The purpose of this meeting is for us to understand and learn together that our values and principles rooted in our faith traditions do not need and should not be restrained to our private lives. By understanding the legitimacy of just being who we are, we will be more confident to allow others to see our lives and we will be bolder in sharing our heartfelt convictions.
These texts are the basis of the thoughts we will discuss together in our first meeting of the year 2021.
Meeting the Challenges of Today
We are now entering a period of incredible ironies. Let us cite but one of these ironies which is yet in its subtle stages: we shall see in our time a maximum if indirect effort made to establish irreligion as the state religion. It is actually a new form of paganism that uses the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of Western civilization to shrink freedom even as it rejects the value essence of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage.
M. J. Sobran wrote recently:
The Framers of the Constitution . . . forbade the Congress to make any law “respecting” the establishment of religion, thus leaving the states free to do so (as several of them did); and they explicitly forbade the Congress to abridge “the free exercise” of religion, thus giving actual religious observance a rhetorical emphasis that fully accords with the special concern we know they had for religion. It takes a special ingenuity to wring out of this a governmental indifference to religion, let alone an aggressive secularism. Yet there are those who insist that the First Amendment actually proscribes governmental partiality not only to any single religion, but to religion as such; so that tax exemption for churches is now thought to be unconstitutional. It is startling [she continues] to consider that a clause clearly protecting religion can be construed as requiring that it be denied a status routinely granted to educational and charitable enterprises, which have no overt constitutional protection. Far from equalizing unbelief, secularism has succeeded in virtually establishing it.
[She continues:] What the secularists are increasingly demanding, in their disingenuous way, is that religious people, when they act politically, act only on secularist grounds. They are trying to equate acting on religion with establishing religion. And—I repeat—the consequence of such logic is really to establish secularism. It is in fact, to force the religious to internalize the major premise of secularism: that religion has no proper bearing on public affairs. [Human Life Review, Summer 1978, pp. 51–52, 60–61]
Brothers and sisters, irreligion as the state religion would be the worst of all combinations. Its orthodoxy would be insistent and its inquisitors inevitable. Its paid ministry would be numerous beyond belief. Its Caesars would be insufferably condescending. Its majorities—when faced with clear alternatives—would make the Barabbas choice, as did a mob centuries ago when Pilate confronted them with the need to decide.
Your discipleship may see the time come when religious convictions are heavily discounted. M. J. Sobran also observed, “A religious conviction is now a second-class conviction, expected to step deferentially to the back of the secular bus, and not to get uppity about it” (Human Life Review, Summer 1978, p. 58). This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain of people’s opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions. Resistance to abortion will soon be seen as primitive. Concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened.
In its mildest form, irreligion will merely be condescending toward those who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian values. In its more harsh forms, as is always the case with those whose dogmatism is blinding, the secular church will do what it can to reduce the influence of those who still worry over standards such as those in the Ten Commandments. It is always such an easy step from dogmatism to unfair play—especially so when the dogmatists believe themselves to be dealing with primitive people who do not know what is best for them. It is the secular bureaucrat’s burden, you see.
Am I saying that the voting rights of the people of religion are in danger? Of course not! Am I saying, “It’s back to the catacombs?” No! But there is occurring a discounting of religiously-based opinions. There may even be a covert and subtle disqualification of some for certain offices in some situations, in an ironic “irreligious test” for office.
However, if people are not permitted to advocate, to assert, and to bring to bear, in every legitimate way, the opinions and views they hold that grow out of their religious convictions, what manner of men and women would they be, anyway? Our founding fathers did not wish to have a state church established nor to have a particular religion favored by government. They wanted religion to be free to make its own way. But neither did they intend to have irreligion made into a favored state church. Notice the terrible irony if this trend were to continue. When the secular church goes after its heretics, where are the sanctuaries? To what landfalls and Plymouth Rocks can future pilgrims go?
If we let come into being a secular church shorn of traditional and divine values, where shall we go for inspiration in the crises of tomorrow? Can we appeal to the rightness of a specific regulation to sustain us in our hours of need? Will we be able to seek shelter under a First Amendment which by then may have been twisted to favor irreligion? Will we be able to rely for counterforce on value education in school systems that are increasingly secularized? And if our governments and schools were to fail us, would we be able to fall back upon the institution of the family, when so many secular movements seek to shred it?
It may well be, as our time comes to “suffer shame for his name” (Acts 5:41), that some of this special stress will grow out of that portion of discipleship which involves citizenship. Remember that, as Nephi and Jacob said, we must learn to endure “the crosses of the world” (2 Nephi 9:18) and yet to despise “the shame of [it]” (Jacob 1:8). To go on clinging to the iron rod in spite of the mockery and scorn that flow at us from the multitudes in that great and spacious building seen by Father Lehi, which is the “pride of the world,” is to disregard the shame of the world (1 Nephi 8:26–27, 33; 11:35–36). Parenthetically, why—really why—do the disbelievers who line that spacious building watch so intently what the believers are doing? Surely there must be other things for the scorners to do—unless, deep within their seeming disinterest, there is interest.
If the challenge of the secular church becomes very real, let us, as in all other human relationships, be principled but pleasant. Let us be perceptive without being pompous. Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.
