Source: https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/transcript-elder-christofferson-cambridge-2017
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 07:45:13+00:00

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Thank you for that warm welcome. I truly appreciate the invitation to be with you at this wonderful conference. I thank and congratulate Charlotte Steinfeld and her team in organizing the exceptional program of today’s conference. J. Reuben Clark Jr. was a gifted lawyer and an inspired Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. Your work as members and leaders of the UK and Ireland Chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society is a fitting tribute to one of the great leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I am especially pleased to be at Cambridge University in a conference dedicated to understanding and celebrating the rule of law. The world owes the British people a tremendous debt for developing workable government institutions founded on the rule of law.
I fear that some may not understand the place of religious freedom in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our eleventh article of faith states, “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.” Freedom of religion is thus a basic principle of the restored gospel. In the Doctrine and Covenants, one of our canonical books of scripture, there is a statement that places the highest priority on preserving religious freedom. There we are told that “rulers, states, and governments have a right, and are bound to enact laws for the protection of all citizens in the free exercise of their religious belief.” In turn, when laws “[hold] sacred the freedom of conscience,” people of faith are bound to support the government. These sacred truths, affirmed in Church scripture nearly two centuries ago, have never been as timely or needed as today.
But religious freedom does not exist in isolation. I also fear that many in our modern secular societies have forgotten that religious freedom undergirds and is inseparably connected to all the other freedoms we cherish. It is the core right in what might be thought of as an “ecosystem” of freedom. As religious freedom goes, so go many other precious rights.
And so my remarks today are entitled “Religious Freedom: The Foundational Freedom.” Along the way I will share some thoughts on how religious freedom and the rule of law are mutually supporting and essential to our fundamental human rights.
I want to introduce my discussion of religious freedom by recounting a notorious event from English history that many of you will be familiar with.
In December 1170, four knights entered Canterbury Cathedral and stabbed to death the Archbishop, Thomas Becket, as he was climbing the stairs to the high altar. A more violent act of desecration would be difficult to imagine: those knights, acting on a rash complaint of King Henry II, took the life of England’s archbishop as he stood in priestly robes during a worship service at one of Christendom’s great cathedrals. Henry’s complaint arose from numerous clashes with his old friend, Becket, over various issues that together raised a monumental question: Who would control the Christian church in England?
Dividing the authority of church and state had the powerful effect of establishing limits to the authority of both. Government came to be understood as inherently limited—its legitimate authority simply does not include matters of religious belief or practice, for those are matters of the soul. By the same token, while churches have legitimate authority over matters of religious belief and practice, they lack civil power over property or life. Governments do not rule churches, and churches do not rule governments; each has a limited sphere of competence, power, and legitimacy.
That is a profound notion that we often take for granted. It means that secular government is not divinely omnipotent and, conversely, that religious authority cannot act as an all-powerful government. There are inherent limits to both governmental and religious authority over society, and in the tensions and spaces created by those limits we find many of our freedoms.
Separating church and state protects religious freedom by walling off questions of personal faith, religious doctrine, and ecclesiastical governance from government control. Thanks to that separation, we take for granted the freedom to adopt a religious faith or to change it, as dictated by individual conscience. With few constraints, we worship how, where, and what we choose. Where the powers of church and state are divided, the government has no power to compel its people to affirm a particular religious orthodoxy as the price of full citizenship. The government also generally lacks power to interfere in the internal ecclesiastical affairs of religious organizations. And, most significantly, the government lacks any rightful authority to persecute its people for their religious beliefs or practices.
I believe this fundamental limitation on the power of government to control the realm of the spirit undergirds the rule of law. For if the power of the king is limited, then surely the power of the king’s magistrates must be too. It follows that there must be rules to guide and constrain the exercise of governmental power. I do not claim that the separation of church and state is the only source of the rule of law in modern Western civilization; no doubt there are many others, as the various scholars at this conference can attest. But the deeply embedded separation of church and state undoubtedly played an important role in establishing and fortifying the rule of law, which in turn has further protected and secured religious freedom from arbitrary governmental authority and persecution.
