be the name we call ourselves, but it is still an important part of who we are. The nickname comes from a record of Jesus Christ visiting people on another continent. That matters to us. Imagine an ex-Muslim starting a podcast about “Quran Stories” and saying that this isn’t a problem because they don’t call themselves “Qurans,” they call themselves “Muslims.”

But that’s not what has happened. Those who have left the faith have not joined these other churches in good faith to continue describing themselves as “Mormon.” This also isn’t about well-meaning Latter-day Saints who may be struggling with a testimony or with standards but who still see themselves as within the community. This is about those who leave, and who, in many cases, are actively seeking to tear down the work done by people who actually love The Book of Mormon, continuing to use the word because it helps them generate more web traffic than an honest name would. 

The Subtle Racism of “Cultural Mormonism”

For a church community that is increasingly populated and run by people from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the idea that people get special say over what happens within the community because of who their grandparents were brings up unfortunate racial problems.

You gain membership through baptism, and you maintain that membership through covenant keeping. 

If you don’t do those two things, then you don’t have a seat at the table; you’ve decided to leave the table. That spot is for new converts learning to leave their own culture for the gospel way, who are trying every day to live in faith and honesty. Trying to freeze Mormon identity to a past time based on what our ancestors were doing dismisses the real work of those all over the world who don’t have that background, but who are doing the work. 

It is their voices that need to be heard, not the person whose grandfather worked with a Romney, or who was a district leader on a foreign language-speaking mission, or who served as second counselor in a bishopric but then decided to leave because the Church’s position on some social issue just wasn’t popular enough for him and his Instagram followers. That person isn’t “Mormon Royalty,” that person isn’t “Culturally Mormon,” that person doesn’t have “Mormon stories,” that person isn’t Mormon. He left. And I wish him the best. But we’re busy trying to build Zion, and you can’t steal our name to help tear it down. 

The post Who is a Mormon? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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For years, living in Iran, I heard the same explanation repeated with certainty: the people in power were incompetent. Corrupt, shortsighted, incapable of governing a country with this much talent, history, and natural wealth. If outcomes fell short—if industry stagnated, if the economy destabilized—the conclusion seemed obvious. It was mismanagement.

That explanation endured not only because it was plausible, but because it was comfortable. Incompetence suggests error. It implies that the system has deviated from its purpose, and that with better decisions—or better people—it could still produce a livable future. It leaves intact a deeper assumption that is rarely examined: that the system is meant to work for those living within it.

Questioning the Assumption of Incompetence

As an engineer and entrepreneur, I tried to place myself outside politics. My work was technical. My goals were practical. I thought that if I focused on building something real, something useful, I could remain at a safe distance from the machinery around me.

That assumption did not survive contact with reality.

Over time, it became impossible to reconcile the logic I understood with the logic of the system I was living under. Cause and effect no longer aligned. Outcomes did not seem to matter. Decisions that produced damage were repeated without correction. What appeared inconsistent at first revealed itself as something more durable: a system operating by a different logic altogether.

At first, I relied on the same explanation everyone else used. The people in power are incompetent.

But that interpretation began to erode under observation. I remember laying out, in precise operational terms, the long-term cost of certain policies—economic degradation, institutional decay, loss of future capacity. These were not ideological arguments. They were straightforward projections. Yet they were met with indifference, as if the criteria being applied were entirely different from the ones being discussed.

That was the first real fracture in the narrative.

I stopped analyzing decisions individually and began looking at the structure itself.

My company changed with me. I no longer organized it for growth in the conventional sense. I organized it for endurance. The goal was not optimization, but shock absorption. Not scale, but survival. Resilience became the business model because volatility had become the governing condition.

Even then, I resisted abandoning the explanation of incompetence. It is a durable idea because it protects a deeper assumption: that the system has deviated from its purpose, rather than forcing us to confront the possibility that its purpose was never what we believed it to be.

I did not arrive at this conclusion through theory, but because politics became inseparable from daily life—professional constraint, private anxiety, ambient uncertainty—leaving no choice but to study it, as the economy itself had become political.

The more unsettling explanation was also the more coherent one: the system was not failing. It was operating according to a logic many of us had refused to name.

A Matter of Ideology, Not Execution

To see that logic requires abandoning a central assumption of modern political life—that governments are primarily organized around improving the material conditions of their populations. Many are not. Some systems are organized around ideological continuity, strategic positioning, internal control, or elite preservation, and they will accept broad social cost if those objectives require it.

Recognizing this is not only an analytical shift. It is a civic one. It forces a reconsideration of how individuals, communities, and societies interpret what they are seeing—and what they choose to do with that understanding.

Iran is not an anomaly in this regard, but a particularly visible instance of a broader class of systems in which stated objectives and operating priorities diverge in systematic ways.

In Iran, power cannot be understood apart from ideology.

The Iranian regime is not merely authoritarian; it is political-theological. Authority is not justified through performance, but through doctrine and continuity. Legitimacy is anchored not in outcomes, but in preservation.

In this sense, ideology does not replace geopolitics; it structures it—defining which strategic objectives are pursued, and which costs are considered acceptable.

That orientation extends beyond national borders. For decades, the state has invested in regional influence, strategic depth and ideological alignment. Whatever language is used—deterrence, projection, expansion—the implication is the same: domestic welfare has never been the primary constraint on decision-making.

Once that becomes visible, much of what appeared irrational becomes internally consistent.

