Congressional Record, Volume 157 Issue 26 (Thursday, February 17, 2011)

[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 26 (Thursday, February 17, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S855-S859]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, religious freedom is the first subject
addressed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In
a pair of clauses that too often are divorced from each other, the
Constitution prohibits Congress from making laws respecting an
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
Religious freedom has been a passion of mine throughout my service in
the Senate and I intend to address this critical subject in a variety
of ways during the 112th Congress. Today, I want to offer for my
colleagues' consideration an important speech on religious freedom
delivered two weeks ago at the Chapman University School of Law by
Elder Dallin Oaks.
Elder Oaks serves in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He received his law degree from
the University of Chicago, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago
Law Review and where he would later teach after clerking for Supreme
Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. He also served as President of Brigham
Young University, Chairman of the Public Broadcasting Service, and as a
Justice on the

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Utah Supreme Court. Elder Oaks is one of the pre-eminent legal scholars
of our time, and a man deeply schooled in the Constitution who dearly
loves our country.
As Elder Oaks makes clear at the outset, this speech is not about
particular religious doctrine but about religious freedom. In fact, he
says that his intent is ``to contend for religious freedom.''
Contending for something is much more than simply talking about it,
explaining it, or even advocating it. To contend for religious freedom
is to strive earnestly for it, to struggle for it, even in the face of
opposition. Religious freedom is that important.
So I ask unanimous consent to have this speech printed in the Record
and ask my colleagues to read and consider it. The full printed version
of this speech contains extensive footnotes which have been deleted
here for ease of publication in the Record. But I note for my
colleagues that the full text and notes may be found at the following
Internet address: http://newsroom.lds.org/article/apostle-emphasizes-
the-importance-of-religious-freedom-to-society.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Preserving Religious Freedom

(Elder Dallin H. Oaks, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Chapman
University School of Law, Orange, California, Feb. 4, 2011)

I am here to speak of the state of religious freedom in the
United States, why it seems to be diminishing, and what can
be done about it.
Although I will refer briefly to some implications of the
Proposition 8 controversy and its constitutional arguments, I
am not here to participate in the debate on the desirability
or effects of same-sex marriage. I am here to contend for
religious freedom. I am here to describe fundamental
principles that I hope will be meaningful for decades to
come.
I believe you will find no unique Mormon doctrine in what I
say. My sources are law and secular history. I will quote the
words of Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish leaders,
among others. I am convinced that on this issue what all
believers have in common is far more important than their
differences. We must unite to strengthen our freedom to teach
and exercise what we have in common, as well as our very real
differences in religious doctrine.

