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On July 5, 2026, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States will join in a unified fast of gratitude for religious freedom and pray that religious freedom will spread throughout the world. In anticipation, our team at Public Square is highlighting one international religious freedom crisis for readers to remember as they fast and pray. 

We spoke with with Nury Turkel, a Uyghur American lawyer, author, and human rights advocate opposing China’s genocide of the Uyghur people. Born in a communist-run re-education camp in China, Mr. Turkel came to the United States, where he became an attorney and a religious freedom advocate, even as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued to persecute his family and other Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. As the first Uyghur American to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Mr. Turkel has been profiled by Foreign Policy and other major outlets. Our interview focuses on the stark realities of the repression of religious freedom in China, the role of U.S. leadership in advocating for international religious freedom, and what Latter-day Saints can do to remember and stand up for the Uyghurs.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length, clarity, and style, and Mr. Turkel has approved the edits.

Remembering the Individual Victims of Genocide

Anna Bryner: Let’s start with China’s genocide of the Uyghurs. In your 2022 book, “No Escape,” you describe the system of surveillance, forced sterilization, sexual violence, detention, re-education, forced labor, family separation, and cultural erasure. You explain the genocide through stories of individuals in your book. What was it like for you to write this book about your people? How can we always remember the individuals affected by genocide? 

Nury Turkel: Thank you very much, Anna. It’s so nice to speak with you again and to share some thoughts.

Writing this book was a therapeutic process for me. It made me feel as if I finally had an opportunity to unload much of the pain and suffering that I experienced, both in China and later in the United States.

I never thought that I would end up talking about the way that my mother brought me into this world in such a horrific way. But I decided to use my story, starting with the title “No Escape,” to illustrate that people like myself—who are disfavored and disliked by a ruling regime—have been suffering, whether under the thumb of the Communist Party or as free Americans. Even as a senior member of the U.S. government, I was still affected by the regime.

So I was trying to use my story to tell the stories of those who are similarly situated and those who have not had the type of privilege I have—being a lawyer in the United States’ capital, having extensive professional and personal support—who are eager to have their voices heard.

Individuals in “No Escape” are not just data points. They are flesh-and-blood human beings who had dreams, families, careers, faith, and desires as simple as meeting their future wives and husbands to get married and build families.

When I think about the challenge of keeping individuals at the center, after interviewing all of the camp survivors, I’m reminded of a sentiment often attributed to this horrific individual, Joseph Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, and a million deaths are a statistic.”

When you hear the media and the advocates saying upwards of 1 million, that’s a lot of people. That’s more than the population of the District of Columbia. But those people, as I noted, have had lives, aspirations, and desires. They’re real people with names, with families, careers, and aspirations. 

The Chinese government has weaponized our psychological tendencies to reduce people to statistics, essentially saying, “Once I lock you up, you disappear. No one cares.” So I focus heavily on the Uyghur women to make the case that this is not only a mass atrocity, but there’s orchestrated, systematic sexual violence being committed against the most vulnerable women. I have some graphic accounts in my book, including their names. 

I also have a chapter called “Cultural Erasure” that specifically talks about the systematic and deliberate attempts to debase the Uyghur religion and just completely wipe it out. We have seen it already in society. For example, when my dad passed away, people who expressed condolences over the phone could not say, “Rest in peace. May Allah preserve a place in heaven for your father.” I mean, that kind of Quranic language is not even permitted.

Some of the things that I’ve seen done are erasing the names from the headstones, removing family photographs from homes, and banning the Uyghur language in schools. Because when you erase the people’s names, you erase the people. This was in the ugly chapters of the Nazi playbook.

My approach during the time that I wrote this book, and also afterward, was just to keep naming individual names. Just keep reminding them that those names need to be read and mentioned.

I had the fortune of meeting the incredible diplomat Ambassador Nick Burns during the confirmation process, and he said something that still sticks with me. When he was working for then-Secretary George Shultz, every time they met with the Soviet leadership, they brought in names, and they said the names, repeated the names, regardless of whether they listened or not.

Ambassador Burns did exactly that, going to the meetings with the Chinese and mentioning my parents’ names, my mom’s name. I think we have seen some really good, happy endings in that endeavor. So my approach is to keep naming the names.

And also, in the book, I wrote about scholars, musicians, and ordinary farmers whose children don’t know where their parents are. Based on the credible investigative journalists’ work, 800,000 to 1 million Uyghur kids have been locked up in children’s detention facilities. You don’t have to be a parent; you don’t have to be a sister; you don’t have to be a brother to be able to appreciate what that would do to you if somebody took your children away. That’s not only breaking the spirit. It’s breaking the family, the roots, the connection. That will have a generational effect.

So, to conclude the question, this is to the general public, this is to the advocates, this is, of course, to the diplomats who have access to the jailers of the prisoners of conscience and prisoners of religious freedom: Just say the name. Learn the name, say the name, repeat the name in every meeting that you have. I’ve done it. It annoys the counterparts. But in the end, that’s what they do, and that’s what they will continue to do: imprison and keep repeating the line that no one cares about the prisoners—unless you repeat their names.

Patterns of Repression

AB: What have you learned about patterns of repression from writing this book? 

NT: The CCP does not allow people to have dignified final days, funerals, or burials. The Uyghur people are not only not allowed to practice their religion, but the CCP is also changing the religious text. 

This is also happening to the Christian community. They have specifically targeted the Uyghur Muslims and the Catholics. There are a large number of Chinese Catholics. They went underground. During my time at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), I specifically advocated for their rights when I was engaging with the Vatican because what the CCP is doing is horrific.

