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Everyone says children come first.

Courts say it. Legislatures say it. Divorce lawyers say it. Parents say it. Spend any time in or around family law or family courts, and you cannot avoid hearing people talk about “the best interests of the child.”

But in practice, children only matter after the adults have already made all the decisions that matter most.

I thought this reality was aptly summed up in a statement by a local candidate for a family court judgeship. The candidate wrote that she would support the rights of mothers and fathers, and parenthetically added, “of course, children come first.” 

We say children come first, but as in this candidate’s statement, the phrase is used like an incantation: If we say it enough, it will absolve us of the fact that we don’t truly believe or practice it.

In the current no-fault divorce legal regime, a court can dissolve a child’s intact legal family even if there is no damage being done to anyone. The child does not need to be found unsafe. No parent needs to be found unfit. There doesn’t need to be abuse, abandonment, adultery, cruelty, addiction, or family dysfunction. A child’s family, on which the child depends, can be taken from the child merely because a parent feels like it. And no one else in that child’s life can protect the child from the consequences of that choice: not the other parent, nor the current legal system.

That legal structure makes sense when the only interest at stake is adult autonomy. But when minor children are involved, the legal act is not merely an adult exiting a private romantic relationship; it is a state decree that restructures the child’s family, home, time, finances, identity, and access to the child’s parents. 

How can the state strip so much from a citizen, without that citizen having any legal pathway to help fight for him or herself? Doesn’t a child have any rights?

The Fourteenth Amendment and Family-Integrity Doctrine

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is the constitutional principle that a state cannot take something from you (whether that’s freedom or a fine) unless there is a process in place for you to try to defend yourself.

But while it’s usually thought of in terms of protecting property or courtroom procedure, due process has long been read to protect the substance of fundamental liberty interests, including family relationships. 

But family integrity is not only a parental right. The child is also a person who has the right to family integrity as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Perhaps the clearest description of this principle appears in a 1982 case. The State of New York had terminated a parent’s parental rights to a child. The Supreme Court found that New York acted improperly because it did not recognize “the child and his parents shared a vital interest” in preventing the destruction of their family.

The American Bar Association recently described the child’s constitutional right to family integrity as a fundamental right rooted primarily in the Fourteenth Amendment, though some courts locate it in the First Amendment’s freedom of association. 

Divorce Is State Action

If a child has a constitutional interest in preserving family relationships when the state acts through child welfare law, why should that interest disappear when the state acts through divorce law?

The bottom line is that there is no good reason.

No-fault divorce is not a private act. It is the state intervening in a private relationship to allow one spouse’s preferences to affect the entire family unit.

A marriage is not dissolved by private act, but by court order. The state changes the legal status, divides marital property, and allocates how children will be shuttled back and forth between homes.

When a court uses public authority to dismantle the legal structure of a child’s intact family, the Fourteenth Amendment should have something to say about the process and the justification required. 

This does not mean that the Constitution must forbid divorce in families with children, nor that an individual should be required to stay in a marriage he or she wishes to leave. It does mean that when states choose how they will dissolve marriages where minor children are involved, they should not be able to treat that dissolution as purely an adult entitlement.

Custody as a Secondary Determination

Modern divorce law claims to protect children through custody and “best interest” determinations. But that application of children’s rights arrives too late.

At this stage, the courts do not consider what happens when the child no longer has a primary residence, nor do they consider the negative academic or behavioral outcomes. 

In my opinion, that is a constitutional error. 

Custody law asks: After divorce, where should the children go?

A Fourteenth Amendment family-integrity analysis would ask a prior question: What must the state prove before it allows the dissolution of the child’s intact legal family in the first place?

The child’s interests are considered, but only after the decisive constitutional injury has been allowed.

Parental Autonomy and Children’s Rights

Children should not get to decide whether their parents stay married. That is obviously true. They do not get to command their parents’ emotions. They do not get to force marital affection or fidelity. 

Children should not be able to imprison their parents in miserable or dangerous relationships.

That is not what this argument claims or attempts to implement. 

Recognizing a child’s right to family integrity does not give any control over the parent at all, only the state. It means the state must justify its legal act before dissolving something the child depends on. Constitutional rights often limit what the government may do without giving the rights-holder total control. A criminal defendant’s due process rights do not mean he controls the prosecutor. 

A child’s right to family integrity would not mean the child controls the marriage. Just that when we say children come first, we actually consider them first, not last.

There is an irony in the “children should not decide” objection. In no-fault divorce, the child is also not deciding. But no-fault divorce allows it without requiring both parents to agree. In some cases, one parent is deciding singlehandedly, while the children and the other parent are left helpless.

The parent who wishes to preserve the best arrangement for the child is left with no additional rights or resources to provide the child with ongoing stability. That parent is instead treated as no different from the parent who chose to dissolve the child’s family.

The Effect of Miserable Marriages on Children

Another important objection is that children are not helped by forcing parents who hate each other to remain married. Again, recognizing a child’s Fourteenth Amendment rights does not require this.

If the family environment is indeed harmful, the law can say so. If the children are being hurt by their current family system, then let that be proven, not assumed.

And again, recognizing children’s rights does not prevent a parent from exercising a new preference; it only determines how the law treats the parent who does. 

No-fault divorce treats grave harm, ordinary unhappiness, boredom, domestic violence, personal reinvention, and adultery the same. That is administratively efficient. But constitutional rights are often inconvenient. The Due Process Clause exists precisely to prevent efficiency from overcoming important individual rights.

The law already knows how to make these kinds of distinctions. 

Why Has Divorce Law Not Integrated This Right?

There are several reasons why this constitutional principle has, to date, not been integrated into divorce law.

First, divorce has historically been framed as a dispute between adults. The only listed parties are the spouses. The pleadings are filed by adults; the adults have the lawyers. Children only enter the case as subjects for custodial findings, not as independent constitutional persons. 

Second, the family-integrity doctrine has been developed within the context of child welfare cases, not divorce cases. Courts use the Fourteenth Amendment when the state removes a child from one parent or terminates parental rights. While divorce does functionally remove a child from at least one parent at least some of the time, no-fault divorces have never been held to the same standard.

Third, courts can mistake the “best interests of the child” analysis for the application of the child’s constitutional rights. But the “best interests” standard is usually a statutory standard. It gives judges discretion, but only after the family is already divided. 