Resources are not misallocated by accident. They are directed elsewhere. Economically viable activity is sidelined not because it is misunderstood, but because it is secondary. Public exhaustion is not necessarily evidence of failure. It is evidence of where the system is willing to place the burden.

This is the distinction many people resist. Incompetence implies correctable error. Intent implies structural alignment.

It is more comfortable to believe that the system I grew up inside was broken than to accept that it was functioning—just not for me, not for people like me, not for the population it claimed to serve. That reorientation did not happen all at once. It required setting aside an explanation I had once found genuinely consoling.

Once that shift occurred, the pattern became difficult to ignore. I began to recognize the same structure in places that had nothing to do with Iran.

Confronting the Real Objectives

In contemporary political discourse, incompetence has become the default explanation for systemic outcomes. When wars expand, when economic strain deepens, when instability spreads, the reflex is to assume failure in execution.

Sometimes that is true. But its repetition across fundamentally different systems should raise a harder question: what if the outcomes are not mistakes, but expressions of underlying priorities?

A system cannot be evaluated if its objectives are misidentified. Yet this misidentification persists because it is easier—and because it is useful. It preserves the assumption that stated goals remain aligned with public expectations, and that deviation is accidental rather than embedded.

At the level of public life, this has consequences beyond policy. It shapes how people assign blame, where they direct their attention, and whether they see themselves as observers or participants in the systems around them.

I remember the moment that realization shifted from analysis to recognition. What followed was a kind of disappointment that does not fade, only settles.

For years, I watched world powers—despite access to intelligence—either refuse to confront this reality or avoid it altogether, as acknowledging it would require action and carry real cost. Instead, they responded in familiar terms, treating the system as if it were malfunctioning: applying pressure, offering incentives, pursuing negotiation.

But if the system is operating as designed, those strategies begin from a false premise. They attempt to correct behavior that is structurally reinforced. What appears as failed diplomacy or ineffective pressure is often something else entirely—a mismatch between reality and the assumptions used to interpret it.

If a system is structurally aligned against the outcomes external actors seek, then strategies built on inducing alignment are not just ineffective—they are misdirected from the outset.

Over time, that mismatch produces consequences of its own. What is not understood is not contained. Pressure accumulates, conditions harden, and the system adapts without changing direction.

At that point, instability is no longer episodic. It is structural.

Iran has lived within that accumulation for years. What was once assumed to be contained is no longer contained. Conflict, economic disruption, and strategic instability now extend outward, shaping risks far beyond its borders. This is no longer a distant system under strain. It is part of the environment others must now operate within. It is no longer somewhere else. It is at everyone’s doorstep.

For years, that trajectory remained visible but unaddressed—not because it was misunderstood, but because confronting it carried a different kind of cost. Treating the system as if it could be corrected allowed for continuity: of policy, of expectation, of response. It preserved the assumption that pressure would eventually produce alignment, even as evidence suggested otherwise. What was deferred was not recognition, but consequence. And over time, that deferral became its own pattern—one that allowed the system to persist without interruption, while the cost accumulated beyond it.

And so, the pattern held.

Pressure accumulated. Adjustments were made at the margins. Each cycle resolved nothing and carried forward more instability than the one before it.

The Cost of Misreading Intentions

What is different now is not the pattern, but the cost of continuing to misread it.

Yet the instinct remains unchanged. Even now, the dominant response is to identify visible actors, assign failure, and move on. It is a form of understanding quick enough to avoid recognition: that repeated outcomes are rarely the product of repeated mistakes. They are the product of stable structures operating as designed.

What follows is less intuitive and more demanding. At the level of policy, it requires abandoning the expectation of alignment and proceeding from sustained divergence. At the level of public judgment, it requires something more difficult than outrage: discipline. The refusal to collapse structural dynamics into familiar language. The willingness to sit with conclusions that offer no immediate resolution.

This is where the failure extends beyond the halls of power and into the streets. The instinct to explain away systemic outcomes as mere incompetence is not just an analytical error; it is participatory. It functions as a psychological safety valve, allowing societies to remain loud and ‘engaged’ without ever being truly unsettled. We trade the terrifying clarity of intent for the comfortable noise of outrage—filling the air with demands for better ‘management’ while the structure itself continues its work, unexamined and undisturbed. It produces a theater of certainty in place of the discipline of understanding.

Repeated outcomes are rarely the product of repeated mistakes. They are the product of stable structures operating as designed.

To recognize that is not to endorse those structures, nor to accept their permanence. But it does remove a particular illusion: that escalation of the same responses will eventually produce a different result.

The more uncomfortable implication is this: misreading is not neutral. It carries a cost. It delays adaptation, distorts decision-making, and extends the lifespan of the very dynamics it fails to understand.

This is not only a question of governments or policy. It is a question of how societies see, interpret, and respond to power—and of the limits they place, often unconsciously, on what they are willing to confront.

If there is a point of departure, it is not in speaking more loudly, or more frequently. It is in seeing more clearly—and accepting what that clarity demands.

Not all systems are meant to correct themselves. Some persist precisely because the expectations placed upon them were never aligned with what they were built to sustain.

The post The Logic Behind Iran appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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The Supreme Court recently ruled that a Colorado law banning “conversion therapy” for minors is unconstitutional to the extent that it prohibits talk therapy. Commentators from across the political spectrum immediately began using the case, Chiles v. Salazar, as fodder for one political narrative or another, often without context or discussion of how the justices came to their conclusion. 