Before the ultimate victory of the forces of righteousness, some skirmishes will be lost. Even these, however, must leave a record so that the choices before the people are clear and let others do as they will in the face of prophetic counsel. There will also be times, happily, when a minor defeat seems probable, that others will step forward, having been rallied to righteousness by what we do. We will know the joy, on occasion, of having awakened a slumbering majority of the decent people of all races and creeds—a majority which was, till then, unconscious of itself.
Jesus said that when the fig trees put forth their leaves “summer is nigh” (Matthew 24:32). Thus warned that summer is upon us, let us not then complain of the heat.
For the full address in writing and video, see the link below.
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/neal-a-maxwell/meeting-challenges-today/
The Truth About Religious Freedom
Just now, as Islamic nations wrestle both with new theoretical ideas and new public policies concerning religious liberty, there may be an opportune moment for reviewing how crucial religious liberty is for democracy. There are rival theories about this. Atheists in Europe have their own approach to religious liberty. In personal life, they do not take religion seriously, naturally, but they do recognize it as a social reality that needs to be dealt with. Politically, however, their aim since the French Revolution of 1789 has been to expel religion from public life and confine it to the private sphere. They have attempted to place the state firmly over religion so the state dominates all spheres of public life. By such “secularization” and “laicization,” the secularists hope to speed the inexorable decline of religion, for they are certain that the future will be less religious than the past—and that this will be a good thing.
In the English-speaking world, the pattern has been different. Some Anglo-Americans share the sentiments of the French. But most have recognized that religion has a serious place in both public and private life. The Anglo-Americans developed two different defenses of liberty of conscience. One is based on non-religious premises, open to atheists as well as believers in God who value philosophical argument for its own sake. The other is based on religious conceptions, particularly the Abrahamic vision of the Creator and Sovereign over all things.
The nonreligious view is that, by nature, each human person is responsible for accepting or rejecting evidence presented to the individual consciousness, and thus each person is responsible for choosing a way of life. This responsibility gives rise to a human right to make such choices—and the right is inalienable, for no one can make those choices for another. In this sense, the conscience of all must be respected as inviolable.
The religious defense of religious liberty is somewhat different. In thinking about these questions at the time of the American Founding, such figures as Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and James Madison expressed the belief of most Americans that the world was made by a benevolent Creator and Governor Who wished to extend His friendship to all human beings and Who wished to be thanked and worshiped in spirit and truth and purity of conscience. In other words, this God could not be deceived by mere outward acts, but saw directly into the human heart. Here is how they expressed it in the Virginia Declaration of Religious Liberty of 1776: “That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by only reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.”
The argument contains four affirmations: the greatness of the Creator; the duty of the creature to recognize, be grateful to, and adore that Creator; the freedom of soul that the Creator endowed in humans for such acts; and the friendship with humans that God desired. With these affirmations as its base, The Virginia Declaration—like the famous Remonstrance against the Governor of Virginia circulated for signatures by James Madison some years later—made the following argument: Every rational creature, contemplating the great gifts bestowed by the Creator, is conscious of a duty to give due worship to that Creator, in spirit and in truth, in the pure light of conscience, under no coercion whatever. Since this duty is sacred, and prior to all other duties either to civil society or to the state, since it is a duty owed by the creature directly to the Creator without intermediary, this duty also implies a right. Since this duty goes beyond any earthly power, it must entail a right to exercise that duty, which may be abridged by no earthly power. It is an inalienable and an inviolable right. It is prior to every other duty. It must be exercised in conscience and without duplicity or coercion, in the direct sight of the Creator.
The religious foundation for religious liberty, therefore, begins with the nature of God. It also sketches out its conviction about the nature of human beings: that we are born free and equal to all others in freedom before God, and that, independent of the state, each of us owes duties to our Creator. Based on these convictions, the religious justification of religious liberty as expressed by the Virginians is founded on the natural rights of human beings, as these have been endowed in human beings by their Creator.
So thorough and profound are these rights, moreover, they are not limited to Jews or Christians, but possessed by all human creatures—Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists alike, together with atheists and agnostics. For all are given their liberty directly by the Creator, in the act of creating human beings. From before time was, the Creator knew each individual by name and called all to Himself—but allowed to all the right to accept or to reject that invitation, according to their own conscience.
I believe that this justification is particularly beautiful because those who first came to it, and proposed it for formal ratification, which it received, established it for all other human beings equally, far beyond their own immediate circle. They claimed nothing for themselves that they did not recognize also belonged to all other human beings. That is why they referred to natural rights. These are founded not in culture nor ethnicity nor tribe nor religious denomination, but in all human beings equally. Their historical root may have been discovered by one particular religious group in human history, but their philosophical and practical application (if they are true) is universal.
For the full text, see below
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/03/the-truth-about-religious-freedom
What's God Got To Do With It?
By Arthur C Brooks, social scientist, musician, and contributing opinion writer for The Washington Post.
The following link contains the whole interview but it is a short read. This is a conversation with an influential journalist from the Times that is clearly upset by the use of the name of God in political discourse. Professor Brooks sets here a good example of seeking understanding at the same time he is asserting his values.
https://arthurbrooks.com/news/whats-god-got-to-do-with-it/
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