Fourth, the law treats parental autonomy as asymmetrical. In non-divorce contexts, the state presumes that fit parents will act in their children’s best interests. But in no-fault divorce, the state effectively allows one parent to singlehandedly override the family-integrity interests of the child, while the parent acting in the child’s interests is effectively sidelined. 

Fifth, legislatures and judges fear the alternative. They worry, reasonably, that requiring a higher standard for divorce will revive ugly fault litigation, trap abused spouses, or invite children to be weaponized. Those are real concerns, and they should be addressed. But they are reasons to design better procedures, not reasons to pretend the child has no constitutional interests.

What the Law Could Require

An approach to divorce law that recognizes children’s Fourteenth Amendment rights would not abolish divorce. It would create a separate track for divorces involving minor children.

The law could still permit immediate separation, protective orders, emergency custody orders, and expedited divorce where abuse, violence, abandonment, or serious danger is shown. And it should. 

But there are many ways that states could reorganize their divorce laws to structurally protect children’s families and encourage parents to choose to stay within their marriage.

I’ve outlined one option I describe as “abandonment divorce.” In this structure, a parent could always choose to abandon the marriage, respecting that parent’s autonomy, if there is no other cause for the divorce, but that choice would be determinative in distributing marital assets and determining child custody, providing the children with the support and stability that they currently lack in the wake of this decision. It would also include a channel for filing for a divorce when it is in fact in the children’s best interests.

At a minimum, any solution should require a restructuring of incentives so that parents are legally incentivized to try to preserve a happy marriage. And it should recognize the child’s rights before a divorce is granted, not merely after. 

The Core Constitutional Error

The mistake in no-fault divorce is not that it lets people leave marriages they are unhappy in. It’s that it provides no legal incentive not to. 

It treats a child’s family as something that the child has no constitutional interest in preserving. 

But whatever divorce laws states create, they should require courts to see the child before they act. 

If family integrity is a constitutional right, then divorce law cannot treat children as merely a downstream custody problem. They are more than passengers in their parents’ litigation. They are whole persons with distinct rights, whose lives are being reordered by a state power that didn’t even think about them first.

Everyone says children come first. Let’s create a divorce regime that actually believes it. 

The post Children Come First appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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I sometimes wonder if some Latter-day Saints—myself included—are a little too casual about the truth of eternal families. Perhaps we are a little too comfortable with this doctrine, taking it for granted and rarely feeling the awe it should inspire. Is it possible that sometimes we are even under condemnation for treating this sacred doctrine too lightly?

“The Family: A Proclamation to the World” boldly articulates the doctrine that the family is an eternal and divine unit originating with a divine heritage:

Each [of us] is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. … The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for . . . families to be united eternally.

The fact that our families can be eternal, not just mortal, is one of God’s greatest gifts to those who choose the covenant path. One reason for this is that difficult life circumstances, both historically and in the present, have often made it hard to fully realize our aspirations for our marital and family relationships in this life. Eternity can give us the “time” and “space” we lacked in mortality to build the deep and loving bonds we yearn for. 

When Mortal Life Ends Too Soon

For most of human history, the specter of death haunted family relationships. The very act of bringing life into the world was fraught with mortal danger; the risk of death for women from multiple pregnancies was much higher than it is today. I see this phenomenon reflected in my own genealogical records. I have great-great-grandparents who lost each of their first four children within a few days of birth. The promise of eternal family relationships must be especially sweet to our ancestors who often had precious little time together in this mortal life.

And it’s not just children who leave us early. My ancestor Lydia lost a beloved husband. After Lydia’s conversion in the early days of the restored Church, she met Newel Knight in Kirtland, where he was laboring to build the temple. Lydia married Newel, and their marriage helped to bring her out of a deep depression from the early death of her first child and abandonment by her abusive first husband. Before leaving Nauvoo in that cold winter of 1846, Lydia and Newel were sealed as an eternal family in the half-finished Nauvoo Temple. But a year later, in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, Newel became deathly ill while living in a dugout hillside shelter. Lydia pleaded with the Lord to heal her beloved husband, as He had raised her from her deathbed on two previous occasions. But no miraculous healing was granted, and Newel begged Lydia to let him go. She relented, and Newel soon died, leaving Lydia, who was pregnant with their seventh child, and six children. The hope of an eternal reunion for Newel and Lydia after a mortal marriage cut short is another reason we can appreciate the gift that our families can continue in eternity.

These experiences remind me that I don’t want family relationships to be reduced to memories. Memories are mechanisms to bridge the time until we can experience those relationships again, coupled with eternal glory.

What Eternity Still May Repair

In my studies of the social history of families, the concept of romantic marriage, although present in many cultures throughout history, was not a pervasive cultural expectation until the 19th century, when Lydia and Newel married. The conditions of marriage and family life throughout much of human history gave many couples little chance of becoming one as we understand it today. Will their eternal lives be a continuation of the relational austerity of their mortal circumstances? I don’t think so. I sense that beyond mortality they will enjoy the blessing of building the warmth, affection, and oneness with one another that too often had to remain a distant priority in their mortal lives. As I perform proxy ordinance work on behalf of ancestors, I can better appreciate what this work could mean to them, and how it can facilitate building exalted family relationships.

I remember a comment my father made many years ago upon the death of my grandmother, a few years after my grandfather had passed away. He said he hoped they would now find the intimacy and warmth that eluded them in the difficult circumstances of their mortal life together.

In our modern times, too, life’s circumstances can make it difficult to become fully one in marriage. I have met spouses who, having discovered that they did not marry Prince or Princess Charming, still choose each day to treat each other as a person of divine heritage and destiny. Out of such actions come the blessings of heaven and deeper feelings of love. Mortality for us—and for our ancestors—is fragile and hard. Marriage is hard, too. I believe this is by design. Our greatest growth comes from gaining the Christlike virtues demanded by the intimacy and constancy of living with the imperfect person we are bound to. I am grateful that we, like our ancestors, will have eternity to overcome imperfections and deepen our marital love. With such hope in mind, I don’t want to be casual about my faith in eternal family relationships.