But interpreting the case as “mere politics” misses crucial details and ignores what the opinion actually said. The fact that eight members of the Court (including two Democrat-appointed justices) signed on to the decision suggests that this case might be more interesting than ordinary politics—it might teach us something about the Constitution. 

But first, what happened? 

Kaley Chiles is a licensed mental health counselor in Colorado. She is also a Christian. Some of her clients are minors who experience same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria.

When these clients come to Ms. Chiles, she lets them dictate the kind of help they want. Some want to acknowledge their experiences with sexuality without making it the focus of their identity. Others don’t. For example, some of her clients who experience gender dysphoria want Ms. Chiles’ help to feel more comfortable with their biological sex. Others prefer to focus on affirming their gender identity. She adapts to the client’s goal.

Crucially for this case, Ms. Chiles employs only talk therapy in her practice. The counselor and client speak—that’s it. No medications, procedures, or other treatments involved.

Did the Supreme Court Just Reinstate Conversion Therapy?

In conducting her practice, Ms. Chiles ran into a law that Colorado passed in 2019. The law is aimed at banning conversion therapy for minors. Conversion therapy is therapy that attempts to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of the patient. Historically, it has included horrifying aversive techniques—including electric shock therapy—that have caused great suffering. Ms. Chiles does not use these methods, and no one in the case defends them.

In defense of the Colorado legislature, drafting laws is hard. Legislators try to define acceptable behavior as precisely as they can, but it’s easy for laws to miss the mark. They are often drafted broadly to ensure they fully encompass their aim—but the scope of the law often extends far beyond the bullseye. Activities that were never intended to be affected sometimes are. 

Broad laws lead to startling headlines like “Supreme Court Allows Licensed Mental Health Practitioners to Traumatize Children.” It gives the sense that the Supreme Court is saying full-steam ahead for shock therapy for people who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. None of us want that!

And thankfully, that’s not what happened here. The way Colorado operationalized “conversion therapy” was very broad, encompassing far more than the typical definition of “conversion therapy.” What Ms. Chiles was discussing in her practice, always at the request of the client, was on the outer edges of the law’s potential reach. 

As one survivor of conversion therapy put it when defending the kind of therapy in this case: “Those are not the coercive practices of my youth. They are value-congruent goals that even secular clinicians may support.” 

For people with same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, particularly faithful Christians, this ruling is welcome relief. It means they can talk with their counselors freely and choose their own paths, not being coerced by the state to pursue only one path. For Christians seeking to find peace with their sexual identity and discipleship, this ruling actually preserves their ability to have fully frank conversations with their counselors, to grapple with all of the hard questions and the complexity of their experience. How painful would it be to have counselors who had to shut down those conversations?

The ruling can be seen as preserving choice for everyone, no matter your approach to LGBT+ issues. As Justices Kagan and Sotomayor point out in their concurrence, a hypothetical law that is the mirror image of Colorado’s—in other words, one that bars therapy affirming a minor’s sexual orientation and gender identity—would also be unconstitutional under this ruling. To ban one perspective but not the other is viewpoint discrimination, and that is almost always disallowed under the Constitution.

This ruling preserves the right of mental health counselors to speak with their clients, whatever path their clients decide to take. This is good news in a highly contested and very sensitive area. 

The Future of Speech and Conduct 

This case does not resolve all issues related to “conversion therapy”—not by a long shot. The ruling relied heavily on the fact that Ms. Chiles was only using speech in her practice. If she had offered medication or medical procedures, the whole analysis could change. That’s because it would then raise the question of whether the speech was “incidental to conduct,” a fancy legal way of acknowledging that speech and action are often connected to each other. For example, doctors are often required to provide informed consent to a patient before prescribing a medication or performing a surgery. The government can compel the doctor to provide this factual information because it is related to the treatment. But just how far the government can compel speech incidental to conduct is tricky to say. 

Justice Jackson, the lone dissenter, said that a counseling session should be treated as conduct that a state can regulate as part of its police powers. In her eyes, if you are experiencing gender dysphoria, there are a number of treatments you might pursue: medication, surgery, and counseling. Since she views counseling as just another form of treatment, and because the other treatments constitute conduct that the state can regulate, she thinks counseling should also be regulated as conduct, notwithstanding the fact (which she admits) that the conduct itself is pure speech. 

On its face, the argument seems plausible. But we think she misses how talk therapy is different from other kinds of treatment. Various treatments exist because people want different outcomes in a given situation. Counseling as a treatment allows the patient to explore the patient’s own goals. It has greater flexibility than other treatments, allowing the patient to drive the direction. 

Talk therapy is often chosen by people who, for faith or other reasons, prefer to form their sense of self around something other than the sexual feelings they experience. For some, the experience of same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria is a prominent part of their lives, yet the focal point is being a disciple of Christ, including living the law of chastity. Some may say this is a denial of who they “really are,” but this presupposes that the person is constituted fundamentally by their sexual desires—an assumption that many people reject. Talk therapy provides an opportunity for people to decide for themselves how they will take a stand on their identity. 

The Culture Wars, Still Unresolved 

Again, though it’s easy to cheer or boo at this case based on your political leanings, it’s important to take a step back and see what this case actually changed—or didn’t change. Therapists can still talk to clients about the clients’ preferred approach to their sexual desires or feelings about gender. States can still ban harmful conversion therapy that involves medications or treatments that go beyond mere speech. What this case did not do is provide any kind of “resolution” to the ongoing cultural battles over sex, gender, and identity that have been going on for decades. Perhaps the work of finding “resolution” is not the Court’s job but is instead reserved for all of us.