I begin with a truth that is increasingly challenged:
Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable
and important to our free society and therefore deserving of
special legal protection. I will cite a few examples.
Our nation's inimitable private sector of charitable works
originated and is still furthered most significantly by
religious impulses and religious organizations. I refer to
such charities as schools and higher education, hospitals,
and care for the poor, where religiously motivated persons
contribute personal service and financial support of great
value to our citizens. Our nation's incredible generosity in
many forms of aid to other nations and their peoples are
manifestations of our common religious faith that all peoples
are children of God. Religious beliefs instill patterns of
altruistic behavior.
Many of the great moral advances in Western society have
been motivated by religious principles and moved through the
public square by pulpit-preaching. The abolition of the slave
trade in England and the Emancipation Proclamation in the
United States are notable illustrations. These revolutionary
steps were not motivated and moved by secular ethics or
coalitions of persons who believed in moral relativism. They
were driven primarily by individuals who had a clear vision
of what was morally right and what was morally wrong. In our
time, the Civil Rights movement was of course inspired and
furthered by religious leaders.
Religion also strengthens our nation in the matter of
honesty and integrity. Modern science and technology have
given us remarkable devices, but we are frequently reminded
that their operation in our economic system and the resulting
prosperity of our nation rest on the honesty of the men and
women who use them. Americans' honesty is also reflected in
our public servants' remarkable resistance to official
corruption. These standards and practices of honesty and
integrity rest, ultimately, on our ideas of right and wrong,
which, for most of us, are grounded in principles of religion
and the teachings of religious leaders.
Our society is not held together just by law and its
enforcement, but most importantly by voluntary obedience to
the unenforceable and by widespread adherence to unwritten
norms of right or righteous behavior. Religious belief in
right and wrong is a vital influence to advocate and persuade
such voluntary compliance by a large proportion of our
citizens. Others, of course, have a moral compass not
expressly grounded in religion. John Adams relied on all of
these when he wisely observed that ``we have no government
armed with power capable of contending with human passions
unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition,
revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our
Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution
was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate to the government of any other.''
Even the agnostic Oxford-educated British journalist,
Melanie Phillips, admitted that ``one does not have to be a
religious believer to grasp that the core values of Western
Civilization are grounded in religion, and to be concerned
that the erosion of religious observance therefore undermines
those values and the `secular ideas' they reflect.''
My final example of the importance of religion in our
country concerns the origin of the Constitution. Its
formation over 200 years ago was made possible by religious
principles of human worth and dignity, and only those
principles in the hearts of a majority of our diverse
population can sustain that Constitution today. I submit that
religious values and political realities are so inter-linked
in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot
lose the influence of religion in our public life without
seriously jeopardizing our freedoms.
Unfortunately, the extent and nature of religious devotion
in this nation is changing. Belief in a personal God who
defines right and wrong is challenged by many. ``By some
counts,'' an article in The Economist declares, ``there are
at least 500 [million] declared non-believers in the world--
enough to make atheism the fourth-biggest religion.'' Others
who do not consider themselves atheists also reject the idea
of a supernatural power, but affirm the existence of some
impersonal force and the value of compassion and love and
justice.
Organized religion is surely on the decline. Last year's
Pew Forum Study on Religion and Public Life found that the
percentage of young adults affiliated with a particular
religious faith is declining significantly. Scholars Robert
Putnam and David Campbell have concluded that ``the prospects
for religious observance in the coming decades are
substantially diminished.''
Whatever the extent of formal religious affiliation, I
believe that the tide of public opinion in favor of religion
is receding. A writer for the Christian Science Monitor
predicts that the coming century will be ``very secular and
religiously antagonistic,'' with intolerance of Christianity
``ris[ing] to levels many of us have not believed possible in
our lifetimes.''
A visible measure of the decline of religion in our public
life is the diminished mention of religious faith and
references to God in our public discourse. One has only to
compare the current rhetoric with the major addresses of our
political leaders in the 18th, 19th, and the first part of
the 20th centuries. Similarly, compare what Lincoln said
about God and religious practices like prayer on key
occasions with the edited versions of his remarks quoted in
current history books. It is easy to believe that there is an
informal conspiracy of correctness to scrub out references to
God and the influence of religion in the founding and
preservation of our nation.
The impact of this on the rising generation is detailed in
an Oxford University Press book, Souls in Transition. There
we read: ``Most of the dynamics of emerging adult culture and
life in the United States today seem to have a tendency to
reduce the appeal and importance of religious faith and
practice. . . . Religion for the most part is just something
in the background.''
Granted that reduced religious affiliation puts religion
``in the background,'' the effect of that on the religious
beliefs of young adults is still in controversy. The negative
view appears in the Oxford book, whose author concludes that
this age group of 18 to 23 ``had difficulty seeing the
possible distinction between, in this case, objective moral
truth and relative human invention. . . . [T]hey simply
cannot, for whatever reason, believe in--or sometimes even
conceive of--a given, objective truth, fact, reality, or
nature of the world that is independent of their subjective
self-experience.''
On the positive side, the Pew Forum study reported that
over three-quarters of young adults believe that there are
absolute standards of right and wrong. For reasons explained
later, I believe this finding is very positive for the future
of religious freedom.

II.

Before reviewing the effects of the decline of religion in
our public life, I will speak briefly of the free exercise of
religion. The first provision in the Bill of Rights of the
United States Constitution is what many believe to be its
most important guarantee. It reads: ``Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.''
The prohibition against ``an establishment of religion''
was intended to separate churches and government, to forbid a
national church of the kind found in Europe. In the interest
of time I will say no more about the establishment of
religion, but only concentrate on the First Amendment's
direction that the United States shall have ``no law
[prohibiting] the free exercise [of religion].'' For almost a
century this guarantee of religious freedom has been
understood as a limitation on state as well as federal power.
The guarantee of religious freedom is one of the supremely
important founding principles in the United States
Constitution, and it is reflected in the constitutions of all
50 of