The CCP changed the text, both in the Quran and the Bible, to make it in line with its policy of Sinicization. That’s a state project. This project was articulated in Xi Jinping’s speech from 2013 in an infamous document called the Number 9 Document, which is available on Wikipedia. This once-secret document was leaked and essentially argued that the Chinese government must do everything possible to prevent the spread of what it called the “thought viruses” of religious belief that are metastasizing the whole human soul and human body. I’m paraphrasing it, but that’s the essence of it, the doctrine that they strictly believe and continue to follow. They see these faith groups as carriers of the Western ideology or the Abrahamic faith, which they believe are antithetical to the communist ideology.

This is their state program and policy to Sinicize the faith groups, specifically those who follow the Abrahamic tradition. So when our government officials—those of us in the space of advocacy, foreign policy, and national security—mention that the CCP leadership has a plan to reshape the world, that’s not hyperbolic. It’s based on the Chinese leadership’s own speeches and policy documents.

And whenever the Chinese leadership delivers a speech, it becomes a blueprint for policy pronouncements and implementation. So, once Xi Jinping said, the year after he became the leader of China, that Western ideology is a threat to the existence of the Communist Party, people did not take it seriously. But now we’re seeing all of it—you know, it’s even in the broader national security space, specifically in technology.

I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about technology, particularly its misuse. That’s how it started. They used technology to surveil places of worship and the devices that exchange religious texts. And then they also look at who’s purchasing what, using all the online purchase history. They also look at using technology to see who they’re talking to, what ideological leanings or spiritual teachings they’re leaning towards or more receptive to, or what countries they want to visit. These are all AI-powered tools of repression targeting ethno-religious groups in China.

U.S. Legislative Responses to the Uyghur Genocide

AB: Can you talk about what it was like to lobby for the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021?

NT: It was a privilege to be involved in this legislative advocacy work. We call it lobbying. In the United States, it is perfectly legitimate, constitutional, and legal. Some people make a living as lobbyists in Washington. But what is remarkable about this whole process is that it was done without a single penny spent on professional lobbyists. No professional lobbying effort, no massive advertisement campaign, or expensive fundraising, or that sort of stuff was ever part of this process.

It is so satisfying that good people in the U.S. Congress, specifically on a staff level, recognized early on that this is something that had to be done.

I got involved, starting from my very first congressional testimony in 2018 that paved the way for the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (UHRP Act). And this was also publicly documented. In October 2019, I testified before then-Senator Marco Rubio specifically on forced labor. That one hearing, based on what I heard from the staffers who put it together and advised congressional leadership, was the catalyst for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).

So it was a humbling and instructive experience in my career. I’ve done legislative advocacy for my corporate clients, but this was the most meaningful because we are a country of laws, and it’s a capitalist market economy. And it’s perfectly okay and legitimate that companies make money. But what we were advocating was providing guidelines and guardrails on how to engage in ethical business, specifically for those with a business presence or business dealings in China.

In the UHRP Act, the most important aspect is to utilize the tools in our toolbox, for example, the Global Magnitsky Act. That is one of the most powerful legal tools we have for going after entities and individuals responsible for human rights abuses. That hadn’t been utilized against those who are responsible for mass atrocities and egregious human rights abuses in China.

So we wanted to have a legislative mandate for that to be utilized. As a result, for the first time, sitting Chinese officials were sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, in the spirit of, under the mandate of, the UHRP Act.

As for the UFLPA, this is arguably one of the most important legislative mandates that the United States Congress put in place to address modern-day slavery or lingering trade issues in our country’s dealings with China on economic and trade fronts.

For years, the U.S. government had urged governments around the world–including China–to end the use of forced labor and stop enslaving fellow human beings. I mean, anti-slavery is deeply embedded in our national values as Americans. We have a history of our own. And with such a large consumer base, we have a responsibility as a country and as a society to say no to forced-labor products.

And most importantly, this was something that could be a potent weapon to stop, or respond to stop, or interrupt, or disrupt the ongoing genocide. The Uyghur genocide, religious persecution, mass atrocities, and collective punishment—all of these go hand in hand with the enslavement of the Uyghurs.

So the brilliance of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Senator Marco Rubio, the congressional leaders who spearheaded this process, recognized that this menace, this cancer of forced labor, needs to be eradicated from the global supply chain by way of helping the Uyghur people.

And I have to underscore this. I mentioned that we didn’t hire professional lobbying firms to help, but we had tremendous support from the faith community. The Catholic community, the Latter-day Saint community, and the Southern Baptist community were advocating and using their influence to lobby.

This whole effort to draft, advance, and pass the UFLPA started in early 2020. This was the time that the country was suffering and losing thousands of lives during the pandemic. And this pandemic, the shortage of supply chain supplies, critical supplies, ventilators, PPEs, and medicine, all were connected to the Uyghur forced labor.

So it was a historical movement, a moment, that brought in a lot of people from all walks of life, all faith communities, to address something that is in line with our national interest and also a part of American values.

It was not a hard sell, to say the least. That experience taught me the power of persistence and persuasion. It also demonstrated that a compelling moral argument can ultimately prevail. That’s one important thing to keep in mind: what we were doing was against the entire global supply chain. And we’re talking about more than 80 global brands that are affected. I don’t want to name the names because some of them stopped that practice. But virtually every major brand we know—as consumers of the things we eat, wear, drive, and use–was touched in some way by Uyghur forced labor.

So it was very satisfying to pass this legislation. It could be used as a case study for other communities to successfully build bipartisan support and get something done meaningfully in Congress.

