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Quote of the Day: Religious Liberty
I am bold to declare before Heaven that I am just as ready to die in defending the rights of a Presbyterian, a Baptist, or a good man of any other denomination [as for a Mormon]; for 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 and too weak to defend themselves.
It is a love of liberty which inspires my soul—civil and religious liberty to the whole of the human race.Joseph Smith, Jr.
There isn’t much I can add to this quote to improve it. I will be focusing on religious freedom and liberty for the rest of the month.
Published in Group Writing
It needs saying, apparently. I saw a commenter elsewhere this week who actually said we have “freedom from religion.”
I’ve seen that, too.
Seen it, but it isn’t true. They just wish it were so.
And, this is the Quote of the Day. We still have two openings for June: the 23rd and 24th. Any takers? Sign up here.
Oh, were it that simple… When does a religious practice cross the line so that general society is within its rights to prohibit it?
Overwhelmingly, the objection to Mormonism was its polygamy. There were hundreds, if not thousands of competing Christian-based theologies going around in the early 19th Century, during the “Second Great Awakening”, very largely peacefully. But polygamy yields a fundamental re-ordering of the whole society.
I think it is instructive to look at the first platform of the Republican Party, in 1856. It states that “it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery.”
It was generally known then, as it should be now, that polygamous societies are violent societies.
Today, should society be forced to acquiesce to female genital multilation in the name of “freedom of religion”?