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our states. As noted by many, the guarantee's ``pre-eminent
place'' as the first expression in the First Amendment to the
United States Constitution identifies freedom of religion as
``a cornerstone of American democracy.'' The American
colonies were originally settled by people who, for the most
part, came to this continent for the freedom to practice
their religious faith without persecution, and their
successors deliberately placed religious freedom first in the
nation's Bill of Rights.
So it is that our federal law formally declares: ``The
right to freedom of religion undergirds the very origin and
existence of the United States.'' So it is, I maintain, that
in our nation's founding and in our constitutional order
religious freedom and its associated First Amendment freedoms
of speech and press are the motivating and dominating civil
liberties and civil rights.

III.

Notwithstanding its special place in our Constitution, a
number of trends are eroding both the protections the free
exercise clause was intended to provide and the public esteem
this fundamental value has had during most of our history.
For some time we have been experiencing laws and official
actions that impinge on religious freedom. In a few moments I
will give illustrations, but first I offer some
generalizations.
The free ``exercise'' of religion obviously involves both
(1) the right to choose religious beliefs and affiliations
and (2) the right to ``exercise'' or practice those beliefs
without government restraint. However, in a nation with
citizens of many different religious beliefs the right of
some to act upon their religious beliefs must be qualified by
the government's responsibility to further compelling
government interests, such as the health and safety of all.
Otherwise, for example, the government could not protect its
citizens' persons or properties from neighbors whose
religious principles compelled practices that threatened
others' health or personal security. Government authorities
have wrestled with this tension for many years, so we have
considerable experience in working out the necessary
accommodations.
The inherent conflict between the precious religious
freedom of the people and the legitimate regulatory
responsibilities of the government is the central issue of
religious freedom. The problems are not simple, and over the
years the United States Supreme Court, which has the ultimate
responsibility of interpreting the meaning of the lofty and
general provisions of the Constitution, has struggled to
identify principles that can guide its decisions when a law
or regulation is claimed to violate someone's free exercise
of religion. As would be expected, many of these battles have
involved government efforts to restrict the religious
practices of small groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and
Mormons. Recent experience suggests adding the example of
Muslims.
Much of the controversy in recent years has focused on the
extent to which state laws that are neutral and generally
applicable can override the strong protections contained in
the free exercise clause of the United States Constitution.
As noted hereafter, in the 1990s the Supreme Court ruled that
such state laws could prevail. Fortunately, in a stunning
demonstration of the resilience of the guarantee of free
exercise of religion, over half of the states have passed
legislation or interpreted their state constitutions to
preserve a higher standard for protecting religious freedom.
Only a handful have followed the Supreme Court's approach
that the federal free exercise protection must bow to state
laws that are neutral as to religion.
Another important current debate over religious freedom
concerns whether the guarantee of free exercise of religion
gives one who acts on religious grounds greater protection
against government prohibitions than are already guaranteed
to everyone by other provisions of the constitution, like
freedom of speech. I, of course, maintain that unless
religious freedom has a unique position we erase the
significance of this separate provision in the First
Amendment. Treating actions based on religious belief the
same as actions based on other systems of belief is not
enough to satisfy the special guarantee of religious freedom
in the United States Constitution. Religion must preserve its
preferred status in our pluralistic society in order to make
its unique contribution--its recognition and commitment to
values that transcend the secular world.
Over a quarter century ago I reviewed the history and
predicted the future of church/state law in a lecture at
DePaul University in Chicago. I took sad notice of the fact
that the United States Supreme Court had diminished the
significance of free exercise by expanding the definition of
religion to include what the Court called ``religions'' not
based on belief in God. I wrote: ``The problem with a
definition of religion that includes almost everything is
that the practical effect of inclusion comes to mean almost
nothing. Free exercise protections become diluted as their
scope becomes more diffuse. When religion has no more right
to free exercise than irreligion or any other secular
philosophy, the whole newly expanded category of `religion'
is likely to diminish in significance.''
Unfortunately, the tide of thought and precedent seems
contrary to this position. While I have no concern with
expanding comparable protections to non-religious belief
systems, as is done in international norms that protect
freedom of religion or belief, I object to doing so by re-
interpreting the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise
of religion.
It was apparent twenty-five years ago, and it is undeniable
today, that the significance of religious freedom is
diminishing. Five years after I gave my DePaul lecture, the
United States Supreme Court issued its most important free
exercise decision in many years. In Employment Division v.
Smith, the Court significantly narrowed the traditional
protection of religion by holding that the guarantee of
free exercise did not prevent government from interfering
with religious activities when it did so by neutral,
generally applicable laws. This ruling removed religious
activities from their sanctuary--the preferred position
the First Amendment had given them.
Now, over twenty years later, some are contending that a
religious message is just another message in a world full of
messages, not something to be given unique or special
protection. One author takes the extreme position that
religious speech should have even less protection. In Freedom
from Religion, published by the Oxford University Press, a
law professor makes this three-step argument:
1. In many nations ``society is at risk from religious
extremism.''
2. ``A follower is far more likely to act on the words of a
religious authority figure than other speakers.''
3. Therefore, ``in some cases, society and government
should view religious speech as inherently less protected
than secular political speech because of its extraordinary
ability to influence the listener.''
The professor then offers this shocking conclusion:

``[W]e must begin to consider the possibility that
religious speech can no longer hide behind the shield of
freedom of expression. . . .
``Contemporary religious extremism leaves decision-makers
and the public alike with no choice but to re-contour
constitutionally granted rights as they pertain to religion
and speech.''

I believe most thoughtful people would reject that extreme
conclusion. All should realize how easy it would be to
gradually manipulate the definition of ``religious
extremism'' to suppress any unpopular religion or any
unpopular preaching based on religious doctrine. In addition,
I hope most would see that it is manifestly unfair and short-
sighted to threaten religious freedom by focusing on some
undoubted abuses without crediting religion's many benefits.
I am grateful that there are responsible voices and evidence
affirming the vital importance of religious freedom,
worldwide.
When Cardinal Francis George, then President of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke at Brigham Young
University last year, he referred to ``threats to religious
freedom in America that are new to our history and to our
tradition.'' He gave two examples, one concerning threats to
current religious-based exemptions from participating in
abortions and the other ``the development of gay rights and
the call for same-sex `marriage.''' He spoke of possible
government punishments for churches or religious leaders
whose doctrines lead them to refuse to participate in
government sponsored programs.
Along with many others, I see a serious threat to the
freedom of religion in the current assertion of a ``civil
right'' of homosexuals to be free from religious preaching
against their relationships. Religious leaders of various
denominations affirm and preach that sexual relations should
only occur between a man and a woman joined together
in marriage. One would think that the preaching of such a
doctrinal belief would be protected by the constitutional
guarantee of the free exercise of religion, to say nothing
of the guarantee of free speech. However, we are beginning
to see worldwide indications that this may not be so.
Religious preaching of the wrongfulness of homosexual
relations is beginning to be threatened with criminal
prosecution or actually prosecuted or made the subject of
civil penalties. Canada has been especially aggressive,
charging numerous religious authorities and persons of faith
with violating its human rights law by ``impacting an
individual's sense of self-worth and acceptance.'' Other
countries where this has occurred include Sweden, the United
Kingdom, and Singapore.
I do not know enough to comment on whether these
suppressions of religious speech violate the laws of other
countries, but I do know something of religious freedom in
the United States, and I am alarmed at what is reported to be
happening here.
In New Mexico, the state's Human Rights Commission held
that a photographer who had declined on religious grounds to
photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony had engaged in
impermissible conduct and must pay over $6,000 attorney's
fees to the same-sex couple. A state judge upheld the order
to pay. In New Jersey, the United Methodist Church was
investigated and penalized under state anti-discrimination
law for denying same-sex couples access to a church-owned
pavilion for their civil-union ceremonies. A federal court
refused to give relief from the state penalties. Professors
at state universities in Illinois and Wisconsin were fired or
disciplined for expressing personal convictions that
homosexual behavior is sinful. Candidates for masters'
degrees in counseling in Georgia and Michigan universities
were penalized or dismissed from programs

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for their religious views about the wrongfulness of
homosexual relations. A Los Angeles policeman claimed he was
demoted after he spoke against the wrongfulness of homosexual
conduct in the church where he is a lay pastor. The Catholic
Church's difficulties with adoption services and the Boy
Scouts' challenges in various locations are too well known to
require further comment.
We must also be concerned at recent official expressions
that would narrow the field of activities protected by the
free exercise of religion. Thus, when President Obama used
the words freedom of worship instead of free exercise of
religion, a writer for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
sounded this warning:

``To anyone who closely follows prominent discussion of
religious freedom in the diplomatic and political arena, this
linguistic shift is troubling.
``The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that
religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of
worship. It's about the right to dress according to one's
religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to
engage in the public square.''