The post Clarifying the Supreme Court’s Conversion Therapy Ruling appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Many things are moving in the right direction. Since the birth of classical liberalism, global poverty has plummeted from near 80% to under 9%, life expectancy has more than doubled, and violent crime is at historic lows. Religious liberty protections in the United States are stronger than virtually anywhere in human history.

But other things are breaking. Teen depression and anxiety rates have doubled since 2010. Marriage rates have fallen nearly 60% since 1970. Birth rates have cratered below replacement levels. Community bonds are dissolving. Loneliness has become epidemic. Political polarization has intensified to levels not seen since the Civil War era.

The family, the fundamental unit of society, struggles to survive in a culture that treats it as optional at best and oppressive at worst. Meaning structures that sustained civilization for millennia are weakening or disappearing entirely.

Secular liberalism promised neutral public spaces where diverse communities could coexist peacefully, but in practice those “neutral” spaces often became vehicles for harmful ideologies hostile to traditional religion and the virtue that flows from it. Public schools teach gender theory as settled science. Corporate HR departments enforce progressive orthodoxy. Administrative agencies regulate religious institutions. The state did not remain neutral. It just changed which comprehensive vision it enforces.

So the question religious conservatives are asking is reasonable: If secular institutions have failed to form virtue and preserve what matters most, shouldn’t we use government to restore what is being lost?

I understand this impulse. I share the alarm.

But as a Latter-day Saint, I believe we should take a different path. Coercion can never produce true goodness; it can only compel outward behavior. If we want to build a better society and protect our way of life in the long term, a more liberty-centric approach to cultural change is the best path forward.

Liberty as a Familiar Alternative

This does not mean abandoning virtue, family, or community. It means getting government out of domains where it has failed and trusting voluntary institutions to do the work that actually transforms lives. This approach has two complementary commitments:

First, protect liberty fiercely in the public sphere. Limit what government controls. Prevent majorities from using state power to enforce their vision on minorities. Ensure that families, churches, communities, and voluntary associations have the freedom to operate according to their values without government either forcing them to compromise those values or forcing others to adopt them.

Second, fight the battle for virtue in the private sphere. Build families so strong that people want to emulate them. Create churches so compelling that people choose to join them. Demonstrate through your life that virtue produces joy, meaning, and flourishing. Compete and win in a marketplace of free thought and association. We should not use state power to mandate virtue. We should prove through voluntary excellence that our way of life produces human flourishing and invite others to join us freely.

For Latter-day Saints specifically, this should feel natural. We are a tiny religious minority that thrives when government protects our liberty to worship, organize, build institutions, and live according to our values. We suffer when majorities use state power to enforce their vision of righteousness.

The liberty we preserve for others to make decisions we disagree with is the same liberty that protects our ability to live our peculiar religion. Liberty is not just morally right. It is the most durable protection we can give to our way of life. It is also where our theology points.  

Liberty in God’s Plan

The most fundamental question in Latter-day Saint theology is also the most politically relevant: What is the purpose of existence?

We believe humans can become divine beings. If the purpose of existence is transformation into beings with infinite potential, then moral agency is not optional—it is the necessary mechanism by which transformation happens.

The War in Heaven expands our understanding of this. In the premortal council, Lucifer promised to save everyone by eliminating agency entirely. God rejected this plan—not because it would not produce behavioral compliance, but because it would destroy what He is trying to create: beings capable of independent righteousness. God chose agency knowing some would fail because the alternative would destroy the very purpose of existence. 

That answer is not emotionally satisfying. Liberty is costly. But if God chose agency despite its risks, we cannot justify using coercion to produce virtue.

Our scripture shows us how the righteous should tolerate error. Alma 30:7-11 describes Nephite prophets facing false teachers willfully corrupting souls. God’s command? They are explicitly forbidden from using law to control religious belief: “there was no law against a man’s belief.” Here God refused to let even His prophet use state power to create forced virtue.

Doctrine and Covenants 121 makes this structural: “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned.” Notice: “can or ought.” Not just “should not”—cannot. Coercion breaks divine authority. This is not a temporary accommodation for mortality. It reveals something eternal about righteous power.

Living prophets affirm this often. In his October 2025 General Conference address, Elder David A. Bednar taught about the “eternal importance of moral agency” which he defined as “the divinely designed power of independent action that empowers us as God’s children to become agents to act and not simply objects to be acted upon.” 

And in prior times of cultural turmoil, prophets have made it clear this extends to the political. President Ezra Taft Benson warned: “one of Lucifer’s primary strategies has been to restrict our agency through the power of earthly governments.” He did not isolate left-wing tyranny, but any use of state power to coerce private virtue.

Our history teaches the same lesson. For our entire history, we have been a religious minority headquartered in a Christian majority nation. When Christian majorities wielded state power to enforce their vision of virtue, we were often the targets. Missouri’s governor ordered our “extermination.” Joseph and Hyrum were murdered by a mob that believed they were defending Christian civilization. This was state power wielded by Christians convinced their religious vision justified coercion. When we are tempted to use government to restore virtue, we should remember we know exactly what that looks like from the other side.