Binding the Generations

A few years ago, my wife, Lisa, and I went to the temple to seal her father to her mother and herself to both parents. Lisa’s parents divorced when she was young, and she had a very strained relationship with her father. But Lisa was elated to do this temple work. She wasn’t focused on her parents, however, who are unlikely to accept the marriage sealing ordinance offered to them. Instead, she was thrilled to complete the links of the chain of her family’s generations, to be linked as an eternal family to her ancestors. As a convert to the faith, Lisa had, from her earliest years as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, faithfully devoted herself to family history research and temple work for as many of her ancestors as she could find. Now, she is connected to them in an eternal family unit. This has brought tangible joy to her soul.

A brief caveat as I conclude: I know that some feel ambivalent about eternal family relationships. Perhaps you have experienced neglect or serious abuse from a spouse, parent, or sibling, and you don’t yearn for an eternal connection. I don’t pretend that I have the perfect helping words to say. But maybe I can just offer this perspective. First, agency is an eternal, overriding doctrine. All family relationships in eternity will be freely chosen. And I also believe that the healing powers of heaven are powerful and can bring sincere understanding, repentance, forgiveness, and healing, leading to an eternal, perfected love that is hard to achieve in our mortal lives.

Eternal family relationships are a beautiful truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Even in a time when fewer children die in infancy, and many married couples enjoy prosperous circumstances that facilitate intimacy, we can all be more grateful for the blessings of eternal family relationships and exalted love.

The post In Awe of Eternal Families appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Damon Landor, a Rastafarian and former prisoner, would likely agree.

In 2020, Landor was finishing a prison sentence in Louisiana custody when two prison guards approached him, intent on shaving off his knee-length dreadlocks to align with the prison’s grooming policy. About two decades earlier, Landor had made a Nazarite vow to never cut his hair.

Prepared for the confrontation, Landor tried to show the guards a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that said prisons were generally barred from cutting male Rastafarians’ hair.

Despite Landor’s pleas that they respect his rights, the guards threw the court opinion into the trash and handcuffed him to a chair. They then shaved off his dreadlocks and put him into lockdown until the end of his sentence. While receiving a long-overdue haircut is a welcome experience for most people, Landor compared the forced breaking of his vow to being raped.

Most people probably agree that Landor and other religious prisoners like him should receive a remedy for the abuses they suffer at the hands of state officials, especially when they suffer irreparable harm. However, despite several justices recognizing the egregious nature of what happened to Landor, the Supreme Court ruled against him in his attempt to recover monetary damages from the offending prison guards for violating his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

Why? Understanding this ruling requires understanding the interaction between RLUIPA and the Constitution’s Spending Clause.

RLUIPA was passed in the wake of a battle over religious freedom protection between the Supreme Court and Congress. In the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, the Court broke away from decades of precedent that had provided strong religious freedom protection under the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause. Instead, it held that the free exercise of religion can be restricted or burdened if government laws or regulations are “neutral” and “generally applicable” (meaning that the laws do not target a specific religion’s practice and that they apply across the board).

In response to Smith, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to restore the pre-Smith standard of review for claims involving religious exercise at both the state and federal level. After the Supreme Court limited RFRA to the federal government, Congress passed RLUIPA in an attempt to restore the pre-Smith standard of review to additional state and local contexts, including the treatment of institutionalized persons. Under RLUIPA, when a state prison receiving federal funds places a “substantial burden” on an inmate’s religious rights, it must show that it is using the “least restrictive means” to accomplish a compelling governmental interest. In other words, the prison bears the burden of showing there was no other way to accommodate the prisoner’s religious exercise and still achieve the law’s purpose.

In this case, the Louisiana Department of Corrections (LDOC) received federal funding and agreed to answer certain suits, as a prison system, for violations of RLUIPA. Using RLUIPA, Landor sued LDOC and the offending prison guards in their official and individual capacities for monetary damages under RLUIPA’s provision that permits those who experience violations of their religious rights to obtain “appropriate relief” from the offending government (here, the prison). By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, only the damages claims against the prison guards in their individual capacities remained because lower courts had found that the monetary suit against LDOC and the guards in their official capacity was barred by the Eleventh Amendment’s sovereign immunity doctrine.

But why did the Supreme Court prevent Landor from being awarded damages from the prison guards in their individual capacities? Louisiana argued, and the Supreme Court agreed, that Congress lacked power under the Constitution’s Spending Clause to impose personal liability on state employees who had not consented to liability. RLUIPA conditions the spending of federal funds on prison systems’ compliance with the stricter standard of respecting inmates’ religious rights, not on individual prison employees’ adherence. Only the prison system itself had accepted the conditions and consented to liability.

In the Court’s eyes, prison guards are not privy to the prison’s acceptance of liability because they do not knowingly consent to it when hired and thus do not face individual liability for violating the religious rights protected by RLUIPA.

Even though the Court’s decision in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety was ultimately decided by the Court’s Spending Clause analysis, it highlights a glaring flaw in current religious liberty law: inmates like Landor who suffer harm from prison officials related to their religious practices in prison currently have no practical remedy available to them under RLUIPA.

This enduring vulnerability in religious practice for people of all religious traditions is highly concerning, especially in our increasingly diverse and secular society. Religion supports human flourishing and is an integral part of individual identity for many prisoners and everyday people alike. It is also an essential part of many prisoners’ rehabilitation.

Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, we should ensure that prisoners have a remedy when they endure abuses at the hands of prison officials and that guards have an incentive to respect the religious exercise of prisoners. This might include conditioning federal funding to prisons on guards accepting suits for monetary damages, or states implementing parallel protections to RLUIPA that allow these suits.

Whatever the solution, it will likely require that more Americans do the work necessary to understand the importance of protecting the free exercise rights of minority religious groups like the Rastafarians and then influence political officials to take the necessary steps.

Relative to other faith traditions in the United States, Rastafarians are a small fraction of the religious population. Their beliefs and practices—like Landor’s knee-length dreadlocks— might seem obscure or even strange to many.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we may not agree with many of Landor’s beliefs. But therein lies the beauty of true religious freedom and the right to conscience: the ability to believe and act in accordance with one’s beliefs should not depend on anyone else’s approval, and especially not upon majority approbation. 

As Latter-day Saints, we are perceived by many to be a peculiar people with odd customs and unprecedented doctrine. In advocating for other faith traditions that face obstacles to true religious liberty, we also help protect the ability to share the message of the Restoration. As Joseph Smith said, “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.”

If we want religious liberty to endure, we cannot defend it only when our own beliefs are at stake. Indeed, caring about and defending the religious rights of the most vulnerable is a powerful way to shore up religious freedom for all, including ourselves. It should not matter whether a cross or dreadlocks symbolize deeply held beliefs. 

