"Honoring and Sustaining the Law"

The twelfth Article of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reads, “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

My familiarity with the Articles of Faith began many, many years ago while I was a Primary student. Of course like everyone else, my graduation from that Auxiliary was in part dependent upon my being able to quote all thirteen of them to my leaders from memory.

For an eleven year old in 1951, the twelfth one seemed benign to me. Why would I or anyone in my restricted circle of friends and relatives seriously think about doing anything contrary to the laws and interests of the United States government? Most of the other Articles of Faith were gospel centered, and their subject matter was intended to motivate the believer to pursue further study of the topic. Other Articles made reference to personal behavior that would require many years or possibly a lifetime to realize. However, sustaining our various levels of government and obeying their dictates only seemed like the natural thing to do. At that age, I knew almost nothing about the reality of other members of the Church who lived in foreign countries, and of the practical and at times life-threatening difficulties they faced while struggling to live by the dictates of this pattern of belief.

At that age, I also had not made the connection between the era in which the Articles of Faith had been penned and the realities with which those Saints were in fact contending. In 1842, the horrors of mob violence that had succeeded in driving them from their homes, businesses, and lands in Ohio and Missouri were still very fresh in their minds as they gathered to Nauvoo. The Prophet and his fellow prisoners had made their way to Illinois after their escape from Liberty jail, where they had been held unlawfully for months in very inhumane conditions. Appeals to their governmental leaders in the Nation’s capital for redress of their many injuries stemming from unconstitutional and illegal persecutions fell on deaf ears and not understanding minds. In spite of being so rebuffed, the Saints were accepting of their condition and thanked God for the forms of government that had treated them so wretchedly. In human terms, such behavior is amazing and normally unexpected.

What are our circumstances as Saints today? Given that our membership in some numbers has spread into almost all areas of the globe, the dictates of the twelfth Article of Faith provide varying challenges to its adherents. One of the hallmarks of the value systems that dominate in socially stable and economically advanced nations is the attempt to enumerate and protect personal or civil liberties. In such lands, supporting the established governments and obeying existing laws is relatively easy and almost always results in an absence of personal threats. At the other end of the social and political continuums are systems that are incapable of maintaining stability or in fact seek to further ends that are chaotic. These seem hardly worthy of the public’s support. Into such areas generally, the gospel is not taken in any organized fashion, and in such where the Church has been established, missionary and temple activities are at times curtailed. While the substance and expectations of the Articles of Faith in such conditions remain the same as otherwise, the resulting conduct of the members most likely will need to be appropriate to their circumstances.

A brief consideration of the experiences of the Saints living in the communist German Democratic Republic may be instructive here. As a rule, what we as a Church consider normal missionary proselytizing activities were very seriously limited by the laws of that nation. Yet full-time missionary work continued with many young members accepting calls to serve. As one of them, Sister Linford served for twenty-six months. Church meetings were often observed by members of the Stasi, the East German secret police, who sat among the congregations. Teaching manuals and other printed materials from the Church that we take for granted were not allowed into the country for many years. Through all of this, the members remained respectful of the communist government and its suppressive laws. Because the government of the GDR came to realize that the Saints living within its borders were not carrying on subversive activities, indeed, they were obedient citizens, the government invited the Church to build a temple. In fact, the temple in Freiberg is the only temple the Church has constructed inside of a communist nation. Had the Saints not conducted themselves in a manner consistent with the twelfth Article of Faith, it is highly unlikely that miracle would have happened.

As the end draws closer, wickedness in the world will increase. That is a given. It is thus reasonable to assume that the world’s populated areas will experience in numbers and intensity an increase in civil disobedience. Organized government’s natural response to such depreciating conditions will be to exert more and more authority. Both the increase of civil disobedience and the expansion of governmental authority in the hopes of restoring and maintaining order will have the effect of limiting ever more the personal liberties of the denizens of these societies. In such instances, attempting to live in accordance with the tenets of the twelfth Article of Faith will become more and more trying and dangerous. The fallback position for those caught in such circumstances and who seek to obey these increasingly authoritarian governments may well be the dictum that social order maintained by even autocratic governments is generally a better course of action than attempting to live within a society marked by chaos and anarchy.

On Liberty

“Liberty is by no means an invitation to indifference or to irresponsible power; nor is it the promise of unlimited well-being without a counterpart of toil and effort. It supposes application, perpetual effort, strict government of self, sacrifice in contingencies, civic and private virtues. It is therefore more difficult to live as a free man than to live as a slave, and that is why men so often renounce their freedom; for freedom is in its way an invitation to a life of courage, and sometimes of heroism, as the freedom of the Christian is an invitation to a life of Sainthood.”

Georges Lefebvre

The Coming of the French Revolution

This quote having been integrated into some of my lectures over the years impressed one of my students sufficiently that he had it beautifully reproduced and framed for me. For many years, his gift hung on the wall of my office. Now it has a similar place at home. Recently, a friend of many years wrote to see if I was still in possession of this quote as his copy had been misplaced. His request reminded me of the appropriateness of this topic given our expanded consideration of the eleventh Article of Faith. Sometimes, things happen this way.