Fortunately, more recent expressions by President Obama and
his state department have used the traditional references to
the right to practice religious faith.
Even more alarming are recent evidences of a narrowing
definition of religious expression and an expanding
definition of the so-called civil rights of ``dignity,''
``autonomy,'' and'' self-fulfillment'' of persons offended by
religious preaching. Thus, President Obama's head of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldblum,
recently framed the issue in terms of a ``sexual-orientation
liberty'' that is such a fundamental right that it should
prevail over a competing ``religious-belief liberty.'' Such a
radical assertion should not escape analysis. It has three
elements. First, the freedom of religion--an express
provision of the Bill of Rights that has been recognized as a
fundamental right for over 200 years--is recast as a simple
``liberty'' that ranks among many other liberties. Second,
Feldblum asserts that sexual orientation is now to be defined
as a ``sexual liberty'' that has the status of a fundamental
right. Finally, it is claimed that ``the best framework for
dealing with this conflict is to analyze religious people's
claims as `belief liberty interest' not as free exercise
claims under the First Amendment.'' The conclusion: Religious
expressions are to be overridden by the fundamental right to
``sexual liberty.''
It is well to remember James Madison's warning: ``There are
more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the
people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power
than by violent and sudden usurpations.''
We are beginning to experience the expansion of rhetoric
and remedies that seem likely to be used to chill or even to
penalize religious expression. Like the professors in
Illinois and Wisconsin and the lay clergyman in California,
individuals of faith are experiencing real retribution merely
because they seek to express their sincerely held religious
beliefs.
All of this shows an alarming trajectory of events pointing
toward constraining the freedom of religious speech by
forcing it to give way to the ``rights'' of those offended by
such speech. If that happens, we will have criminal
prosecution of those whose religious doctrines or speech
offend those whose public influence and political power
establish them as an officially protected class.
Closely related to the danger of criminal prosecutions are
the current arguments seeking to brand religious beliefs as
an unacceptable basis for citizen action or even for argument
in the public square. For an example of this we need go no
further than the district court's opinion in the Proposition
8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
A few generations ago the idea that religious organizations
and religious persons would be unwelcome in the public square
would have been unthinkable. Now, such arguments are
prominent enough to cause serious concern. It is not
difficult to see a conscious strategy to neutralize the
influence of religion and churches and religious motivations
on any issues that could be characterized as public policy.
As noted by John A. Howard of the Howard Center for Family,
Religion and Society, the proponents of banishment ``have
developed great skills in demonizing those who disagree with
them, turning their opponents into objects of fear, hatred
and scorn.'' Legal commentator Hugh Hewitt described the
current circumstance this way:

``There is a growing anti-religious bigotry in the United
States. . . .
``For three decades people of faith have watched a
systematic and very effective effort waged in the courts and
the media to drive them from the public square and to
delegitimize their participation in politics as somehow
threatening.''

The forces that would intimidate persons with religious-
based points of view from influencing or making the laws of
their state or nation should answer this question: How would
the great movements toward social justice cited earlier have
been advocated and pressed toward adoption if their religious
proponents had been banned from the public square by
insistence that private religious or moral positions were not
a rational basis for public discourse?
We have already seen a significant deterioration in the
legal position of the family, a key institution defined by
religious doctrine. In his essay ``The Judicial Assault on
the Family,'' Allan W. Carlson examines the ``formal
influence of Christianity'' on American family law, citing
many state and United States Supreme Court decisions through
the 1950s affirming the fundamental nature of the family. He
then reviews a series of decisions beginning in the mid-1960s
that gave what he calls ``an alternate vision of family life
and family law.'' For example, he quotes a 1972 decision in
which the Court characterized marriage as ``an association of
two individuals each with a separate intellectual and
emotional makeup.'' ``Through these words,'' Carlson
concludes, ``the U.S. Supreme Court essentially enlisted in
the Sexual Revolution.'' Over these same years, ``the federal
courts also radically altered the meaning of parenthood.''
I quote Carlson again:

``The broad trend has been from a view of marriage as a
social institution with binding claims of its own and with
prescribed rules for men and women into a free association,
easily entered and easily broken, with a focus on the needs
of individuals. However, the ironical result of so expanding
the `freedom to marry' has been to enhance the authority and
sway of government.''
``As the American founders understood, marriage and the
autonomous family were the true bulwarks of liberty, for they
were the principal rivals to the state. . . . And surely, as
the American judiciary has deconstructed marriage and the
family over the last 40 years, the result has been the growth
of government.''

All of this has culminated in attempts to redefine marriage
or to urge its complete abolition. The debate continues in
the press and elsewhere.

IV.

What has caused the current public and legal climate of
mounting threats to religious freedom? I believe the cause is
not legal but cultural and religious. I believe the
diminished value being attached to religious freedom stems
from the ascendency of moral relativism.
More and more of our citizens support the idea that all
authority and all rules of behavior are man-made and can be
accepted or rejected as one chooses. Each person is free to
decide for himself or herself what is right and wrong. Our
children face the challenge of living in an increasingly
godless and amoral society.
I have neither the time nor the expertise to define the
various aspects of moral relativism or the extent to which
they have entered the culture or consciousness of our nation
and its people. I can only rely on respected observers whose
descriptions feel right to me.
In his book, Modern Times, the British author, Paul
Johnson, writes: ``At the beginning of the 1920s the belief
began to circulate, for the first time at a popular level,
that there were no longer any absolutes: of time and space,
of good and evil, of knowledge, above all of value.''
On this side of the Atlantic, Gertrude Himmelfarb describes
how the virtues associated with good and evil have been
degraded into relative values.
A variety of observers have described the consequences of
moral relativism. All of them affirm the existence of God as
the Ultimate Law-giver and the source of the absolute truth
that distinguishes good from evil.
Rabbi Harold Kushner speaks of God-given ``absolute
standards of good and evil built into the human soul.'' He
writes: ``As I see it, there are two possibilities. Either
you affirm the existence of a God who stands for morality and
makes moral demands of us, who built a law of truthfulness
into His world even as He built in a law of gravity. . . . Or
else you give everyone the right to decide what is good and
what is evil by his or her own lights, balancing the voice of
one's conscience against the voice of temptation and need. .
. .''
Rabbi Kushner also observes that a philosophy that rejects
the idea of absolute right and wrong inevitably leads to a
deadening of conscience. ``Without God, it would be a world
where no one was outraged by crime or cruelty, and no one was
inspired to put an end to them. . . . [T]here would be no
more inspiring goal for our lives than self-interest. . . .
Neither room nor reason for tenderness, generosity,
helpfulness.''
Dr. Timothy Keller, a much-published pastor in New York,
asks:

``What happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible
that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you
pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest,
how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You
won't!. . . .
``Though we have been taught that all moral values are
relative to individuals and cultures, we can't live like
that. In actual practice we inevitably treat some principles
as absolute standards by which we judge the behavior of those
who don't share our values. . . . People who laugh at the
claim that there is a transcendent moral order do not think
that racial genocide is just impractical or self-defeating,
but that it is wrong. . . .''

My esteemed fellow Apostle, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, asked:
``[H]ow can a society set priorities if there are no basic
standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the
arithmetic of appetite?''
He made this practical observation: ``Decrease the belief
in God, and you increase the