Supported and sustained by the rule of law, religious freedom is foundational to numerous other cherished rights. The support religious freedom gives other fundamental rights was noted by Lord Acton, who insightfully wrote that “religious liberty is the generating principle of civil [liberty], and that civil liberty is the necessary condition of religious [liberty].” More recently, British philosopher Michael Oakeshott explained that the freedom we experience and value “lies in a coherence of mutually supporting liberties, each of which amplifies the whole and none of which stands alone.” Foremost among these is religious liberty.
Religious freedom erects an effective shield for other freedoms. Religious freedom presumes there are important areas of life beyond the legitimate power of government. A government powerless to compel religious belief or exercise will be hard pressed to compel orthodoxy in other areas of life. Religious freedom protects the freedom of individual belief and expression in all areas of human activity. This enables people to develop and express their own opinions in matters of philosophy, politics, business, literature, art, science, and other areas, which naturally leads to social and political diversity.
Let me highlight a few ways that religious freedom is both foundational to other basic freedoms and also in turn supported by those freedoms.
Church autonomy, freedom of association, and mediating institutions. Let’s start with freedom of association—the right to freely assemble with friends and associates and to form voluntary, self-governing associations centered on shared values. This liberty is basic to any free and just society. It is also a direct offshoot of important religious freedoms.
Among the most significant aspects of religious freedom is what some scholars call “church autonomy.” By this I mean the autonomy of a church or other religious organization to determine its own theology and criteria for priesthood; to establish standards for membership, discipline, and removal; and to own and manage sacred properties.
Shielding churches and other religious organizations from the full brunt of government power is a principle at least as old as Magna Carta, which guaranteed that “the English church shall be free,” meaning that the monarch would not interfere in the church’s internal affairs.
This ancient principle of church autonomy is alive and well in Anglo-American law today. Indeed, the law of most Western nations recognizes some form of church autonomy. For example, in the 19th century the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that churches have autonomy to decide ecclesiastical issues free from governmental interference. The Court stated: “The right to organize voluntary religious associations to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned.” Church autonomy principles ensure that churches and other religious organizations have the authority to determine who is qualified to be a member and that ecclesiastical authorities have the last word on questions of doctrine, priesthood, sacraments, worship, church administration, and ecclesiastical discipline.
In keeping with this long tradition of respecting the autonomy of churches, a 2012 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed the right of religious organizations to govern their ecclesiastical affairs, ruling that the national government could not force a church-owned school to reinstate a teacher who was a “commissioned minister” in the church. The Court concluded that “it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church’s determination of who can act as its ministers”—even when that determination arguably conflicts with laws against discrimination.
The laws of the U.K. and Ireland likewise have important limitations on the power of government to meddle in the internal ecclesiastical affairs of religious organizations. Thanks to those protections, our Church is perfectly free in those nations to define its doctrine and determine who may serve as bishop or stake president or who may take the sacrament or enter our temples.
Safeguarding the autonomy of churches and other religious organizations enhances freedom for everyone by establishing a right to freely associate in voluntary associations. For if that right must be recognized for nonprofit religious organizations, then equality and fairness dictate that a substantially similar right must be recognized to protect the associational freedom of nonprofit secular organizations.
More subtly but equally important, protecting church autonomy also enhances freedom by dispersing power. Religious organizations stand as bulwarks of freedom between the state and the unprotected individual.
Churches, like families, schools, and other voluntary associations, are often called “mediating institutions,” meaning, as Elder Bruce Hafen once put it, that they “[mediate] between the individual and the megastructures of contemporary government.” In their relationships with individual members, churches act as competing institutions of authority. By asserting their institutional prerogatives, churches ensure that the state does not exercise a monopoly on legitimate authority over the lives of individual citizens. In this respect, churches buffer and shield the individual from the power of the state and from complete dependency on its assistance.