The post A Prisoner’s Faith Rights Denied appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

That small moment in a classroom tells us something larger about the modern world. With a phone, there is so much to read, watch, and listen to—right at our fingertips. This technological and informational boom has in many ways been a blessing. We can communicate with loved ones quickly. We can share hope, peace, and God’s love around the world in the blink of an eye. 

You and I already know, though, that our tools of technology have been bringing a little more division than unity in recent years. For disciples of Jesus Christ, the question is not whether technology is good or bad. The question is whether we are actively using it as a tool, or whether the “tool” is quietly training us.

Just because technology can fill the world with light and hope does not always mean that it will. Like other tools, it has been designed for a specific job. Just as a hammer is better at pounding nails than a screwdriver, different types of technology are better suited to different tasks than others. Gaining an understanding of how these tools guiding our digital lives are designed, particularly social media, will help us better understand the increase in polarization and disunity in our communications and our communities.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory recognizes that social media can provide connection, while also warning that current evidence points to meaningful risks and unanswered safety questions for children and adolescents. 

A Tool Built to Hold Our Attention

The first thing we should remember about social media is that it is a profit-making tool. This can be easy to forget as we, the users, never have to pay to use the service. Instead, social media companies make money by selling our attention to advertisers. This is called the attention economy.

Not only do advertisers pay to get ads in front of us, but they will pay even more if they can target those ads to the people most likely to buy them. This is a big reason why social media companies track so much of what we do on and around their platforms, from each click and search to how long we wait before we scroll away. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission reported that major social media and video platforms collect, track, and use personal information to determine ads and content—often through feeding said data to algorithms, AI, and data analytics.

Engagement is their key metric: both time in the app and how much we interact with it. This means that anything and everything that social media companies can do to increase our engagement will pay off for them financially. So it should come as no surprise that Netflix, while not a social media company, built its financial incentives around the attention economy—so strongly that its then-CEO Reed Hastings once called sleep its “primary competitor.”

Other apps are often faced with similar competition, sending notifications during school hours and late at night: everything they can to get users back onto their platform. A 2023 Common Sense Media report found that more than half of young participants received 237 or more phone notifications per day. 

They don’t just want to get us onto their sites, but to keep us there.

When a Tool Trains Our Habits

There are many other technological tricks and design choices made to keep us engaged as long as possible. From daily streaks to personalized endless feeds, social pressure, likes, and bright colors, social media sites are designed to be habit-forming.

Just like a slot machine, you never know if that notification is going to bring good news, irritation, embarrassment, attention, or a near miss. These intermittent and instantly-gratifying rewards can resemble patterns that make habits hard to break. Social media is not unlike a casino, except that instead of money, we often pay in time, and instead of a payout, we may walk away with a dizzying sense of loneliness.

Just as casinos are window-less to obscure the passage of time, social media has autoplay and infinite scrolling so you don’t need to look up to keep partaking.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we take special care not to partake of addictive substances in our physical diets. Social media, however, has taken over many of our informational diets with habit-forming patterns that shape our attention to bring us back the next time a notification arrives.

With every scroll and every click, we may be handing our attention to the machines we carry around in our pockets. 

Agency in the Attention Economy

Our perspective on the damage caused by addiction inform us, even beyond the commandments, not to partake of harmful substances. Agency is a cornerstone of the Latter-day Saint worldview. The Church teaches that moral agency gives us “the power to act for ourselves” and to take responsibility for our choices.

In the premortal life, Satan wanted to take away our agency to gain glory unto himself. Christ, however, offered Himself for a better way forward, preserving our power to choose. We all chose Him over the arguably more “comfortable” route of letting outside forces control our destiny. The Church’s Gospel Topics guide teaches that Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man,” while those on earth had used their agency to accept God’s plan.

This comparison should make us careful. A platform is certainly not Satan, and a phone is not evil. But any system that narrows our choices, claims our time without our intention, or nudges us toward impulse instead of covenant can weaken the good habits agency requires. The addiction-forming patterns of social media can take our thoughts and time away from all the good that we could do with our agency.

As a secondary school teacher, I can attest to the powerful nature of the devices we allow our children to carry everywhere they go. When I ask students what they did over the weekend, a surprising number will simply say they communicated with friends through their phones. These tech companies have strong financial reasons to make sure that our favorite way to pass the time  (and our children’s favorite), keeps drawing us back to the screen.

What Our Feeds Teach Us About People

One of the most subtle ways these platforms train us is the way they teach us to view one another. Because their bottom line is tied to engagement, algorithms often reward content that keeps us clicking, including content that is shocking, angry, depressing, disturbing, or rage-worthy.

A 2025 PNAS Nexus study of Twitter’s engagement-based ranking found that, compared with a reverse-chronological feed, the engagement-based algorithm over-represented emotionally charged and out-group hostile content, and that political tweets selected by the algorithm made users feel worse about their political out-group.

This effect is in direct opposition to the directive of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who teaches that we are all children of God. God is no respecter of persons. We, who are disciples and saints within these latter days, are admonished to follow the Savior. Perhaps we should consider how much time we think Jesus would spend on social media, if any at all? What types of posts and comments would He write or share? Wherever this thought experiment leads us, we need to go and do likewise.

Preach My Gospel states that “Through repentance, we develop a fresh view of God, ourselves, and the world. We feel God’s love for us anew as His children—and our Savior’s love for us.” If  we gain a fresh view of the world by repenting, that must mean we are viewing our brothers and sisters in this human family with greater love, as God views them.

This is God’s way, and it is a clear opposite of the way of contempt, misrepresentation, and endless outrage.

A More Christian Digital Diet

As we move through this mortal journey, we Latter-day Saints know of the importance of maintaining the presence of the Holy Ghost. We can walk with God on earth as we keep our covenants and serve others. Christ taught that if we love Him, we must feed his sheep. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to mourn with those that mourn, comfort those in need of comfort, and stand as witnesses of God.

Social media is designed in such a way that it can suck our time away from this important work and twist our brains into believing the worst of our brothers and sisters. While much good can be brought about as we share righteousness and bring light to the world, we must remember that the platforms themselves are financially incentivized to maximize engagement, even when our engagement is done is wisdom, peace, or discipleship.