The Risks of Reaching for State Power

Reaching for state power instead carries serious risks. First, you hand those with views opposed to yours the blueprint. Every tool you build, every precedent you establish, every expansion of government power you create to enforce your values becomes available to your opponents when they win elections. And they will win elections.

You might establish laws promoting traditional marriage. They will use the same state machinery to enforce gender ideology in schools. You might require religious education in public schools. They will mandate intersectional social justice curriculum. The power does not stay in your hands. It transfers. And when it does, you will face the very machinery you have built to advance their values.

Second, you teach the next generation that politics determines virtue. Once you establish that state power is the proper tool for cultural formation, the only question becomes: who has more votes? 

Third, you signal that voluntary persuasion is not sufficient. If Christianity truly produces human flourishing, why do you need state enforcement?

The gospel succeeds through attraction, not compulsion. People become Christians because they encounter Christ and recognize Him as the source of life abundant. They join churches because they see communities living with joy, purpose, and love that they want for themselves.

When you reach for state power to enforce religious values, you are announcing that attraction is not working. You are saying your faith cannot compete on its merits in a free marketplace of ideas. That is spiritually devastating. If we really believed that truth freely chosen would prevail, we would not need state coercion.

All of this is to render unto Caesar what is God’s.

The Path Forward

We are facing real and serious problems. The concerns driving religious conservatives toward government solutions are legitimate and urgent. 

But Latter-day Saints have unique resources to see why that response is both theologically wrong and strategically unwise.

Our theology teaches that transformation requires freely chosen action, not coerced compliance. Our scripture commands tolerance even of false teachers. Our prophets warn against restricting agency through government. Our history shows what happens when Christian majorities wield state power to enforce virtue.

Let’s build the Kingdom of God through persuasion, not coercion. Let the state protect rights while God transforms lives through voluntary institutions. Compete in the marketplace of ideas with confidence that truth, freely chosen, will prevail.

God chose liberty over guaranteed outcomes in the War in Heaven because agency matters more than safety and freedom matters more than forced righteousness. As Latter-day Saints, we should understand why that choice was right and why we must make it in our politics today.

Let’s start rendering unto God what is God’s.

The post Caesar’s Dues appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In today’s fraught political landscape, it’s hard not to feel like both sides are dominated by extremes. And people are noticing. Registered independents have hit an all-time high and continue to increase. While academic research shows that most independent voters still hold ideological leanings, more people than ever are hesitant to officially align themselves with either political party.

This is problematic. Political parties have served as important organizing institutions in American politics for over two hundred years. Their primary goal is to elect candidates to office. Parties accomplish this by attracting voters and building broad coalitions. With America’s two-party system, as soon as one party knocks the other out of the arena, there is an incentive to broaden political appeal to win back voters. 

The past three presidential elections have been decided on thin margins, and Congress has had the narrowest majorities over the past three cycles than at any point in nearly a century. If large, diverse coalitions are no longer necessary to win elections and mobilized ideologues can instead emerge victorious, then the founding idea of a democratic republic reliant on a pluralistic society is bankrupt. 

The solution? Join a party. The medicine might seem counterintuitive to the diagnosis. How can increased partisanship help a polarized America? Because civic engagement, including partisan activity, allows citizens to steer the course of the political parties and, by extension, the nation.

Too often, people relegate political engagement to Election Day, unaware that half the battle was already fought months earlier in caucus nights and committee meetings. It’s powerful to cast a ballot, but even more powerful to shape the ballot itself. In politically homogeneous states, which are becoming more common, congressional elections are often decided at the primary level, or even earlier through party maneuvering (see both Democrat and Republican examples) that determines who appears on the ballot. Registered independent voters are often left out of these decisions, limiting their ability to select candidates and party platforms they most support.

When a closed primary system is used, independents lose political influence, especially in homogenous states, because they cannot determine who is selected as the party’s candidate. Take Utah as an example. Only registered Republicans are allowed to vote in the Republican primary, and GOP candidates are almost always elected for federal and statewide office. While we can bemoan party operations, I am personally irked when someone claims, almost righteously, that they registered as an independent voter. To me, it means they have willfully given up political influence. 

Surprised at the significant support I garnered for running on a different agenda than the national fervor at the time, I again offered my vision of a different direction for the party. I called for a broader coalition of support and identified the shortcomings of relying upon divisive figures. After a second round of voting, and with one person shifting support, I was elected as my precinct’s state delegate.

My experience did not teach me to have a holier-than-thou attitude toward people with a differing vision of politics than myself. Instead, it taught me that one vote in a caucus can matter, and that involvement with parties can be effective in changing their direction. 

I urge readers to become more involved in their local parties. We should seek to be more engaged within our communities, especially through civic and partisan means. A political party may not accurately represent all your views; indeed, it probably will not and should not. Dallin H. Oaks, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said as much in 2021, emphasizing that “no party, platform, or individual candidate can satisfy all personal preferences.”

While I do not place the Republican or Democratic parties on the same pedestal as the American democratic project, I do believe MacIntyre’s point offers a helpful model for the partisan. Being an avid supporter of a political party still allows for healthy disagreement with the party’s platform or structure. 

I leave with this: joining a mainstream political party opens up avenues for political power that are closed to many independent voters, and joining does not mean you agree with every aspect of the party. If anything, the greatest impact you can have is changing the institution itself and moving the party forward in its quest to serve the people. 

In the past, Republicans and Democrats were not so polarized, and I believe more partisan involvement would actually increase mutual understanding and respect if done thoughtfully. So why wait? Join the party.