Founding Ideals and Preventing Modern Slavery

AB: You’ve talked before about how the world’s response to the Uyghur genocide has been morally inadequate. As we’re approaching America’s 250th anniversary and thinking about our founding ideals, what would a morally responsible response look like from Americans and also from the world?

NT: This is an important moment for me to reflect. I live in Washington, D.C. I think the whole city is getting ready for this 250th anniversary. You’re seeing some new monuments and exhibits going up, many reflecting on different chapters of American history, including the Civil War. That makes this conversation especially meaningful and timely.

When America was founded and in its early decades, economic interests—particularly slavery and the cotton economy—made it politically convenient to look away from profound injustice. Today, the economic incentives are different, but the moral dilemma is strictly similar. Critical minerals, manufactured goods, and global supply chains have created powerful incentives to ignore forced labor. The United States is now investigating forced labor in dozens of countries, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative has initiated a Section 301 investigation. Yet it can still be politically and economically convenient to look away from what’s happening in Xinjiang. 

In other words, economic stakes are enormous. If you look at our government’s tone, publicly calling out those abusers has been almost nonexistent today because economic interest is still at the top of the priorities. And history will not be kind to us if we follow the same path.

We’ve seen this movie before. In the early 2000s, when China joined the WTO, American companies moved to China because there were incentives—tax incentives, cheap labor and all the rest—and a mindset that doing business in China, helping to build the Chinese economy, would eventually encourage political liberation and bring China closer to the international rules-based order. It didn’t happen.

So there’s a lesson to learn. And I don’t want to get too deeply into my other work on international trade, export controls, and global compliance. China has identified and exploited strategic choke points in critical minerals, some of which, according to documented evidence, are linked to forced labor. That presents a serious strategic challenge, and I believe the U.S. government should be doing more to address it. 

So a morally responsible response has several components that we need to keep talking about, even though this is not a very popular topic these days.

First, it requires that we actually enforce the laws that we have passed. We have so many good laws. I’m a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) lawyer by training, and I’ve worked extensively on global regulatory compliance. The FCPA matters because corruption and human rights abuses often go hand in hand. Companies that ignore corruption risks frequently ignore forced labor, repression, and other human rights abuses as well. The same commitment to corporate accountability underlies the UFLPA, which, like the FCPA, is landmark legislation. But enforcement requires resources, political will, and a willingness to confront powerful corporate interests.

Second, it requires diplomatic courage. I mentioned a 301 investigation.  I know it’s too much trade talk here, but it has significant diplomatic implications as well. Forced labor and genocide should be treated merely as bilateral trade disputes. They should be treated as moral and diplomatic red lines that shape every aspect of our engagement with the Chinese government. That principle should guide U.S. diplomacy at every level. It’s so important.

And third, it requires a supporting accountability mechanism, documentation of crimes. The State Department used to have a global war crimes office and had done some documentation of crimes. I don’t know if that is still the case under the current leadership. And also, the U.S. government should be pushing for accountability. Without accountability, perpetrators will continue committing these atrocities with impunity. 

So as America approaches its 250th anniversary, we should ask a simple question: Do we still believe in the universal ideals on which this country was founded? 

Another question we need to ask ourselves: What did the founders mean when they wrote about liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Are we living up to those ideals?

So if you believe in all that, then we cannot be silent when the government is systematically destroying a vulnerable population, their faith, their language, their families, their lives. The measure of American leadership is not what we say about ourselves. It’s about what we do. Actions speak louder than words.

American Leadership in Promoting International Religious Freedom

AB: Related to that, what is the role of American leadership in promoting international religious freedom, and how would you assess our current efforts?

NT: It’s sad to see that our leadership in the international religious freedom space has not been as visible as during my time in the U.S. government. During the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, international religious freedom was an important aspect of our foreign policy and diplomatic engagements. Today, it has been pushed to the sidelines, and that leadership is no longer as visible.

But when Congress put in place IRFA, the International Religious Freedom Act, in 1998, it had a very simple but powerful intention, which was to make sure that we don’t forget about who we are. Religious freedom is enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It’s an older concept than human rights. The UN Declaration of Human Rights drew heavily from principles reflected in our constitutional tradition, including religious freedom.

So this is not about the United States going out and telling people how they should be free of political repression and religious persecution, but this is a way of magnifying and presenting ourselves based on the foundational concept of the United States, based on the ideal.

So this was the most effective message that I deployed during my time in the U.S. government: 

We’re not here to impose our values on you. We’re simply saying that your country will be stronger if people are free to practice their faith without fear. If there are no prisoners of conscience or prisoners imprisoned because of their religion, your society will be more peaceful, more prosperous, and more stable. You won’t need thousands of police officers or pervasive surveillance systems to control your own people. The more freedom people enjoy, the less resentment and resistance governments create. So this is less constant monitoring and relatively easy for you to do. 

That was the kind of message that I delivered and sent as a USCIRF representative.

So it resonated. We were able to secure the release of some political prisoners. We were also able to engage with some governments to modify some of their laws and regulations. But in the end, what we do, what we did, and what USCIRF does, what IRFA does or intends to do, is good for humanity, good for the country.

By advocating for international religious freedom, we also advance U.S. national security interests. Societies that protect religious freedom are generally more stable and less susceptible to violent extremism. Radicalization has a lot to do with religious persecution.

So there are multiple benefits to recommitting ourselves to the vision Congress established in IRFA and supporting USCIRF’s mission. And disturbingly, USCIRF has to fight for adequate funding almost every year. Given America’s economic strength and the scale of federal spending, USCIRF should not be worrying about whether it has sufficient resources to carry out its mission. Those are the things that really concern me.