In short, the hard-won right of churches to autonomy in their ecclesiastical affairs has helped lay the groundwork for the right of all people—religious or not—freely to form and govern numerous social and cultural institutions that enrich our societies in so many ways.
These “mutually supporting liberties,” as Oakeshott called them, mean that religious freedom is not just a benefit for religious people and institutions alone. Religious liberty often acts as a catalyst in protecting many other rights. Partly that is so because each fundamental right touches on some aspect of religious freedom. But it is likewise true that protections for religious freedom coincide with protections for other rights. Courts have implicitly recognized that rights must protect both religious believers and nonbelievers. The freedom of speech, for instance, embraces the right to speak about God but also to speak about one’s personal opinions on matters of politics, art, literature, history, morality, or virtually any other topic.
This is all to say that our basic freedoms tend to rise and fall together. Courts that protect religious freedom tend to protect the freedom of speech and press, while courts that allow the government to infringe religious freedom tend to allow the infringement of other basic rights. I think, in particular, of the contrast in American history between World War I, when laws were upheld prohibiting dissent, and periods of heightened protection for speech and press that coincided with vigorous protections for religious freedom. Heightened protection for religious freedom in the United States during the 1970s tended to accompany heightened protections for other kinds of freedom—such as the freedom of conscientious objection during wartime, which protected sincere pacifists with no connection to a formal religious denomination or belief system during the Vietnam War.
Protecting religious freedom is fundamental to protecting other personal rights because conflicts over religious freedom are the focal point where the state either safeguards or invades the space necessary for liberty. If the state can be convinced (or compelled) to leave space for religious dissent, it will almost surely leave space for other forms of dissent. If the state does not respect religious freedom, it is unlikely that it will respect other freedoms.
Religious freedom and the morality of freedom. A legal regime that respects religious freedom also affirms the moral basis for all human rights and thereby makes all rights more secure. The very idea of human rights rests on a religious conception of human nature. American President Calvin Coolidge explained that freedom of religion and other fundamental rights arise from “the recognition of the dignity and worth of the individual, because of his possession of those qualities which are revealed to us by religion. It is this conception alone which warrants the assertion of the universal right to freedom.” The Bible teaches that each person has an innate dignity because God created human beings in His image—“male and female created he them.” Modern revelation supplements that truth by declaring that “the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.” Coolidge was right, then, in saying that “equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, [and] the rights of man … have their source and their roots in the religious convictions.” Our essential rights are inalienable because they are the gifts of God. No state could grant them. Accepting that fundamental truth lays the foundation for all other freedoms. And the first recognition of that truth—historically and morally—has come from acknowledging that the state must respect religious conscience.
My final point is that religious freedom is critical because it allows religion to inculcate the virtues and habits necessary for a free society.
True religion encourages the virtues and habits of good citizenship that are necessary for a free society. Honesty. Duty. Moral self-discipline. Sacrifice for family and country. Compassion and service toward others. Civic engagement.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks echoed that insight when he wrote that “we are in grave danger of forgetting the moral basis of society. It is all too easy to move from claiming, ‘I have a right to do this,’ to saying, ‘I am right to do this’; that whatever is not forbidden by law is morally permissible and therefore morally reasonable.” What is merely legal cannot define what is moral, or we will lose the moral and religious tradition by which all our freedoms are preserved. Protecting religious freedom ensures that religion can continue to play its essential role of inculcating the virtues that we all need to live freely, and without which our freedoms cannot survive.
What can we do to cultivate a society where religion is respected and the rule of law remains a reality? I believe that it is the “small and simple things” that matter most. We must live by the truths that we profess. We must be better husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. We must be kinder neighbors and coworkers. We must be better informed about the world around us and take a more active role in our communities as citizens. We must teach principles of gospel living to our children. And we must defend what is right—including freedom of religion and the rule of law.
 D. Todd Christofferson, “A Celebration of Religious Freedom” (address given at an interfaith conference in São Paulo, Brazil, Apr. 29, 2015), mormonnewsroom.org/article/a-celebration-of-religious-freedom.