In recent general conference messages, President Dallin H. Oaks taught both the importance of the family-centered gospel and the need for followers of Christ to use the “language and methods of peacemakers.” President Oaks was announced as the 18th President and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on October 14, 2025, and the same month he reminded that the Church is “a family-centered church.” And in April 2026 he urged followers of Christ to forgo contention and avoid what is harsh and hateful.

I believe we should think carefully about the role social media has to play in our daily activities and the examples we set for our children. May our digital diets reflect all things virtuous, lovely, and of good report. And may we remember to follow the Savior when it comes to how we hold our human family within our hearts.

The post Designed to Divide appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Latter-day Saints should look beyond the festivities and reflect upon the deeper meaning of the freedoms we enjoy. From the blessings promised to this land to the founding of America and the Restoration of the Gospel, Heavenly Father’s guiding hand has quietly moved through the centuries, preparing the way for the founding of a land of liberty where He could restore His gospel. Though the history of the United States has, at times, been filled with injustices and failures to live up to its own principles of liberty and justice for all, its founding principles created an inspired framework through which liberty, religious freedom, and human dignity could be expanded.

As we revel in parades and picnics, our nation is threatened by a growing disregard for God and the blessings of freedom He has bestowed. To honor this anniversary properly, we should recall America’s inspired founding and draw from that remembrance the strength to defend the divinely inspired Constitution in a polarized age where God‑given liberties are increasingly misunderstood or ignored.

A Land of Prophecy

Book of Mormon prophecy reveals God as guiding when and how nations would come to the American continent. The prophet Lehi taught that “there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord.” The prophet Moroni taught that “this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ.”

The American continent has long been home to many peoples with diverse languages, governments, economies, and religions, including those described in the Book of Mormon as being led to the Americas. The Book of Mormon describes how the people of the American continent were, for a time, kept “from the knowledge of other nations,” including the nations across the Atlantic whose later arrival would drastically reshape history. 

Europeans did not arrive in the American continent until after the nations of feudal Europe experienced the Renaissance and Reformation and established themselves as independent kingdoms. The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi described the Europeans’ first encounter with America, starting with Christopher Columbus, as inspired:

And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.

Given the devastation European conquest brought to many Indigenous peoples, it can be difficult to see how inspiration was at play. While Columbus is a morally complex figure with a challenging history, we also learn from his journals and letters that he was particularly  interested in the biblical passages that referred to the gathering of Israel, he employed persecuted Jews and conversos in Spain, and felt guided by the Holy Ghost in his revolutionary voyage to the New World. 

Nephi also saw that, after Europeans learned of the New World, many would seek to escape the persecution and tyranny of the Old World and flee to America to obtain religious freedom (1 Nephi 13:13-16). Building upon the Renaissance and Reformation, the Pilgrims and their Mayflower Compact established early settlements “for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith,”  a covenant land with a biblical foundation. The concept of practicing religion according to the dictates of one’s own conscience, revolutionary before the founding of America—and often taken for granted today—became one of the quintessentially American ideals that has spread through much of the world.

A Providential Revolution

In that same vision, 2,300 years before the American Revolution, Nephi saw that American colonists would prevail in their war for independence with God’s help (1 Nephi 13:16-19).

President Ezra Taft Benson taught, “Our Father in Heaven planned the coming forth of the Founding Fathers and their form of government as the necessary great prologue leading to the Restoration of the Gospel.” 

And many paid the price they pledged. Roughly a dozen signers of the Declaration suffered serious losses to homes, estates, or property—through looting, occupation, destruction, or burning—often at the hands of British or Loyalist forces. Five others were taken as prisoners of war—and in the particularly horrible case of Richard Stockton, starved and kept in freezing, brutal prison conditions for months. One signer lost his son in the Revolutionary War, and another had two sons who were captured. Nine died from a variety of causes during the war and did not see the Constitution established.

Many of the founders have since had proxy temple work performed on their behalf. In August 1877, Elder Wilford Woodruff, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and president of the St. George Temple, received a visitation by the spirits of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. They asked Elder Woodruff why the saving priesthood ordinances of the temple had not been performed for them.

Elder Woodruff recorded this visitation in his journal. “Before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, ‘You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God.’”

After the temple work was completed for the Founding Fathers, Elder Woodruff wrote in his journal, “I felt thankful that we had the privilege and the power to administer for the worthy dead, especially for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, that inasmuch as they had laid the foundation of our Government, that we could do as much for them as they had done for us.”

As president of the Church, President Woodruff later declared in the April 1898 general conference that “those men who laid the foundation of this American government were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits … [and] were inspired of the Lord.” Indeed, the Founders were exceptional in their faith, education, wisdom, vision, and leadership ability.

An Inspired System of Government

The founders helped to lay an inspired system of government. In 2 Nephi 10:10-14, the Book of Mormon prophet Jacob foretold that in the latter days the Gentiles would colonize America and would establish it as a land of liberty where no kings would rule. Through Jacob, the Lord declared that He would protect the inhabitants of the land and that anyone who tried to establish a kingdom would perish.

In rejecting even the suggestion of kingly power, George Washington showed the kind of humility and restraint that many scriptural civilizations lacked, recognizing that monarchy always carries the risk of tyranny and pride.

Instead of creating a kingdom, the liberated colonists chose a radical exception to the global status quo by establishing a constitutional republic, something Abraham Lincoln would later summarize as “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Thus, Washington’s humility and desire to serve as president rather than rule as an autocrat is one shining example of what has come to be known has “American exceptionalism.”  

A Divinely Guided Constitution

Having designated America a land of liberty, God raised up a group of inspired and intelligent leaders who could draft a constitution and establish the first truly free society in modern times. The Lord revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith that He inspired the Constitution for the specific purpose of eliminating slavery and protecting the God-given rights belonging to all people. He declared:

According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles;

That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.

Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.

And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose” (D&C 101:77-80, emphasis added).

Thus, the Lord inspired the Constitution as a means to eventually abolish slavery and protect the sacred agency that Heavenly Father had given us as a critical part of our eternal progression.

Of course, it took significant work and nearly a century to end the despicable practice of slavery in the United States.

Although the abolition of slavery was not immediately achieved at the founding of our republic in 1776, some states immediately began to strip away at slavery’s foundation. For example, during the Revolutionary War, Vermont used its state constitution to abolish slavery in 1777, becoming the first state in the Western Hemisphere to do so. New Hampshire followed in 1779.