We need more people showing up, especially in Congress, speaking about the importance, or talking about the importance of religious freedom, both at home and abroad. The political will is so important. We have the legislative mandate. We have the culture. We have the willingness to help those who have been suppressed and repressed because of their faith. We can do a lot better.

AB: Can you talk more about how, when you were at USCIRF, you had opportunities to not only advocate for the Uyghurs but also for people of many other faiths? I know you personally adopted a prisoner of conscience, Shamila Kakimov, a Jehovah’s Witness. Can you talk about what it was like to stand for people of other faiths when your own group had been suffering so much? And why does religious freedom mean religious freedom for everyone? Why should we stand for each other?

NT: For me, this question gets to the very heart of religious freedom.

When I had that platform, I knew there were many others whose voices also deserve to be heard. So at the time, when my people were suffering on a scale that is hard to comprehend—we talked about millions, when the mosques were demolished, when the children were separated from parents—it would be natural, perhaps, even expected that I would focus exclusively on the Uyghur suffering.

But I believed, and still do, that it is both a moral and a strategic mistake to focus only on one group. Because the bad actors use the same method. They vilify not only one religion, but all religions. So the people who have problems with religion and faith are generally about more or less the same people with the same idea and the same playbook.

So I decided to use my time and platform to advocate for those who have not had enough voice in this arena.

I picked up a few cases, specifically those from Central Asia. They have a cultural, historical, and linguistic connection that is convenient. So that’s why I advocated the rights of the Latter-day Saint community, Jehovah’s Witness community, Catholic community, and Jewish communities living in predominantly Muslim societies.

I did that because when my people were desperate to be heard, those same communities stood with the Uyghurs. They spoke up for us when it mattered most. 

Supporting them wasn’t only an expression of gratitude–it was also a reflection of my belief that religious freedom is universal. And if we defend it only for people who share our own faith, then we aren’t really defending religious freedom at all. 

The Personal Toll of Advocacy

AB: And you’ve paid a personal price for your advocacy. In 2024, you were reunited with your mother after 20 years of separation. How do you carry the grief of this work without losing hope? And how do you measure success when so much remains outside of your control?

NT: Anna, as you know, I was born in a re-education camp. That was my beginning, and I’ve been dealing with this as long as I’ve been breathing.

A long time ago, my mother was pregnant with me during her third trimester. And she sustained physical injuries because of the physical abuse in the camp. She ended up giving birth to me while her body was in casts, chest down. So that fact—that brutal way that I was brought into this world—shaped everything about how I understand persecution, everything about why I do this work.

For more than 20 years, my mother was separated from me. She was not allowed to leave town. She was under both domestic and international travel bans. She was not even allowed to go to Beijing to meet with our ambassador. She lived under watchful eyes every day. So it’s no different from being locked up.

And this was the time when I was building a life and career in America, and I could have just said, “Okay, I have a life here. Don’t worry about it. Forget it. They’re not going to change. They’re not going to do anything humanly possible. I’d be better off just being a lawyer in Washington and enjoying my life.”

I decided to take the other way. I started writing, testifying, speaking, educating, and advocating. In some instances, I found myself involved in some of the controversial political and geopolitical issues.

When I reunited with my mother, cinematically, miraculously, at an Air Force base in Texas on Thanksgiving in 2024, it was one of the most joyful and heartbreaking moments of my life. She was alive. As soon as she got off the plane, she said, “I’m glad I won’t be dying alone.”

That was so moving. It was the first hug in 20 years that we had on the tarmac. But those years of suffering taught me a lot of things in life that otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to learn by reading or from real professional experience. Pain and suffering sometimes make you value and appreciate life more. That’s how I feel.

And also, I believe in fairness. I believe that being persistent and staying hopeful in this kind of advocacy work—being factual, not hyperbolic—and just people will respond. I cannot say—I cannot thank those people in cross-administrations enough. We’re talking about the U.S. presidential administration, starting from George Bush, Obama, first Trump, Biden, now Trump.

So from the previous four administrations, I’ve made so many friends and contacts, and I have nothing to give them. But I earned their respect, earned their support, secured their support. In the end, they become an advocate for me.

So those wonderful people made Trump hand in my parents’ names on his first trip in November 2017, and then that same work continued in the Biden administration. President Biden himself asked Xi Jinping twice, in person, to allow my mom be able to travel to the United States to be with her American children and grandchildren.

So it was the endurance, the perseverance, staying hopeful. I was looking at some of my email communications with the officials that I communicated with over the years, letters I’ve written, and I sent essentially the same message: “I am a free American. I testified. I spoke out against human rights abuses. I served in the U.S. government. I volunteered my time. And my government should not tolerate another government punishing my parents, my family, for what I do in America as a free person. We should not have a foreign government reaching out to me through a long arm and making me feel that I cannot escape from their persecution.”

So it was a happy ending, but the reunion is not the same. It’s not the same as restoration. You may have seen my public messages. My family and I lost a time that can never be brought back to us. So this regime essentially stole 20 years of my life and family time from me.

So, how do I carry this? Honestly, I’m not sure if I can carry it as much as I have learned to walk alongside it. And I don’t try to put it down or put it away. I let it remind me that this work is not abstract. The person who benefits from this, from the next piece of legislation or the next diplomatic intervention, is real.

I wrote about this in my latest piece for Fox News. Like me, they have a mother, they have family, they have faith. It took almost 20 years for my mom’s name to be said to the person who was holding her. And there are many others who are waiting for their names to be said to their jailers.