 W. R. W. Stephens, The English Church from the Norman Conquest to the Accession of Edward I (1066–1272) (1901), 182–83.
 Michael W. McConnell, The Problem of Singling Out Religion (2000), 17.
 Carl H. Esbeck, Dissent and Disestablishment: The Church-State Settlement in the Early American Republic (2004), 1385, 1387.
 Mark DeWolfe Howe, The Garden and the Wilderness: Religion and Government in American Constitutional History (1965), 17–18.
 Howe, The Garden and the Wilderness, 18.
 Lord Bingham, The Rule of Law (2007), 66.
 Bingham, The Rule of Law, 72.
 Bingham, The Rule of Law, 73.
 Railway Express Agency Inc. v. New York, 336 U.S. 106, 112 (1949).
 Bingham, The Rule of Law, 78.
 John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, First Baron Acton, Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears (1985), 47.
 Michael Oakeshott, “The Political Economy of Freedom,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962), 40.
 Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 728–29 (1871).
 See Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc’y, 819 F.2d 875 (9th Cir. 1997); O’Connor v. Diocese of Honolulu, 885 P.2d 361 (Haw. 1994); Marks v. Hartgerink, 528 N.W.2d 539 (Iowa 1995); Parish of the Advent v. Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Mass., 688 N.E.2d 923 (Mass. 1997); Smith v. Calvary Christian Church, 614 N.W.2d 590 (Mich. 2000); Conic v. Cobbins, 44 So.2d 52 (Miss. 1950); Fowler v. Bailey, 844 P.2d 141 (Okla. 1992).
 See Watson, at 730 (“We cannot decide who ought to be members of the church, nor whether the excommunicated have been justly or unjustly, regularly or irregularly cut off from the body of the church”); Chase v. Cheney, 58 Ill. 509 (1871) (ecclesiastical courts have final say on offenses to church discipline); Shannon v. Frost, 42 Ky. 253 (3 B. Mon. 1842) (church is sole judge of excommunication); Harmon v. Dreher, 1 S.C. Eq. (1 Speers Eq.) 87 (Ch. 1843) (secular court will not review synod’s expulsion of member).
 Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. EEOC, 132 S. Ct. 694, 704 (2012).
 Bruce C. Hafen, “Hazelwood School District and the Role of First Amendment Institutions,” Duke Law Journal (1988), 701.
 See Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains (2005) (describing how slavery came to be outlawed in the British Empire).
 Cinnamon Network, Cinnamon Faith Action Audit National Report: To Serve the Nation, May 2015, 7.
 “What a Difference a Faith Makes: Insights on Faith-Based Charities,” New Philanthropy Capital, Nov. 2016, 16.
 Oakeshott, The Political Economy of Freedom, 40.
 “What can be more fair, then when a man judicious, learned, and of a conscience … openly by writing publish to the world what his opinion is, what his reasons” (John Milton, Areopagitica ).
 See Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights (1965), 56–61 (recounting Penn’s trial).
 Brant, The Bill of Rights, 61.
 See United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965) (granting conscientious objector status to applicants who were not members of a recognized religious denomination).
 Calvin Coolidge, “Education: The Cornerstone of Self-Government” (address to the Convention of the National Education Association, July 4, 1924), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ ws/index.php?pid=24188.
 Calvin Coolidge, “Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia” (July 5, 1926), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=408.
 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, ed. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio; trans. Alan S. Kahan (1998), 206.
 Edmund Burke, “Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” in Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other Writings, ed. Jesse Norman (2015), 680.
 Lord Moulton, “Law and Manners,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1924, 1.
 Moulton, “Law and Manners,” 1.
 Clayton Christensen, “Religion Is the Foundation of Democracy and Prosperity,” Feb. 8, 2011, http://www.mormonperspectives.com/?p=115.
 Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962), 36.
 Lord Sacks, “The Great Covenant of Liberties: Biblical Principles and Magna Carta,” in Magna Carta, Religion, and the Rule of Law, ed. Robin Griffith-Jones and Mark Hill (2015), 311.

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