Pennsylvania began gradual emancipation in 1780. Massachusetts came next with a state supreme court decision in 1783, and Rhode Island began gradual emancipation in 1784, shortly after the war. Later that year, Connecticut initiated a gradual plan to emancipate its slaves.

Thus, within eight years of our founding in 1776, six of the original Thirteen Colonies had abolished slavery or begun gradual emancipation. Many in the founding generation drew on the principles of the Revolution to challenge slavery and to establish a constitutional framework that, while imperfectly applied, contained principles capable of more fully securing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

So why did many of the Founders, who denounced slavery, nevertheless own slaves themselves? The answer is complex, as they operated within the socioeconomic system inherited from British colonial rule. Both Washington and Jefferson helped articulate the age’s ideals of liberty while remaining entangled in slavery. Washington came to oppose the institution privately and freed the people he personally owned in his will, while Jefferson opposed slavery in principle but freed very few of the hundreds he enslaved. He vociferously condemned slavery as a “cruel war against human nature” in his original draft Declaration, but Virginia passed various pro-slavery laws during his lifetime that made manumission difficult. In spite of their complex history with slavery, the Founders’ lives demonstrate how God can work through imperfect people to accomplish His purposes and lay a foundation for later generations to fulfill.

Defending the Constitution

Heavenly Father has given a sacred responsibility to His covenant people to befriend and defend the Constitution. As recorded in Section 98, the Savior told Joseph Smith, “Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land” (D&C 98:6). Because He created all mankind to be free, Jesus asks us to do our part to ensure that the rights and privileges of all mankind are protected. 

He also warned against laws that encroach upon the God-given rights and privileges of personal liberty, and of our obligation to elect honest and wise leaders (D&C 101:77-80 and 98:5-10).

The Lord further revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith that the Constitution and the United States would one day be imperiled. Several contemporaries of the Prophet Joseph Smith reported that he prophesied that the Constitution would seemingly hang by a thread, and Latter-day Saints would step forth to save it from threatened destruction. 

Our modern prophet, President Dallin H. Oaks, has described an apostolic responsibility for studying the meaning of the divinely inspired United States Constitution in the work of the restored Church. For example, he has identified how the First Amendment’s antiestablishment and religious exercise guarantees were the fertilizer in the soil from which the Restoration took root.

It is no wonder then that the Prophet Joseph Smith called the Constitution “a glorious standard… a heavenly banner.” The dedicatory prayer for the Kirtland Temple, as dictated by Jesus Christ to the Prophet Joseph Smith and found in Section 109, contains these words: “May those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever” (D&C 109:54).

A Sacred Responsibility

As we celebrate Independence Day on America’s 250th birthday, we must remember that we are free because of divine providence from our Father in Heaven. We are free to exercise our moral agency to choose good over evil. He asks us to love Him and each other, and to keep all His other commandments. May we use our agency to be peacemakers, especially in our politically divided society.

As American citizens and as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are among the most blessed of all of Heavenly Father’s children. With those blessings, we have a sacred responsibility to be a light to the world. We are called not only to share the restored gospel as part of the gathering of Israel, but to be the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). In other words, “to be the seasoning, savoring, preserving influence in the world, the influence which would bring peace and blessings to all others.”

President Oaks declares that our belief in the divine inspiration behind America’s founding gives us a special responsibility to uphold constitutional principles, trust in the Lord, and remain optimistic about our nation’s future. We should pray for our nation and peacefully and lawfully engage in civic life. Upholding the Constitution, he counsels, also means learning its inspired principles, supporting wise leaders who defend them, and being informed citizens.

Heavenly Father inspired the founding of our republic as a land of liberty. This was an important step so that Jesus Christ could restore His gospel upon the earth. Therefore, when influences—whether political or cultural—seek to undermine our nation’s inspired founding principles, we should protect the heritage with which God has blessed us. 

The significance of America’s 250th birthday invites us to do more than celebrate; it calls on us to remember, recommit, and reclaim the sacred purpose of our nation. Let us resolve today, as Old Glory flutters triumphantly in the background of our Independence Day celebrations, that we, as Latter-day Saints, will righteously honor our responsibility—as prophesied by the Prophet Joseph Smith—to rise up and defend our divinely inspired Constitution. Then, with God’s continued grace, the United States of America will have many more milestone birthdays to come—birthdays on which our children and grandchildren can rejoice in a nation still anchored to the principles with which He made us free.

The post America’s Divine Founding appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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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.

The post International Religious Freedom with Nury Turkel appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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.

The post Five Prayers for Freedom appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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When Texas state representative and current U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico said in a 2021 floor speech, “God is nonbinary,” he was certainly trying to be provocative. 

Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, was speaking during a heated political debate about transgender athletes. He described God as “both masculine and feminine and everything in between” before summarizing his point in the phrase that has since gone viral: “God is nonbinary.”

The controversy that followed underscores how the truths of the restored gospel speak to the hearts of so many individuals. For many Christians, the phrase sounded downright blasphemous, even though it represents the rather uncontroversial theology of most Christian denominations, including Presbyterianism, Catholicism, and The United Church of Christ.

I should add, as an aside, that Christians in those traditions might well understand that their doctrine is that God transcends sex and still feel upset that Talarico described that understanding as “non-binary” since that description has become a controversial description of human gender identity. But while it may have evoked controversial phrasing, the actual idea, that God is neither male nor female, is both widely accepted and apparently deeply controversial. 

Enter the restored doctrine of Jesus Christ.

Latter-day Saints React Differently

Latter-day Saints have good reason to be uneasy with the phrase “God is nonbinary.”

For us, God is more than a transcendent spirit or an ultimate reality, He is a literal father. We believe God is personal, embodied, parental, and knowable. We don’t pray to Him as a metaphor, but in relationship with Him. And that conviction is not a footnote to our faith; it is foundational to the way we understand and worship God.

In our worldview, embodiment is not a limitation to overcome, but part of becoming more like our Father in Heaven. And when Genesis proclaims that we are created in the image of God, “male and female,” we believe. And we believe that a gendered embodiment is an essential characteristic of eternal identity.

So when Latter-day Saints hear a statement such as “God is nonbinary,” we don’t just feel a generic discomfort. We understand precisely how and why it is inaccurate to our eternal worldview.