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Dignity. That’s what’s missing from our politics. 

Leadership isn’t just about what you do; it is about how you do it. At the core of our humanity lies a profound longing for our dignity to be recognized—for the inherent worth of each of us to be acknowledged. As scholar Donna Hicks has written in her book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, “When we feel worthy, when our value is recognized, we are content. When a mutual sense of worth is recognized and honored in our relationships, we are connected.” Effective leaders facilitate relationships by cultivating recognition and respect for the dignity of others. Unaddressed dignity violations destroy connection, smothering progress and development.

The Constitution of the United States is built for disagreement. It not only expects conflict but channels it: elections instead of coups, courts instead of tyranny, justice over arbitrariness, and persuasion over coercion. But no amount of constitutional design can substitute for a culture where people choose to recognize one another as fully human. Dignity is not the opposite of conviction. It is the opposite of contempt. 

Leaders set in patterns of disparagement and contempt damage this culture. If we want a healthier political culture, we need to name the patterns in political leadership that are harming us and seek leaders who implement principles of dignity in their leadership styles. 

Why Dignity Collapses in Politics

The tendency to aggrandize oneself and demean others is, ironically, rooted in a lack of self-confidence. As Hicks further describes in her book, “The temptation to save face is as powerful as our fight-or-flight instinct … The dread of having our inadequacy, incompetence, or lack of moral integrity made known is enough to … do whatever it takes to protect ourselves.” 

That instinct shows up in politics as a familiar set of moves: avoiding, deflecting, dodging, and attacking instead of taking responsibility. It shows up as blaming rival administrations, condemning entire organizations or groups of people, and ostracizing opponents. It shows up as othering. 

While “othering” enemies is an oft-used war tactic, promoting dignity is a more effective approach to leadership because it harnesses individuals’ excellence. Honoring dignity promotes the self-respect necessary for proactive and practical greatness. You change people by introducing them to their goodness rather than demeaning them. Perceiving and appreciating the dignity of others helps to unlock their creative potential. 

I share five ways that politicians—and anyone, really—can emphasize the dignity of others in their leadership. For additional ideas, check out some of the resources provided by Project UNITE.

Principle 1: Lead by Recognizing Inherent Value, Especially in Your Opponents

If dignity is the acknowledgment and recognition of every individual’s inherent value, then the first test of leadership is simple: Do you talk about political opponents as fellow citizens, or as inferior people who must be shamed, crushed, or erased?

Notice that neither party has a monopoly on contempt or on dignity. It isn’t about ideology; it’s about integrity of character. On the left, dismissive rhetoric tossing entire communities into a moral rubbish heap has become a shorthand example of what it feels like to be written off. On the right, language declaring opponents “enemies,” “traitors,” or “enemy of the people” functions the same way—less as a critique of behavior than as a declaration that the other side is illegitimate. Dignity collapses when leaders use labels that convert people into caricatures, treat disagreement as proof of moral inferiority, and popularize contempt as entertainment.

This matters because contempt is contagious. Once leaders model it, followers feel permission to practice it.

Principle 2: Sidestep Shame and Blame to Get to Problem Solving

The strongest leaders are able to sidestep shame and blame in order to problem-solve. Rather than wasting energy on contempt, the most effective leaders focus on taking responsibility for what they can control and drawing out the goodness of others.

Dignity-honoring leadership, here, looks like owning mistakes without theatrics and naming trade-offs and limitations honestly. It means replacing scapegoats with solutions. Both parties have had their moments of success and failure. 

In the frantic days after Sept. 11, 2001, Republican Rep. John Cooksey of Louisiana suggested pulling over anyone who looked “Middle Eastern,” including anyone with “a diaper on his head” with a “fan belt wrapped around” it.  In 2018, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California urged supporters that if they saw members of the Trump administration “in a restaurant” or “a gasoline station,” they should “create a crowd” and “push back,” telling them they were “not welcome anymore, anywhere.” In both cases, these are politics of humiliation that smother problem solving. 

Dignity-violating leadership like this makes a sport of blaming. It treats every setback as proof that others are incompetent, corrupt, or inferior. It assigns villain status to whichever target is useful that week: the previous administration, the media, the courts, the bureaucracy, immigrants, corporations, extremists, woke elites, or religious fanatics.  The labels change. The psychological pattern does not. Shame and blame feel powerful in the moment, but they suffocate progress and development. The strongest leaders are able to sidestep shame and blame to get to problem-solving rather than wasting energy on contempt.

Principle 3: Resist “othering”—because it builds fear, not strength

Some leaders believe that “othering” rhetoric promotes unity among the in-group. It often does—briefly. But it actually and ultimately engenders fear. And when our psychological safety is at stake, we are, as Hicks describes, thrust into “a frozen state of self-doubt, preventing us from accessing the positive power that is at our disposal once we see and accept our value and worth.”

The fear isn’t limited to outsiders. I’m part of the in-group now, but what if I’m the next one to be cut out? It seems fine until you are the one getting “othered.” 

Consider how President Trump othered his rivals, complaining that he had to fix “disasters” and “failed policies” inherited from a “totally inept group of people.” President Trump went on to say that “President Biden totally lost control of what was going on in our country.” Perhaps his task was difficult, but by claiming it was others who caused or failed to solve problems, he suggested he was somehow above them.

Dignity-violating rhetoric treats entire groups as suspicious, disposable, or beneath respect. It publicly humiliates opponents in an attempt to signal dominance. It turns politics into a permanent purge: who’s in, who’s out. 