The exercise of personal agency is very much bounded by the rules, customs, and biases of organized and unorganized societies. Liberty, as discussed here, pertains directly to the degree of protection and furtherance or, to the contrary, restraint organized societies place on the ability of their individual members to exercise their God-given right of personal choice.

The desire to protect the degree of personal liberty that had evolved in most of the American based British colonies from the growing encroachments of the Parliament was at the heart of the American revolutionary movement. Historians have argued and it was very likely the case that the American revolution was over before it began. At least in the minds of its leaders, the separation of the colonies from the Mother Country was a fait accompli before the first shot was fired in Massachusetts. The success of this revolution provided support and direction for others. The desire to expand and protect the basic notions of personal liberty was a powerful motivator in the coming of many subsequent revolutions in two hemispheres that successfully overthrew forms of monarchal government beginning in France.

Given the natural affinity between the true gospel of Jesus Christ and true forms of representative government regarding the necessity of providing and protecting substantive personal liberties for their citizens, our recent experience in the former communist area of Germany was an eye opener. The Marxian socialist value system that dominated the region for approximately fifty years had significantly curtailed its citizens’ ability to exercise independent behavior. On the other hand, it had provided a “social safety net” whereby its citizens were guaranteed such basic necessities as housing, employment, and medical care. This was the trade-off. Restricted personal liberty made possible the satisfying of certain basic human needs. When their system collapsed in 1989, their safety net was gone, and the former citizens of Eastern Germany found themselves largely responsible for providing for themselves in the absence of government guarantees. This was very unnerving to many of these individuals, and we as citizens of the United States were the brunt of verbal attacks by many as we mingled with them. The dissatisfied were generally displeased with the role our government had played in the fall of their communist system. Even more troubling were the confrontations we experienced on this subject from Church members. After experiencing political domination and restricted personal liberty for so many years, they had substantially lost their vision of the importance of exercising personal agency in all of its possible forms.

Marxian socialism overtook Eastern Europe so quickly that the populations of those lands were powerless to prevent themselves from being inundated. However, in the Americas, socialist thought, laws, and institutions are spreading at a more incremental pace, and in their wake the personal liberties of the impacted citizenry are slowly being eroded. How did Professor Lefebvre put it?

“Liberty is by no means an invitation to indifference or to irresponsible power; nor is it the promise of unlimited well-being without a counterpart of toil and effort. It supposes application, perpetual effort, strict government of self, sacrifice in contingencies, civic and private virtues. It is therefore more difficult to live as a free man than to live as a slave, and that is why men so often renounce their freedom; for freedom is in its way an invitation to a life of courage, and sometimes of heroism, as the freedom of the Christian is an invitation to a life of Sainthood” (Georges Lefebvre).

Personal Agency

The eleventh Article of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reads, “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.”

Agency is an eternal principle. It is through the exercise of agency that personal progression in the gospel sense is possible. It was the Prophet Abraham who reported God’s purpose concerning the exercise of personal agency: “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;” (Abraham 3:25). So integral is agency to God’s eternal plan for us, that the presentation of a counter proposal that would have subverted the agency of God’s spirit children while they were living in mortality was in and of itself an important factor in Lucifer’s fall.

Only in an environment that permits mankind to exercise the requisite degree of freedom of thought and action is each individual able to work out their salvation. Given its importance, the use or misuse of agency at times gives rise to effects of enduring consequence. Among the rebellious are those who believe that the exercise of their agency gives them the right to obey or not to obey the commandments of God, seemingly without personally harmful consequences. If by this they mean to suggest that agency provides them the right to determine what is right or wrong, they are seriously mistaken. As Elder Charles Didier taught in one of our stake conferences, “Agency is given to us to choose between right and wrong and not to decide what is right and what is wrong” (April 28, 2002).

The most defining moments in an individual’s life are those wherein substantive choices are presented, and a decision is made that has the potential to alter the person’s subsequent course through not only mortality but also throughout eternity. President David O. McKay spoke to this point when he said, “There are three great epochs in a man’s [or woman’s] earthly life, upon which his happiness here and in eternity may depend, his birth, his marriage, and his choice of vocation.” However in reality, the potential effects of the defining decisions made by a single individual in mortality will be perhaps limitless. For whether the course followed is consistent or contrary to the will of God, future generations will tend to reap either the blessings or the heartaches inherent in the course of life upon which their feet are set. This says nothing about the nature of the multitudinous relationships in which each of us is involved with non-family members and in consequence the potential we have to effect them for good or for ill.

Given our understanding of the centrally-important role agency should play in each individual’s life, we ought to support those institutions, actions, and beliefs both domestic and foreign that possess the power to provide, protect, and further the exercise of personal agency among the largest possible number of God’s children. In so doing, we encourage the realization of an environment wherein as many as possible will be free to live and worship “according to the dictates of [their] own conscience.”