Of course, Latter-day Saints can still choose to vote for Talarico, because they prioritize avoiding corruption or policy alignment over doctrinal agreement. But when it comes to the doctrine, it’s clear that we simply don’t agree, and we know why.

Something Deeper

Romans 8:16 teaches that “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” When it comes to our relationship with God, our instincts often go deeper than theological argumentation or doctrinal lists. God’s children understand a relationship with our Creator instinctively. In our most vulnerable moments, we understand that relationship as parental. When we cry, plead, and worship, we feel the kinship of a child to its parent. We call Him Father not because it is merely one more metaphor, but because He is our Father.

A good number of those who have been scandalized by the phrase formally belong to religious traditions that already deny that God the Father is embodied, biologically male, and physically sexed. In my view, this most likely comes because the objection to Talarico’s declaration goes much deeper than mere doctrine to something so many of us feel instinctively. 

A Restored Answer

This controversy is an opportunity for Latter-day Saints to enter a religious conversation to witness, rather than to mock.

The restored gospel offers answers to the questions that undergird this debate. It answers the longing of so many hearts. 

Is God personal or abstract? Is the body temporary or eternal? Do I have a Father in Heaven? Am I made in God’s image? Is God gendered?

Latter-day Saints have unusually powerful answers to these questions. And we have a unique opportunity when the public square offers a forum to provide those answers. But only if we can avoid the temptation to try to score points for whatever side of the political debate we are on.

The controversy over Talarico’s phrase will likely continue in the usual ways. People talking past each other. Lots of political parties shouting, so no one notices their own candidate. Clipped videos, angry posts, defensive interviews.

But behind it are people hungry for a God who is more than an idea. They may not have a theological language for that hunger, but Latter-day Saints do. And we can offer it to them. 

The world is full of abstractions. The restored gospel gives us a Father.

The post Is God Nonbinary? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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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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“God would cease to be God.” 

This interesting phrase appears multiple times in the Book of Mormon, often in reference to the balance between opposing forces.

Indeed, the gospel of Jesus Christ consists of many ideas that may appear incompatible. Justice and mercy. Grace and works. Love and laws.

With recent messages from leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about becoming peacemakers, it is the balance of love and laws that I suggest requires more of our focus.

Christ’s Pattern of Love and Truth

We live in a world of polarization, in which we are constantly asked to pick sides. However, we have been taught by prophets, apostles, and the scriptures to love God and love our neighbor—a concept described by President Nelson as upholding both the laws and love of God.

Just recently, President Dallin H. Oaks, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,  taught: 

This balancing is not easy. When we seek to keep all the commandments in our personal lives, we are sometimes accused of having no love for those who don’t. When we show personal love and support loving causes, we are sometimes misunderstood as implying support for results that contradict our other religious duties. But as followers of Christ, we should seek to live peaceably and lovingly with other children of God who do not share our values and do not have the covenant obligations we have assumed.

When we over-focus on one side of the equation, we risk both becoming indifferent to people who need our support and connection and failing to be diligent in our discipleship and defense of eternal doctrines. Both of these traps are inconsistent with the love and character of Christ. Throughout His ministry, we see Christ acknowledging sin as wrong, yet choosing to associate with sinners and form connections with those who would otherwise be outcasts.

Learning What We Lack 

It is so easy to notice in hindsight that the treatment of sinners, publicans, and diseased people in the New Testament by the scribes and Pharisees was wrong, but it can be more difficult to recognize that we sometimes still marginalize or “other-ize” friends, families, and communities today. This may include people who choose to participate in elective abortion, those who identify as LGBTQ+, or even just people who subscribe to different religions, some of whose beliefs may contradict or show contempt towards our own. 

Similarly, it is easy to agree with Christ’s support of His Father’s doctrine and His condemnation of false beliefs in His interactions with hypocritical religious figures and sinners alike. Yet it is sometimes difficult to stand up for those same doctrines when they challenge our worldview or appear to cause pain for people we love. 

How do we actually accomplish this feat? 

It starts with prayer, introspection, and personal revelation. I would propose, in accordance with Dr. Ty Mansfield, that we consider, with the Lord’s help, which side of the equation each of us needs to focus on.

When We Need More Love 

You may discover that you need to increase your implementation of the love of God. As you do, you may find that you can be firmly pro-life and yet empathize with single women who may feel terrified and trapped in their unplanned pregnancies. You may find that you can believe in the divine nature of gender, and still choose to connect and associate with members of the LGBTQ+ community or youth struggling with gender dysphoria who feel marginalized or shunned by religion or society. 

If you feel you don’t struggle with these issues, increasing love for others can take smaller forms as well. For example, perhaps you feel a greater drive to take care of the poor and needy, repair family or ward relationships that have previously struggled, pray more intentionally for a spouse, child, or sibling, or avoid angry retaliations to misinformation online.

When We Need More Law

On the other hand, you may discover that you need to become more diligent in upholding God’s laws. Through diligent prayer and study, you may encounter a growing testimony of the family as essential to God’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. You may feel an increased faith in and appreciation for temple ordinances, even if they still don’t completely make sense to you, or an expanded comprehension of Jesus Christ’s Atonement—what He suffered for you.

You may feel more confident in sharing your beliefs online or grow less concerned about how others will react to your witness of gospel principles. You may even learn to love and stand firmly behind points of doctrine that have been previously difficult to accept because of their implications for friends, family members, or associates.

Through personal revelation, I discovered that I more often struggle to uphold the laws of God in my concern for other people. For example, I had trouble with some of the Church’s policies surrounding the LGBTQ+ community. Luckily, I found myself in classes at BYU that forced me to dive in and truly study “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” from both secular and religious perspectives. Studying these beautiful doctrines gave me an increased understanding of God’s plan and our place in it and allowed me to find peace between the doctrines I have learned to love and the policies and procedures that still affect me and the people I love.

Perhaps (and likely often), we feel that in some cases we need to focus more on love, while simultaneously in others, the laws of God need more of our attention. The Lord wants us to progress, and I believe He will show us which matters need more of our attention.

In this quest to live as true disciples of Jesus Christ, we do not work alone. The enabling power of His Atonement allows us to become more than we ever thought possible. God operates in a space of balance between opposing forces: “If these things are not there is no God.” In our quest to be like Him, let us learn to live within these seeming incompatibilities, building bridges between God, ourselves, and others. This is the work of becoming true peacemakers.