Principle 4: Negotiate and Govern by Acknowledging Dignity First

Politics is negotiation—between regions, classes, generations, cultures, and moral codes. An effective negotiator acknowledges the dignity of any leaders’ attempt to protect their people, then moves forward to interest-based solutions.

Honoring human dignity begins with a basic posture: You are a human being with worth; now let’s argue honestly about what is right. In practice, this means starting with shared goods—safety, opportunity, freedom, flourishing—and treating opposing concerns as real, not fake. It means keeping criticism tethered to actions and ideas. It means arguing about ideas instead of attacking people.

Contempt can’t do this work. Emphasizing weakness, antagonizing, and enflaming hatred may feel like strength, but it is often simply avoidance veiled in camouflage. The alternative is the discipline of honoring dignity up front, and then digging into the substantive work of negotiating interest-based solutions. You can see flashes of that discipline when leaders refuse the cheap thrill of televised dunking and instead build coalitions around shared goods like stability, safety, and opportunity. Sometimes that looks like cross-party pairs who learn to argue honestly without degrading—think of bipartisan efforts like McCain–Feingold’s campaign finance work, or the strange-bedfellow coalitions that produced criminal justice reform in the First Step Act. Sometimes it looks like the unglamorous willingness to split credit and share blame, like the 1983 Social Security compromise shaped by Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Reagan’s team.

Both parties have been tempted by the cheap thrill of televised dunking. But doing the substantive work turns the theater of humiliation into governance.

Contempt doesn’t negotiate; it escalates.

Principle 5: Praise The Good In Others More Than Emphasizing the Negative

Honoring dignity will always be more effective than fostering disparagement and contempt. Honoring dignity promotes the self-respect necessary for proactive and practical greatness.

Leaders from both parties have had rare, powerful moments when they described the other side’s voters as understandable—neighbors motivated by real fears and hopes—even while fiercely disagreeing. You can hear it when Joe Biden, in his 2020 victory speech, told Americans to “lower the temperature,” reject the language of “red” and “blue,” and treat one another not as adversaries but as fellow citizens. You can hear it, too, when Republican Gov. of Utah Spencer Cox’s call to “disagree better”  warns Americans not to slip into the habit of treating one another—especially our political opponents—as enemies. 

And leaders from both parties have had destructive moments when they spoke as if the other side’s voters were beneath respect. The difference is not cosmetic. It is structural. Their language either builds trust in institutions and the rule of law, or it erodes it.

The Good News

The good news is that violations of dignity can be named, tamed, and healed; this rebuilds the civic trust on which strong communities are built and unleashes the inherent power of dignity.

Don’t be fooled by righteous indignation masquerading as political victory. Leaders (and each of us) can build this dignity dimension by praising the good in others rather than overemphasizing the negative, accepting responsibility for our actions, and choosing to popularize dignity validation.

Although I have focused on broader principles of dignity, there is no question that there are politicians today who have violated these norms with increasing frequency and severity. The sanctity of holding political office has been tainted by demeaning nicknames, dehumanizing political opponents, and contempt filled with shame and blame, both domestically and internationally. These behaviors are not the sole domain of one party or ideology. But having the most powerful leaders in the world disregard the dignity of others so often and so severely undoubtedly has a coarsening impact on our entire national discourse. 

Elected officials take cues about dignity from those who elect them. It is time for every responsible voter to pause in a moment of deep introspection and ask: Do I really value the inherent dignity of my fellow human beings?

The incentives we create will determine the leaders we get. If we reward humiliation, we will get more humiliation. If we reward dignity, we may yet recover the kind of political discourse where disagreement does not require degradation—and where progress and development are not smothered by contempt.

The post The Dignity Deficit appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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If you were to ask Jesus today, “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” He might simply kneel, draw something in the dust, and tell a story instead. It was never His way to choose sides on worldly matters like we do. He saw through every label, every flag, every slogan. To Him, the question was never Who do you support? But rather, whom do you love?

Today, politics has become a new form of faith. It shapes our values, friendships, and even our sense of identity. We divide the world into saints and sinners, heroes and villains, based on who supports our side. We often begin with our political tribe and then justify it with faith.

Christ invites the reverse: start with love, truth, mercy, and justice — then observe what’s left. This book begins with a simple but uncomfortable question: How does your political party stack up against one thing and one thing only? Love.

That’s not a trick question, and it’s not meant to shame anyone. It’s an invitation to hold our politics up to the light of Christ’s teachings — the ones about mercy, humility, forgiveness, and service. To see what survives that light, and what doesn’t.

Does your party honor the dignity of others? Reduce suffering or fear? Does it build reconciliation or division?

Would Jesus recognize love in it?

So if love is the standard by which Christ measured everything, then love must also be the measure by which we examine our own public life: our policies, our priorities, our party platforms.

When Jesus spoke of loving your neighbor as yourself, he wasn’t just suggesting a simple slogan—he was establishing a revolutionary way for people to connect that goes beyond party lines and policy fights. Yet today, we find ourselves more divided than ever, with each side claiming moral superiority while often ignoring the core message of love that Christ emphasized.

Consider the immigration debate. Rather than viewing it through the lens of partisan talking points, what if we examined it through Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan? The story doesn’t ask us to determine the legal status of the injured man or debate border security policies. Instead, it challenges us to see the humanity in those who are different from ourselves and to respond with compassion.