So that’s the type of thing that I always mention when I meet with people who are in power.

But as for measuring my success in that one-family advocacy, I have to radically define what it looks like.

I cannot feel free from all of the people who are still there. And the current political environment is not ideal for that. And I cannot undo the years of suffering. What I can do is to make the next violation more costly, amplify the next survivor’s testimony, help one person to feel less alone in their suffering.

Some days, that is enough. Some days it’s not. In the latter days, I return to the faces of the people that I’m fighting for, that I profiled in the book, and that I interviewed. And I remember that to stop would be abandoning them.

I know that when you look around today in the political environment, it sounds impossible. I’ve been there. I’ve been in impossible situations and rather hopeless situations as well. But hope is not something I wait to feel. It’s a discipline. Hope is a discipline.

And late Senator John McCain once said—and this is very applicable to a community that faces repression: “Hope is the best weapon against oppression.” So that’s the kind of thing that keeps me going every day.

Picturing the Individuals Persecuted When We Fast for Religious Freedom

AB: As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints participate on July 5th in fasting and prayer for worldwide religious freedom, what would you want them to picture when they’re thinking about the Uyghurs and others who are persecuted for their beliefs?

NT: First of all, I want to begin by acknowledging something very important. I find The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints deeply meaningful. It has profoundly moved and touched me with the level of support I received from it, including the opportunity to meet with the Church leadership during a lunch in Salt Lake City a few years ago.

So the Latter-day Saint community knows something about what it means for the government to turn against your faith. I think that commonality, the common experience, is where something built a really strong bond between my way of seeing the world, seeing religious repression, and the Latter-day Saint community.

The Missouri extermination order comes to mind, the forced migration. I was a tour guide in San Francisco before I moved here. I took tour groups to Temple Square countless times. I’ve been to Latter-day Saint communities in Idaho, in Nevada, in Arizona, and, of course, in southern Utah, countless times. Fascinating history: a long history of being told that your beliefs made you dangerous or unacceptable. That memory is not merely historical. It’s part of the Latter-day Saint community’s memory identity.

So when you close your eyes and fast and pray on July 5th, I want you, as the Latter-day Saint community, to draw on that memory, and then I want you to imagine this:

Imagine a grandmother in Kashgar, my place of birth, who can no longer teach her grandchildren to pray. Not because she has lost her faith, but because the government has taken her grandchildren to boarding school, where they will be raised to forget who they are. She knows their faces, but she does not know if they still know hers.

Imagine a father who has been in a detention camp for three years or more. His only “crime” was having too many contacts in a foreign country, or going to the place of worship too often, or owning a copy of the Quran. He does not know if his wife is still waiting for him. He does not know if his children still say his name.

Imagine a young woman who was taught to be proud of her language, her music, and her faith, and who now lives in a world where all three have effectively been erased from public life.

When you pray for the Uyghurs, pray for those individuals. Not the abstract statistic of a million, but the grandmother, the father, and the young woman. And pray, knowing that your prayers are not empty. They sustain the ones who are fighting. They signal to governments that people of conscience are watching. And they testify that in God’s eyes, these lives matter, and they’re not forgotten.

And July 5 is significant. In 2009, in the streets of Urumqi, the Uyghur capital, Chinese security forces violently suppressed peaceful demonstrations, resulting in the death of many Uyghurs. So July 5 holds profound historical significance for the Uyghur community.

What Can the Average American Do? 

AB: Finally, what are some concrete steps that individuals can take? How do supply chains fit in?

NT: As a corporate lawyer who advises companies, I know business leaders care about consumer concerns. So we don’t have to be in a position of power to make a difference. We have tremendous influence as consumers.

So one of the most direct actions people can take is to look at the labels on their clothing and other consumer goods. Many everyday products — from groceries and tires to sporting goods and school supplies—have been linked to forced-labor risks.

So check the label. For cotton products, roughly 85% of China’s cotton is sourced from the Uyghur homeland. Many of the garments hanging in closets across America and around the world were made with cotton picked by people who had no choice or no right to say no. And those cotton products are made by vulnerable modern-day slaves. So the cotton is the thread connecting your wardrobe to the camp system. Don’t forget about that. That’s really important.

And also, contact your representatives and urge them to continue funding the enforcement of the seminal Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Support Uyghur advocacy groups. They’re easy to find online.

And then when you go to the church, just share what you heard, what you read about the Uyghurs. Again, there’s so much relevance and connection between the Latter-day Saint community and the Uyghur community’s historical suffering or facing religious persecution. The fact that you’re interviewing me today speaks to that fact. We met several years ago. You still remember. You read my book. And that speaks volumes about your caring about these issues.

And then the other thing is to stay hopeful. This pendulum will swing back. When we look around today, it may seem as though people no longer care about human rights or religious liberty. I don’t believe that’s permanent. I don’t know exactly how things will change, but I do believe we cannot remain a healthy society if we stop caring about these fundamental values. 

So my message is simple: stay hopeful. Pray, and act. And do both together. 

And the Uyghur people—I know this might be a little bit provocative—but I often say the Uyghurs ask for partnership and support, not pity.

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1. We can pray for religious prisoners of conscience.
   Like Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, many today are imprisoned for their faith. Others are tortured, disappeared, or sentenced under unjust laws. In China, Seylihan Rozi, a Uyghur Muslim mother, was sentenced to 17 years for teaching the Qur’an to her children and a neighbor. In Iran, Joseph Shahbazian, a Christian pastor, was convicted of praying with others and celebrating Christmas. In Russia, Ivan Neverov, a Jehovah’s Witness, received seven years for holding religious meetings. And in Nigeria, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a Sufi Muslim musician, has spent more than six years in prison facing the possibility of the death penalty for sharing song lyrics deemed blasphemous.