[[Page S859]]

numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being
`society's supervisors.' Such `supervisors' deny the
existence of divine standards, but are very serious about
imposing their own standards on society.''
Elder Maxwell also observed that we increase the power of
governments when people do not believe in absolute truths and
in a God who will hold them and their government leaders
accountable.
Moral relativism leads to a loss of respect for religion
and even to anger against religion and the guilt that is seen
to flow from it. As it diminishes religion, it encourages the
proliferation of rights that claim ascendency over the free
exercise of religion.
The founders who established this nation believed in God
and in the existence of moral absolutes--right and wrong--
established by this Ultimate Law-giver. The Constitution they
established assumed and relied on morality in the actions of
its citizens. Where did that morality come from and how was
it to be retained? Belief in God and the consequent reality
of right and wrong was taught by religious leaders in
churches and synagogues, and the founders gave us the First
Amendment to preserve that foundation for the Constitution.
The preservation of religious freedom in our nation depends
on the value we attach to the teachings of right and wrong in
our churches, synagogues and mosques. It is faith in God--
however defined--that translates these religious teachings
into the moral behavior that benefits the nation. As fewer
and fewer citizens believe in God and in the existence of the
moral absolutes taught by religious leaders, the importance
of religious freedom to the totality of our citizens is
diminished. We stand to lose that freedom if many believe
that religious leaders, who preach right and wrong, make no
unique contribution to society and therefore should have no
special legal protection.

V. Conclusion

I have made four major points:
1. Religious teachings and religious organizations are
valuable and important to our free society and therefore
deserving of their special legal protection.
2. Religious freedom undergirds the origin and existence of
this country and is the dominating civil liberty.
3. The guarantee of free exercise of religion is weakening
in its effects and in public esteem.
4. This weakening is attributable to the ascendancy of
moral relativism.
We must never see the day when the public square is not
open to religious ideas and religious persons. The religious
community must unite to be sure we are not coerced or
deterred into silence by the kinds of intimidation or
threatening rhetoric that are being experienced. Whether or
not such actions are anti-religious, they are surely anti-
democratic and should be condemned by all who are interested
in democratic government. There should be room for all good-
faith views in the public square, be they secular, religious,
or a mixture of the two. When expressed sincerely and without
sanctimoniousness, the religious voice adds much to the text
and tenor of public debate. As Elder Quentin L. Cook has
said: ``In our increasingly unrighteous world, it is
essential that values based on religious belief be part of
the public discourse. Moral positions informed by a religious
conscience must be accorded equal access to the public
square.''
Religious persons should insist on their constitutional
right and duty to exercise their religion, to vote their
consciences on public issues, and to participate in elections
and in debates in the public square and the halls of justice.
These are the rights of all citizens and they are also the
rights of religious leaders and religious organizations. In
this circumstance, it is imperative that those of us who
believe in God and in the reality of right and wrong unite
more effectively to protect our religious freedom to preach
and practice our faith in God and the principles of right and
wrong He has established.
This proposal that we unite more effectively does not
require any examination of the doctrinal differences among
Christians, Jews, and Muslims, or even an identification of
the many common elements of our beliefs. All that is
necessary for unity and a broad coalition along the lines I
am suggesting is a common belief that there is a right and
wrong in human behavior that has been established by a
Supreme Being. All who believe in that fundamental should
unite more effectively to preserve and strengthen the freedom
to advocate and practice our religious beliefs, whatever they
are. We must walk together for a ways on the same path in
order to secure our freedom to pursue our separate ways when
that is necessary according to our own beliefs.
I am not proposing a resurrection of the so-called ``moral
majority,'' which was identified with a particular religious
group and a particular political party. Nor am I proposing an
alliance or identification with any current political
movement, tea party or other. I speak for a broader
principle, non-partisan and, in its own focused objective,
ecumenical. I speak for what Cardinal Francis George
described in his address at Brigham Young University, just a
year ago. His title was ``Catholics and Latter-day Saints:
Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom.'' He proposed
``that Catholics and Mormons stand with one another and with
other defenders of conscience, and that we can and should
stand as one in the defense of religious liberty. In the
coming years, interreligious coalitions formed to defend the
rights of conscience for individuals and for religious
institutions should become a vital bulwark against the tide
of forces at work in our government and society to reduce
religion to a purely private reality. At stake is whether or
not the religious voice will maintain its right to be heard
in the public square.''
We join in that call for religious coalitions to protect
religious freedom. In doing so we recall the wisdom of
Benjamin Franklin. At another critical time in our nation's
history, he declared: ``We must all hang together, or
assuredly we shall all hang separately.''
In conclusion, as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ I
affirm His love for all people on this earth, and I affirm
the importance His followers must attach to religious freedom
for all people--whatever their beliefs. I pray for the
blessings of God upon our cooperative efforts to preserve
that freedom.

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