It affirms that governments have no power to prescribe rules of worship to bind the consciences of men or to dictate forms for public or private devotion. Related to this is a doctrine of primordial individual freedom. For Latter-day Saints agency is indestructible. The individual's freedom to search for this truth should not be contravened, and in the last analysis it cannot be. Even God cannot coerce belief.
Intolerance often arises from sectarian conviction.
It has an extensive scriptural foundation, but no formalized creeds and no closed canon. Commitment to truth in this inclusive sense is commitment to the view that all philosophies, religions, and ethical systems have elements of truth and that all persons have a portion of light. The crucial need for tolerance has been impressed upon Latter-day Saints by the buffetings, persecutions, and drivings of their own history. In various places in the world they have sometimes been denied civil and even survival rights. The Church itself has a long history of forbearance.