We can pray for these prisoners and their families—and even for their captors—that hearts may soften, prisoners may be treated with dignity, and unjust laws may change. 

2. We can also pray for religious communities facing genocide and mass violence. Our own history of extermination orders and forced exile should make Latter-day Saints especially tender toward those whose faith has made them targets of violence. Uyghur Muslims in China have endured mass detention, forced labor, and the systematic destruction of families and mosques. Christians in Nigeria continue to be murdered, kidnapped, and driven from their villages. Armenian Christians have been forced from their ancestral lands. And Rohingya Muslims have been driven from Myanmar into desperate refugee camps.

We can pray for the displaced to find safety and compassion, for the violent to be restrained, and for those who are suffering to be strengthened. 

3. We can pray as well for democratic countries where religious liberty is weakening. In Japan, courts dissolved the Unification Church and seized its assets. In France, strict secularism has forced Muslim girls to choose between receiving an education and keeping their religious commitment to cover their hair. In Canada, recent legislation removed the longstanding religious speech defense, raising concerns that good faith religious expression could now be prosecuted as hate speech. And here in the United States, where religious liberty is core to our national identity, the picture is sobering: by my calculations from Pew Research Center’s data, the U.S. ranks 90th out of 198 for freedom from government restrictions on religion—and 91st for social hostilities. The threats range from legal pressure to lethal violence: pandemic-era limits on worship, conscience conflicts for religious professionals and institutions, and deadly attacks on Jewish, Muslim, and other faith communities—including Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc.

We can pray that free nations—especially our own—will have the humility to recognize our shortcomings, and will have the courage to live up to our ideals and strengthen religious liberty. 

4. The darkness is real, but so are the people shining a light. We can pray for the defenders of religious freedom. Through the First Freedom Foundation, I have the privilege of working with young leaders like Hewan Omer of the Free Yezidi Foundation, who serves genocide survivors in Iraq; Twesigye Leonard, a secular humanist in Uganda, who trains lawyers to defend religious liberty where non-Christians are often persecuted; and Mohammad Rahaman in Nepal, who is working to guide his country’s powerful youth movement toward principled advocacy rather than division. Others cannot be named for their safety. Like America’s founders, they are often young, under-resourced, and facing overwhelming opposition—yet they continue to defend religious freedom for all, even as they receive bombs at their doors. 

Pray that they will be strengthened, protected, and sustained in hope. 

5. Finally, we can pray for courage in ourselves. Religious freedom is not only a right to defend; it is a duty to extend. It is easy to support the rights of those we agree with. It takes far more courage to stand for the conscience of our adversaries. President Dallin H. Oaks has taught that the freedom and protection we seek must not be “for ourselves alone.” 

We must pray for the strength to defend religious freedom for friend and foe alike. 

As we fast, let us remember those whose poverty, hunger, and displacement are the direct result of religious persecution—refugees driven from their homes, families denied work or education, and believers forced to choose between conscience and survival. 

May our hearts be softened toward the persecuted, our courage be strengthened to defend religious liberty for all of God’s children, and our offerings of prayer, sacrifice, and action be accepted by the Lord.

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I live in a neighborhood in Provo, Utah, developed in the 1950s, referred to as “The Neighborhood of Tomorrow” on the community’s original plans. If you think that sounds like an enchanted corner of Disneyland, you’re not far off.

Our community features hidden private parks, a large church building and park where my neighbors gather to worship and socialize, and a neighbor-owned grocery store where you can procure pebble ice, maple bars, and Ben & Jerry’s—all of life’s necessities. A few blocks from our home, a 1950s drive-in offers burgers and the world’s best fresh-lime sodas, made with simple syrup and fresh-squeezed lime juice. It’s an idyllic community, mostly because our neighbors have enormous hearts.

A few years ago, a family on our block marked Pride Month by flying a trans pride flag outside their home in support of their child. Around the same time, other neighbors began displaying various political signs and flags outside their homes, including several “title of liberty” banners.

For those unfamiliar with the origins of the title of liberty: At a pivotal point in the Book of Mormon, Moroni was a chief commander of armies battling against forces that “sought to destroy the Church of God, and to destroy the foundation of liberty which God had granted” the land’s inhabitants. To rally his people, Moroni tore a piece of his coat and wrote on it “‘In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children’—and he fastened it upon the end of a pole.” Moroni also “caused the title of liberty to be hoisted upon every tower which was in all the land.” In that wartime crisis, adversaries who refused to enter into a covenant to “support the cause of freedom” were put to death.

I suggest that if Latter-day Saints listen intently, God is revealing a different approach to preserving life, liberty, and freedom today. Rather than being counseled to isolate ourselves into tribes, fashion banners, take up arms, and fight “the enemy” to the death, we are being counseled by the Lord’s prophets to exercise and promote religious freedom in perhaps what is a higher and holier way revealed to meet the exigencies of our day:

•     “peacemakers needed”
•     “we should not seek total dominance for our own position”
•     “seek fairness for all”
•     “seek to moderate and unify”
•     “work for a better way—a way to resolve differences without compromising core values”
•     “pour oil on troubled waters”
•     “exercise our influence civilly and peacefully”
•     “reconcil[e] existing conflicts and avoid[] new ones”

Such work is not for the fainthearted. It requires not planting flags in the ground but engaging in the hard work of planting and nourishing seeds, which if nourished will cultivate peaceful pluralism and religious freedom for all in our diverse society. This prophetic counsel is not an out-of-touch, namby-pamby, touchy-feely approach to today’s polarizing issues. It is much more difficult work, but those who believe in the law of the harvest as an eternal truth understand it is the only approach that will work.