American Exceptionalism

The confluence of two trains of thought have brought me to this writing. Recently, we celebrated Memorial Day which is intended to direct our thoughts toward our dead. In my youth, we often referred to this holiday as Decoration Day for a portion of our time was spent caring for and decorating the graves of our relatives in the city cemetery. As a nation, we use Memorial Day as an opportunity to remember and give thanks for the sacrifice of those who have served in the armed services in the defense of our country thus reaffirming thereby the importance of the liberties and safety that we enjoy daily as a result of our continuing history.

My other thoughts are a product of having recently read Brother Hugh Nibley’s work entitled Lehi in the Desert and The World of the Jaredites. Among other things, I was reminded again of just how clearly both the followers of Lehi and the Jaredites were informed by the Lord as to the exceptional status of the land to which they were being led and of the conditions that would apply there. This is a promised land, and the Lord will not tolerate indefinitely abuse of His will by those He has permitted to live here. When the cup of the Lord’s forbearance is full, the unrighteous are swept from this land. The descendants of both of these migrations experienced in due time the devastating full measure of this warning. It is interesting to consider in this context, that not all who are allowed to live here are of Israel. Certainly, Lehi’s followers were, but the Jaredites were not given that their story as reported by the Prophet Ether began with the confusion of languages following the tower of Babel debacle.

One of the many paradigms used to interpret particularly the history of the United States is known as “American Exceptionalism.” It may be worth noting that while American Exceptionalism applies specifically to the United States, the term “America” does not. There are those in the United States who experience some personal discomfort at the thought that say Canadians, Mexicans, and Brazilians, for example, rightfully may also refer to themselves as “Americans.” True is it not, this entire hemisphere is America? If so, then all who are citizens of the various nations which comprise this hemisphere are Americans.

From which source did the notion of American Exceptionalism spring? While the answer to this question is debatable, a popular and defensible answer is Alexis Charles Henri Clerel de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, and his traveling companion were sent by France to the United States in the early 1830s to report on our penal institutions as the French were considering reforms in their houses of correction. In addition to making the report the purpose of which had brought him here in the first place, de Tocqueville wrote a two-volume work entitled, Democracy in America, which provides all future generations a window into this dynamic period of early United State history. His understanding of republican government, democracy, equality, and liberty and what he believed their long-term effects would be on our nation’s history are a fertile seedbed for important elements of American Exceptionalism.

In general terms, this paradigm of United States history assumes that the fundamental institutions of our society and government are different from those of every other nation in the world in at least small but identifiable ways. These institutions and their underlying value system have produced a nation that is not only destined to be an example to others but is expected by a majority of its citizens and countless others living abroad to be a world leader. This was not always the case. It took time for this nation’s institutions and citizens to mature through the processes of trial and error. However, it may be argued that for about a century, the United States government has shouldered well its domestic and international responsibilities in spite of expected missteps.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we know what the vast majority of the world’s citizens does not namely, that God has declared the land of America to be a promised land, and He expects that those who live here will serve Him. If they do not, in due time their offenses will be the cause of their destruction. As for the United States specifically, we know that our Constitution was written under circumstances determined by God. “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, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:80; see also verses 76 to 80).

It is not my purpose here to become embroiled in a contest of philosophies or opinions. However, it does seem apparent to me that more and more forces are at work without and within this nation seeking to challenge its unique role in the modern world and to cause both its leaders and its citizens to question ever more critically the propriety of continuing on our historic course. For me, our challengers fall into at least two major categories. First, there are those who sincerely desire to rid our societies both domestic and international of notions or philosophies they deem to be inherently divisive. Notions such as “political correctness” and “I’m okay, your okay” are general approaches whereby many of this group attempt to accomplished their desired ends. The other major group of challengers appears to have less than honorable ends in mind as they seek to dissuade policy makers and their supporters from continuing on a course whereby the United States plays a leadership role.

For those of us who have an understanding of God’s assumptions pertaining to America, both of these groups are problematic. Whether the rejection of American Exceptionalism is rooted in ignorance or in evil intent, the results may eventually be the same. When a people rejects God’s ways long enough, their lives are made more difficult through external means. An example of this concerns the inhabitants of Western Missouri in the 1830s who rejected the coming of the Latter-day Saints to that area. The Lord said, “I, the Lord, am angry with the wicked; I am holding my Spirit from the inhabitants of the earth. I have sworn in my wrath, and decreed wars upon the face of the earth, and the wicked shall slay the wicked, and fear shall come upon every man;” (D&C 63:32-33).

Given God’s expectations for both His Kingdom as well as the United States in America, the inherent responsibilities for those of us who are citizens of both would seemingly deny us the right to believe we are no more enlightened than those who have not been so blessed. By what right do we seek to opt out of setting an overt example to others of God’s children of those values, behaviors, and truths that are most consistent with gospel goals? In other words, by what right do we seek to hide our light under a bushel?

In addition to our regular study of the Book of Mormon and latter-day published revelations, a thoughtful reading of our history for the past century should serve as a timely reaffirmation of our various opportunities, blessings, and commitments relative to this subject. In these last days, maintaining clarity of purpose and direction will become more and more difficult as the noise with which we are bombarded becomes more intense and its effects more confusing.