In a recent letter to The Salt Lake Tribune, Latter-day Saint writer David Ostler argues that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports religious liberty only halfheartedly. According to Ostler, the Church supports its own priorities and those of other Christians but is “far less willing to defend the religious rights of people outside the LDS faith when those rights conflict with church policies or values.”
We strongly agree with Ostler “that religious freedom is strongest when it protects people of every faith—including those with no faith at all.” But we disagree with his assessment of the Church’s record on religious liberty.
Setting the Record Straight
To begin, Ostler makes misleading statements about the Church’s efforts to protect religious liberty. He says that the Church did not “intervene” in the case of Damon Landor, a Rastafarian whose case recently came before the Supreme Court. But while the Church could not legally intervene as a party, it did become involved. It filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Landor, clearly and publicly supporting Mr. Landor’s case through the only legal avenue it had.
What does it mean to consistently support religious liberty as a universal principle?
Ostler correctly notes that the Church did not file an amicus brief in Domineque Ray’s case. But the case of Mr. Ray, a Muslim who was denied an imam at his execution, reached the Supreme Court in an emergency posture only the day before his scheduled execution. While we agree that the case had important religious liberty implications, the reality is that there was virtually no time to prepare an amicus brief. In fact, only one was submitted, while most religious freedom cases draw dozens. The Court’s rules that year also discouraged amicus briefs in emergency petitions. So to argue the Church should have intervened would be asking the Church to do something that even the nation’s leading religious liberty organizations, which focus on these cases, could not pull off.
Ostler also argues that the Church should have “filed opposition” to the Texas abortion ban to protect its members’ religious freedom. But this conflates an allowance with an obligation. Just because the Church allows abortion in exceptional cases does not mean members have a religious obligation to obtain abortions, nor that getting an abortion is an exercise of religious belief.
The case involving Hoosier Jews for Choice, in which several plaintiffs in Indiana claim a right to abortion under the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) law, is more complex. However, it’s also not as simple as “you supported religious liberty in other cases, so you have to support it here.” RFRA laws have several standards that must be met, and there are good reasons to believe that those standards have not been met in this case.
Promoting Religious Freedom Through Legal Action
Beyond these cases, Ostler raises an important question that he never really answers: What does it mean to consistently support religious liberty as a universal principle? If, as he seems to suggest, it means supporting religious groups and beliefs other than one’s own, the Church clearly does.
There are many, many cases in which the Church has filed briefs in support of religious communities and individuals with significantly different beliefs. Most religious freedom cases to reach the Supreme Court in recent decades have involved Christian litigants. However, the Church has also supported non-Christian groups and individuals. In recent years, it has filed in support of the Rastafarian prisoner previously mentioned; Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Catholic parents; Catholic entities; Lutheran churches; nondenominational Christians; and an evangelical Christian, among several others.
What’s more, the Church frequently joins religiously diverse coalitions to file these amicus briefs. This practice indicates its interest in securing religious freedom for all, not only for itself.
The Church also has a longstanding relationship with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The Becket Fund is the leading national law firm that defends the religious freedom of people of all faiths, not just Christians. It has represented Sikhs, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and members of other minority faiths.
And while religious liberty is a fundamental right, it’s not an unlimited right. The state can restrict religious liberty for legitimate reasons, and the Church understands this. For instance, the state’s interest in promoting health and safety led to restrictions on houses of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the proportionality of these restrictions compared to those imposed on other institutions has been debated, the Church willingly complied to promote health and safety, despite the way these restrictions limited religious exercise. Further, President Oaks has said that religious government officials cannot use religious liberty as a justification to avoid fulfilling their duties under the law, such as providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples when the law recognizes these marriages.
Promoting Religious Freedom Through Dialogue
We also think it’s important to look at global religious liberty. After all, the focus of the Church’s recent fast for religious liberty was specifically to promote this freedom worldwide.
Religious belief deserves special recognition and suppor
The Church sends its leaders around the world to shape dialogue about religious freedom and promote pluralistic approaches to living together in peace. These conversations do not merely produce sound bites. They articulate principles that government leaders can use to improve conditions for religious freedom in their own countries. And they teach members the importance of protecting religious freedom for all, especially for those with different beliefs.
The Church has also financially supported the annual International Religious Freedom Summit, which brings together key religious freedom organizations to champion religious freedom worldwide. Summit participants come from diverse faith backgrounds and from around the world to work together to improve religious freedom for all people everywhere, especially for the world’s most persecuted groups.
The Church’s flagship legal institution, BYU Law School, also hosts an annual International Law and Religion Symposium that convenes people of different faith backgrounds (or none) to discuss challenges to religious freedom and learn about best-practice solutions. And BYU Law School also boasts some of the world’s leading scholars of law and religion, who travel the globe teaching the principle of religious freedom for everyone, everywhere.
None of this captures the Church’s extensive humanitarian efforts, many of which help people persecuted for their beliefs. Consider, for example, the Church’s assistance to the Yazidis, a religious minority in Iraq who faced genocide at the hands of ISIS, or the Church’s efforts to help refugees, including many who are fleeing religious persecution. Countless other examples exist.
It’s true that the Church does not get involved in every single case or with every bill with religious liberty implications. The Church has consistently emphasized that certain core spheres of religious freedom are most important to protect, and it prioritizes them. As critics of the Church would agree, not every purported exercise of religious belief can or should be accommodated. But within appropriate limits, religious belief deserves special recognition and support. The Church has long supported religious liberty as a broad principle, one that applies to religious believers and nonbelievers alike.