So what seeds can we plant to exercise, promote, and protect our right to religious freedom? I propose here just a few of many possible varieties of fruit-bearing seeds. 

Planting Seeds of Knowledge

In April 2021, President Dallin H. Oaks encouraged Latter-day Saints “to uphold and defend” inspired principles of constitutionalism, including five principles inherent in the U.S. Constitution:

• Popular sovereignty, meaning people are the source of government power, and they exercise that power through elected representatives;
• Federalism, or the division of power between a central “federal” government and state or regional governments;
• Separation of powers, meaning the establishment of independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government that exercise checks on one another, holding each other accountable to the Constitution;
• The Bill of Rights, which guarantees enumerated individual rights and “places specific limits on government authority”; and
• The rule of law, or the principle that we are “governed by law and not by individuals,” ensuring “our loyalty is to the Constitution and its principles and processes, not to any office holder.”

Learning about, internalizing, and being guided by these overarching principles is a seed-planting exercise in promoting and protecting religious freedom and other freedoms.

Instead of doing the harder work of studying and promoting these principles, we may be tempted to do the easier work of popping a pocket version of the Constitution in a backpack or purse. We may “like” social media posts purporting to espouse constitutional principles. Or we may vote for candidates who claim to know and stand for constitutional principles. But those acts alone are not a fulfillment of President Oaks’s charge.

President Oaks emphasized the principle of the rule of law—that individuals are not a law unto themselves, meaning we aren’t free to create our own preferred Constitution or rely on the interpretations of friends, politicians, or talking heads. Key here is understanding the legal doctrine of judicial review, established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison opinion. That doctrine means that courts with jurisdiction—not individuals—are responsible for interpreting the meaning of the Constitution and declaring unconstitutional the executive and legislative acts that don’t comport with its principles.

Of course, we as individuals can advocate to amend or repeal legislation that we believe to be contrary to constitutional principles, but those of us who aren’t judges have no authority to declare law unconstitutional, on online fora or elsewhere. So it behooves us all to be more informed about judicial decisions interpreting the Constitution, and the reasoning behind them, and to be more careful and considered in our language. At a minimum, learning and focusing on key constitutional principles, rather than digesting and regurgitating polemic and partisan positions, will help us plant seeds to promote and protect constitutional rights, including the right to religious freedom.

Planting Seeds of Moderation and Unity

Judge Thomas B. Griffith, now retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has championed President Oaks’s counsel to moderate and unify. At BYU’s Religious Freedom Annual Review in 2021, Judge Griffith explained how efforts to moderate and unify led to the drafting and signing of the U.S. Constitution and are critical to upholding its principles today:

 To me, the key insight as to what happened in the summer of 1787, what I would say is the miraculous element of that event is, . . . . when the Convention was on the verge of dissolution, eleven moderates got together and decided they were not going to let the Convention fail. And so they did something truly remarkable. They convinced their fellow delegates to enter into a compromise for the sake of unity before they knew the terms of the compromise. 

I believe that is what President Oaks is talking about when he says that we should work to moderate and to unify. You want to support and defend the Constitution of the United States? Then get off your cable channels, stop repeating talking points that are prepared by partisans, and look to build the spirit of amity and mutual deference in your community; that’s how we support and defend the Constitution. 

In the spirit of the Founders, moderating and unifying today requires that we moderate our expectations and not seek a monopoly on rights in a society where we must live alongside those not of our faith—mutually honoring and making space for freedom of religion or belief, or nonbelief, for all.

Planting Seeds in Support of Fairness for All

In his 2021 Joseph Smith Lecture at the University of Virginia, President Oaks discussed the benefits of collaborative legislation as a way to resolve differences without compromising core values—a message reiterated in his April 2026 general conference address.

President Oaks asserted that collaborative legislation is generally preferable to judicial decisions for resolving religious freedom conflicts. Litigation declares winners and losers, is limited in scope to the particular case, and is “ ill-suited to the overarching, complex, and comprehensive policy-making” required in sensitive conflicts, like those between nondiscrimination and religious liberty interests. He explained: 

There are worthy constitutional and ethical arguments on both sides of such disputes, and, so far as possible, we should seek to accommodate them consistent with the most important interests of all sides. This is not easy when we differ so fundamentally on matters of such immense importance. But the effort is essential if we are to live together in peace in a pluralistic society.

Notably, the phrase “most important interests” indicates that not all interests or values are “core.”

President Oaks cited the Utah Compromise of 2015 as a promising model of accommodation legislation. That collaborative legislative effort has been held up by national thought leaders in New York Times op-eds and scholarly publications as a remarkable achievement in bringing together organizations and individuals from both the religious and LGBTQIA+ communities in Utah (which aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, though we often speak of them as if they are) to draft and pass two bills in the Utah Legislature that protect fundamental rights in employment and housing for both groups. In fact, representatives from both “sides” in that process agree that the bills’ popular name—the Utah Compromise—is a misnomer; while the two sides collaborated on a legislative solution, neither believes they compromised core values.  

