Cowardly Criminality

The riots are still fresh and, in truth, it is not certain that tonight will be free from trouble. Unlike Aaron, I do not have any charitable or sympathetic feelings toward the rioting thugs at this time. I hope that reflecting on his post and more broadly on the Gospel I can develop such a perspective in the near future.

Right now I am fuming about what has happend over the last four days. This is nothing like democratic protests (even those that can turn violent) in situations where protesting is the only possibility for addressing grievances.

Looting in Hackney, East London (ht:Mirror)

So Much for Civic Pride or the Rule of Law

Woman Escaping from Burning Flat in London Riots (ht:Mirror)

Criminal Behavior, not Protesting Turned Violent

Jewelry Shop and Flats Burning in Croydon, South London (ht:Mirror)

Social networking then allowed this to happen in this way as gangs of youths texted, blackberry messaged and twittered about where the next “fun” and “free stuff” could be had. Gangs of rioters consisted of twenty-first century digital boys (and girls) who apparently don’t know how to live in the real world, but they’ve got a lot of toys. The perpetrators were urban and in some cases suburban youth (and adults) wearing designer clothes and using their blackberries and iPhones to conspire about their next crimes.

Law and Order

The police handled this admirably in the sense that they exercised restraint in resisting the urge to charge in and start beating the robbers with nightsticks. But it shocked all of us to watch them standing in lines while, in their view, kids smashed into shops and ran away with armfuls of stolen goods.

Police Officer Stands Near Burning Car in Hackney, East London (ht:Mirror)

Outrage and British Stoicism Mingled in the Aftermath

As to the feelings of residents of the neighborhoods hardest hit, I watched an interview on BBC where a woman whose shop was smashed and robbed in Clapham (or maybe it was Croydon), angrily stated that the perpetrators were “feral rats” and that their parents bear a lot or most of the responsibility for what has happened. I admit that this strikes me as legitimate outrage, even as I applaud the stoicism that saw hundreds from the local communities turn out to clean up the mess left by these criminal youth.

Trevor Phillips explained that although the Commission did not have a reputation of standing up for people of faith in the past, he is committed to do so in the role. But the Telegraph also reported that Phillips observed that Evangelical Christians in the UK are more “militant” in complaining about discrimination — by which he appears to be referring to bringing administrative or civil actions under equality or employment legislation — than Muslims in the UK.

From his vantage point, according to the Telegraph, this is because

Muslim communities in this country are doing their damnedest to try to come to terms with their neighbours to try to integrate and they’re doing their best to try to develop an idea of Islam that is compatible with living in a modern liberal democracy.

The most likely victim of actual religious discrimination in British society is a Muslim but the person who is most likely to feel slighted because of their religion is an evangelical Christian.

I think this is a fascinating and insightful observation. Evangelical Christians, in Phillips’ view, are cynically claiming discrimination, primarily in cases relating to homosexuality, possibly as a vehicle to make headlines and gain political influence. I am not sure what data informs this particular observation by Phillips but the point about Muslims in the UK, by and large, making a real effort to integrate or at least find a way to come to terms with “a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society” seems valid, in my own admittedly limited observation.

Similarly, I share Phillips’ skepticism in the face of Evangelical Christian claims of being persecuted. Phillips acknowledges the mean-spiritedness of the new atheist pundits such as Richard Dawkins, whom he names specifically, which he says he regrets. But he also notes that “there are a lot of Christian activist voices who appear bent on stressing the kind of persecution that I don’t think really exists in this country.” I also think that such claims by a majority religion in a country that does not even have an institutional separation of church and state and where the state religion is Christianity are extremely dubious. Whether the source of such claims of persecution really is a veiled attempt to gain political weight and influence is more difficult to affirm and I don’t think it’s particularly necessary to do so in order to agree with the deeper point about pluralism.