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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.

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It matters what kind of God we believe in. Mortality can feel heavy. Bodies hurt, hearts break, and even the most faithful can feel worn down. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worship a God who is not distant, abstract, or unknowable, like in much of creedal Christianity. 

Yet our ability to imagine a God who can literally hug us has become almost common, so ingrained in our imaginations and beliefs, that we may not always notice how deeply it shapes our worship, our understanding of our body, and our sense of divine identity. The truth that God is embodied offers more than a theological quirk to Latter-day Saints and also provides intimacy, dignity, and hope. 

In practice, it may seem as if belief in an embodied God does not make a difference in religious life. The physical act of prayer doesn’t appear to change whether the believer holds an image of God as an embodied being, or as the feeling or presence of love, support, or guidance. Commandments don’t read any differently whether they were spoken by God’s voice or given through inspiration. 

The vast majority of people who have ever lived, even those who believe in a corporeal God, have not seen or interacted with Him physically, nor do they expect to, until after their own physical life has ended. That being the case, why is this doctrine of an embodied God so important, and how does it change Latter-day Saint worship and understanding of our own divine physical identities?

What Is Corporeality?

Corporeality, or embodiment, points to the form and physicality we are familiar with in our own bodies and suggests the capability for interaction. Corporeal beings can share a location in space, exert influence on, and be influenced by, physical surroundings, and communicate through sound, touch, and motion.

Though we don’t know exactly what embodiment entails for divine beings, Genesis 6:6 and Moses 7:28 describe God experiencing grief and weeping over the wickedness of His children. Other scriptures describe His anger and jealousy—negative emotions rooted in disappointment towards His children’s rejection of Him. God’s work and glory in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man is not a pain-free experience, even for Him. 

God, of course, is not miserable in His work with His children, and is said to rejoice alongside heaven in many scriptural instances. 

These emotional elements, along with the physical qualities of corporeality, allow for radical closeness and  between humans and divinity through shared form and varying degrees of shared experience. The doctrine of a corporeal God changes the nature of the relationship a human being can have with their creator, lessening the gap between us and the divine.

Our Understanding of God’s Embodiment

However, because we are fallen humans living in a mortal world, this view of God comes with some problems. By relating too closely to Him, we can make “God in our own image,” and assign Him inappropriate expressions we see in our fellow mortal family members, friends, and associates. In this way, the doctrine of corporeality can lead us to lose the sense of wonder, respect, and even fear for the greatness of the Divine that inspired Isaiah to cry “Woe is me,” and Moses to declare “man is nothing,” along with the praise, celebration, and adoration expressed through psalms, poems, and hymns. God may have a physical body, but His glory exceeds our familiar mortal experience. Recognizing this difference inspires the awe and desire necessary to worship Him reverently.

The exact nature of divine embodiment hasn’t been revealed to us, but we see suggestions of its nature in the scriptures. Doctrine and Covenants 93:34 tells us that we are incapable of receiving a fullness of joy unless our spirits and bodies are united. Resurrected bodies will be immortal and perfectly restored, down to the very hairs of our heads.

Despite this, Jesus Christ’s resurrected body retained His scars. Following His resurrection, Christ was also capable of eating food, feeling troubled, and changing his mind. We don’t know exactly what perfection in bodily form looks like, but the Greek word teleios, used in the Bible to convey perfection, can also be translated as complete or mature, suggesting similarity and continuation of experiences in mortality.

Does God Deserve Worship?

God inspires intense respect for His majesty and power. His love and compassion for his children also inspire reverence. These qualities move Latter-day Saints towards the worship of Him. The etymological source of the word “worship” originates in the Old English weorðscipe, from its root weorð, meaning “worthy.” To worship is to give reverence and respect to the being we recognize as worthy of our devotion. The nature of what and who we worship is therefore tied to the nature of that being.

A person could, in theory, worship a god who is cruel, as long as that god was also powerful enough to inspire devotion and respect purely out of fear. However, while this god could reward his followers for their adoration, he would not inspire a genuine relationship, nor would he be likely to inspire the qualities of love and compassion within them. In the case of our God, both expressions of the qualities we already respect, often referred to as spontaneous worship, and commanded worship, directing us towards what we ought to revere, are both possible.

Our rational minds may be imperfect and liable to error, yet we were given the ability to recognize and seek truth by God, for the purpose of understanding Him and His plan. The image of a god completely outside the realm of human understanding is a god that is difficult to relate to, emulate, and even obey.

How Can You Worship an Embodied God?

To worship a corporeal God is to adore, respect, and honor Him in his corporeality, which can be extended to inspire honor and respect of our own corporeality. Through this, we can more actively and intentionally strive to emulate God. Instead of seeing our bodies as a source of separation, we can see them as a source of connection between Him and us. In a sense, we are divine (or like God) because we are embodied. To mutilate, abuse, or mistreat our bodies denigrates an aspect of our inherent divinity.

Beyond our physical bodies, this respect can extend to all aspects of our embodied experience, including our emotions and sensations. We connect with divinity in our ability to feel both joy and sadness, to see beauty and mess, and to hear harmony and discord. In Matthew 5:48 and 3 Nephi 12:48, we are commanded to be perfect like our Father, or if the alternative translation is used, to be complete or mature. The best aspects of being embodied on this earth—sensations, emotional intimacy, our capability to move, create, and work—as well as pain, must also be similar to the completion or maturity that comes with godlike perfection. As Latter-day Saints, our worship includes obedience to a health code, showing respect for sexual intimacy, and providing for the needs of others when we are able to. This lifestyle encourages respect for our bodies and becomes more clearly inspired when our corporeality is viewed as a connection to the divine.

In addition to the unique ways in which we approach the embodied experience, the worship of our corporeal God encourages prioritization of human relationships. To know that God feels with us and works with us to overcome the challenges of mortality on a physical level allows for a closer and more personal relationship with Him. In the best cases, our relationships with other humans can mirror the attributes of a corporeal living God. Through our belief in an embodied God, we are more able to view ourselves, in our own corporeal state, as capable of becoming like Him.

Though imperfect, our attempts to emulate these qualities in our worship lead us to treasure the good and work through the bad in our human relationships, for the “same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there…coupled with eternal glory.”

 The worship of a corporeal God inspires the kind of relationship with Him and with our fellow human beings that can transform both our mortal and eternal corporeal existence.

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