Planting Seeds Through Informed Voting

To protect religious freedom and other constitutional rights, we can and should prepare to vote by studying candidates’ proposed policies and considering their methods for getting things done. If we want to follow President Oaks’s counsel to support collaborative legislation, it follows that we must support political candidates who will collaborate. President Oaks has also urged church members to “seek out and support wise and good persons who will support [inspired constitutional] principles in their public actions.” This may entail looking beyond messaging or party to examine how candidates’ policies potentially promote or restrict religious freedom.

In an interview with BYU Law School’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies, religious freedom expert Knox Thames discussed how “the promotion of religious freedom has been a consistent topic across all U.S. administrations, Republican or Democratic.” He explained this is so “partly because it’s mandated in law but also because it’s an American value and . . . part of our diplomatic engagement.”

Thames’s subsequent analysis of U.S. policies demonstrates that, when researching candidates, we must scratch beneath the surface of messaging and decide which principles and policies most resonate with our personal priorities relative to religious freedom, among other issues. In selecting candidates, we can make pro and con columns and examine policies that affect both majority and minority religions. This process can help us conduct our own personal calculus to decide which candidates align most closely with our values and desired strategies and outcomes. As President Oaks explains:

No party, platform or individual candidate can satisfy all personal preferences. Each citizen must therefore decide which issues are most important to him or her at any particular time. Then members should seek inspiration on how to exercise their influence according to their individual priorities.

He followed with the kicker: “This process will not be easy.”

The implication being, if it’s easy, we’re not doing it right. 

Planting Seeds Outside Your Faith Community

As President Oaks stated, appreciation and support for free exercise of religion “depends on the value the public attaches to the positive effects of the practices and teachings in churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship.” In short, if we don’t contribute to society through the freedoms we are given, those freedoms won’t be valued or supported by others.

Community service is a significant way for religious individuals and organizations to exercise religious freedom for the benefit of others. Those in a season of life when serving outside their immediate sphere is difficult, or impossible, may consider donating to faith-based service entities like the Church’s Humanitarian Aid Fund or other religious organizations that offer aid to those of all faiths who are in need or vulnerable.

Planting and Nurturing Seeds with Patience and Love

There are many other ways and places to plant seeds of religious freedom I have not discussed here. We plant them through teaching and serving at home and at church. We plant seeds whenever we offer connection and friendship, demonstrate curiosity about the beliefs of others, or share the gospel. And in all our planting, we should seek to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. 

Obviously, we can’t do all of this seed planting at once. Planting requires prioritizing, working, nurturing, and practicing patience. One of my neighbors is fond of invoking Alma chapter 32, saying, “The adversary always offers fruit. God offers seeds, which will eventually produce fruit if we nurture them.” Unfortunately, as 21st-century humans, we’re programmed to want fruit and want it now.

One fairly easy way to feel like we’re exercising and promoting our rights is by flying a banner. I certainly don’t begrudge my neighbors the right to fly flags and banners. Our family flies the Stars and Stripes on our porch from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And just prior to an election, we post campaign signs in our yard supporting candidates or issues we feel strongly about. 

But I worry that, even if we plant flags and signs in our yards with the best of intentions, they can convey virtue signaling more than true virtue. Scott Miller, former dean of BYU’s College of Humanities, cautioned against the potentially reductive nature of some symbols, stating:

We should constantly consider the import of symbols and phrases we use to describe others, as well as those we associate ourselves with. In one way or another, as we seek to be identified primarily by the name of Christ, we must face this enigma: How can we be open and loving in a world where people cannot imagine the complexity and divinity of those with whom they disagree? While symbols have their place, we should be wary of the “lazy” communication that symbols can offer.

Miller advocates for “a more productive kind of communication that involves greater imagination for human possibility, mutual understanding, and grace.” 

Indeed, I fear adopting symbols in the form of flags, bumper stickers, or pocket constitutions in an effort to promote religious freedom may be the latter-day equivalent of broadening the phylacteries on our foreheads. The more productive but much harder work involves planting and nurturing principles of faith and constitutional principles in our hearts.

I would also suggest that some symbols used historically may not be called for today. The title of liberty, for example, was used in a very specific context—during a short period in Book of Mormon history when religious dissenters were put to death. I in no way discount the faithfulness of Moroni and his people, nor would I armchair-quarterback their choices in their unique, historical context.

I do suggest that leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ and of other faiths today are asking us to do work that may be even more challenging than dividing ourselves into all “manner of -ites.”

That hard work involves engaging and nurturing relationships with those who dissent, those who have disaffiliated themselves from our Church, and those who believe differently from us, or who have no religious belief.

Our church leaders, by word and by deed, are asking us to bridge the vast concrete driveways that divide us from our neighbors, to plant seeds of friendship, fellowship, and love, no matter our differences—to collaborate with those who believe very differently than we do to help secure the blessings of freedom of religion or belief, or nonbelief, for all.

Our nation and others won’t understand the value of protecting religious freedom if we fail to live the values we espouse. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ, that means following the example of Jesus Christ and exemplifying His teachings in all we do, rather than simply adopting outward signs or symbols of religious belief. Our latter-day prophets are asking us to show true, Christlike love as the fullest expression and exercise of our religious freedom. 

In his 2021 Joseph Smith Lecture, President Oaks quoted Elder Lance B. Wickman, former general counsel for the Church, who so beautifully stated:

When we exercise our religious freedom to serve and lift to strengthen community ties and to pour oil on troubled waters, and to make America better—when we use our religious freedom to bring people together in unity and love—we are defending and preserving religious liberty and the Constitution in a most profound way.

I believe that is the work we are called to today. Planting and nurturing seeds of religious freedom in a spirit of love and unity will bear fruit for generations to come.

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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.

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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