This is not to suggest that complex political issues have simple solutions. They almost never do. Instead, it’s about approaching these challenges with the right heart and perspective. Christ’s emphasis on love wasn’t just about personal relationships—it was about transforming how we approach every aspect of human society, including governance.

What would our political landscape look like if we truly filtered our policy preferences through the lens of Christ’s love? How might our approach to partisan politics shift if we prioritized His teachings over party loyalty?

The Heart Before the Flag: Christ’s Radical Political Vision

Jesus—supporter and champion of good; protector of the weak; defender of life, justice, and liberty; leader of compassion and Savior for all. He is our blueprint.

Jesus was a radical and a revolutionary in the truest sense—not because He sought to overthrow governments, but because He sought to overturn hearts. He confronted hypocrisy with truth, power with humility, and hatred with love. When He entered the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers (Matthew 21:12–13), He was declaring that greed and exploitation have no place in the house of God.

His message was not about allegiance to a nation or party: it was about allegiance to truth, mercy, and the intrinsic worth of every person.

It breaks down divisions, exposes hypocrisy, and reorders our priorities toward justice and mercy. When we apply His radical vision to our politics, we are invited to see opponents not as enemies to be defeated, but as neighbors to be loved. Only then can we begin to heal what power alone cannot fix.

Jesus spoke more about love than any other commandment because love is the engine of transformation. Love can make you think, see, and live differently. It is not abstract sentiment, but the most powerful political and spiritual force on earth.

Love doesn’t just tell you; love shows you. Love breaks down the limits of mind and heart, calling us to see even our enemies as children of God. In that radical reordering of priorities, Christ offered not just salvation for the soul, but a model for how humanity might truly live in justice and peace.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”- 1 John 4:8

A Kingdom Not of This World: Beyond Red and Blue —The Way of the Cross

The Way of the Cross in modern life means carrying the weight of reconciliation. It means standing in places of tension—between rich and poor, conservative and progressive, believer and skeptic—and refusing to walk away.

To bear the cross is to absorb hostility without returning it, and to love without condition, even when that love is mocked as weakness. Public witness no longer looks like shouting from platforms; it looks like quiet courage in workplaces, schools, local communities – and online.

The Quiet Work of Repentance

How can we begin to undue the division that has been manufactured by politicians over not just decades, but hundreds of years? Political idolatry is not undone by argument, but by repentance — a turning of the heart. That repentance might look like listening before judging, or admitting that a policy we once defended actually causes harm. Or refusing to share a post that fuels contempt instead of compassion.

Repentance is not weakness; it’s freedom. And it releases us from the emotional leash of the outrage machine. It lets love, not loyalty, guide our conscience.

The Politics of the Heart

In today’s marketplace of political ideas, where power and influence are traded like precious commodities, Jesus’s revolutionary message of love stands as a stark contradiction to conventional wisdom. His teachings weren’t just spiritual insights but radical political statements that challenged the very foundation of how human beings organize themselves and relate to one another.

Today, this message remains just as disruptive. Imagine if our political conversations started not with who deserves to win, but with who most needs to be heard. Imagine if policy debates were guided by empathy instead of ideology. The teachings of Christ challenge both the left and the right, progressives and conservatives alike, not to adopt “Christian politics,” but to judge every platform and policy by the standard of love. In doing so, we rediscover that politics at its best is not a fight for dominance, but an act of service—a reflection of divine love in the public square.

The Seduction of Certainty

Every party claims moral high ground. Each says it stands for justice, freedom, or compassion. But certainty can become its own idol. When we believe our side is always right, we stop listening, stop learning, and stop loving.

The prophets spoke truth even to their own kings. Nathan confronted David. Amos challenged Israel’s elite. John the Baptist rebuked Herod. Love demands that same courage today: the willingness to hold our own side accountable.

In our age, courage rarely looks like standing before a throne; more often, it looks like standing in a comment section. It’s resisting the easy applause of our tribe and speaking words that make both sides uncomfortable, or refusing to share the meme that distorts the truth, even when it flatters our position. It’s saying, “That’s not right,” when our own side crosses a moral line.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will seeclearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” – Matthew 7:3–5

This teaching reminds us to examine ourselves before judging others — to practice self-awareness and humility.

Silence in the face of deceit is not peacekeeping; it is complicity. True love tells the truth, even when it costs us our sense of belonging. To love truth more than victory is to worship God more than ideology. 

In the end, Christ will not ask how we voted, but how we loved each other. He will not count our party victories, but our acts of mercy. And if our politics have hardened us to compassion, it may not be our country that needs revival — it may be our hearts.

Ask yourself: Do I equate faithfulness with winning, or with serving? In my community, what would it look like to lead from the cross instead of the throne?

If my party demands allegiance, does it also demand compassion? Do its policies reflect service, humility, and care for the least — or do they mirror Caesar’s hunger for dominance?

Does my loyalty to this party make me more loving toward those who disagree with me? Do I defend truth, even when it costs my side a win? Am I more excited to see mercy triumph than to see my party prevail?

Love has never needed permission to begin. It only needs participants. Every act of kindness is a policy of grace; every word of truth is a campaign for peace.

So go into your world—not to conquer, but to care. Not to shout, but to shine. And remember: the Kingdom is already among us, growing wherever love dares to act.

That is the true revolution.

That is the politics of Christ.

That is the politics of love.

That is how love reigns.

That is how heaven transforms history.

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