If Phillips is correct in his observations, it raises the inference that Muslims are more committed to religious pluralism in the UK than Evangelical Christians. This might seem ironic at first blush but is less so considering that adherents of minority religions are the most immediate primary beneficiaries of a society’s commitment to religious pluralism (the “modern, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society” to which Phillips refers also, in my view, would necessarily encompass a robust notion of religious pluralism over and above mere toleration). Majority religions, by the way, also benefit in the long run from true religious pluralism because it is in everyone’s best interest for peace and prosperity (in my opinion) for such pluralism to exist, even if it means that a majority religion doesn’t get to proscribe the adherents of minority religions in their spiritual privileges or deny them of their individual rights as citizens. Depending on their perspective, adherents of the majority religion might view this as more of a bug than a feature (Warren Smith?) but in the bigger picture, where true religious pluralism exists, my belief is that adherents of the majority religion will not desire to leverage this position in this way.

Perhaps the most controversial opinion to surface in Phillips’ observations is that the Christians who are responsible for all the noise are people whose manner of belief is “incompatible with living in a modern liberal democracy”. More provocatively, according to the Telegraph, Phillips identified such people as African and Caribbean immigrants who are gaining influence in traditional Christian churches in the UK. Whatever truth there might be to this observation, it is far from the politically correct thing to say both on religious and racial grounds (though Phillips is himself a black Christian).

I can see this latter observation about this type of Chritianity raising warning flags among advocates for religious freedom and freedom of conscience. As someone who considers himself in that category, I cringe to think of a government agency tasked with enforcing equality legislation making the observation that certain people’s religious beliefs are “incompatible with living in a modern liberal democracy”.

But in the same breath, Phillips asserts the Commission’s and his own personal commitment to the principle of religious autonomy:

The law doesn’t dictate their organisation internally, in the way they appoint their ministers and bishops for example.

It’s perfectly fair that you can’t be a Roman Catholic priest unless you’re a man. It seems right that the reach of anti-discriminatory law should stop at the door of the church or mosque.

I’m not keen on the idea of a church run by the state.

I don’t think the law should run to telling churches how they should conduct their own affairs.

Based on his observation that the Evangelical Christians making all the noise about persecution and discrimination hold beliefs incompatible with living in a modern liberal democracy, it could seem like he was making a threat of some kind and planning to somehow restrict those beliefs or the possibilities of those who hold the beliefs through his role in the Commission. But in stating clearly that the Commission “is committed to protecting people of faith against discrimination and also defending the right of religious institutions to be free from Government interference” and that he personally doesn’t think “the law should run to telling churches how they should conduct their own affairs”, even with regard to women or gay clergy, it does not seem like this is the case.

I have wondered whether there is really anything to Christian claims at being the most persecuted people/religion in the world, which surface from time to time in the United States and the United Kingdom. These claims have never rung particularly true for me. Life in a pluralistic society founded on the rule of law entails some give and take. Some of the “give” in the equation might feel a little uncomfortable. To what extent should our commitment to pluralism and liberal democracy bridge the gap between this discomfort and actually claiming that we are being persecuted? In my view, Mormons have a much more valid claim to persecution in modern society than Evangelical Christians but I still fear that we far too easily raise concerns about being persecuted where that is perhaps not the case and perhaps if we ourselves were only a little more dedicated to contributing to real religious pluralism in society, we would not come to a conclusion that we are being persecuted but rather that we are “giving” (consecrating?) something in return for the privilege of building such a society.

A sound inference invited by WCS’s Patheos article is that he, and by extension those who agree with him, believes the religious beliefs of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) disqualifies them from playing any role whatsoever in the society that WCS envisions for the United States of America. This is, of course, fundamentally at odds with the ethos of what America means (and what it means to be an American) for most of its inhabitants: a land where the first freedom continues to be the freedom of religion/conscience.

Arguments about Constitutional interpretation aside, most Americans should and can agree that the First Amendment ingeniously guarantees this first freedom through the combination of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause — two essential components that most Americans believe (at the Founding as well as now) must be a part of the equation to guarantee freedom of religion as our first freedom. This combination creates the environment for a truly religiously pluralistic society to exist (especially after the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the First Amendment against state and local governments instead of just as a limitation on the federal government) by preventing religious organizations from mingling religious influence with civil government and in so doing fostering one religious organization or dogma over another. More importantly, by preventing religious organizations from mingling religious influence with civil government, the First Amendment is meant to and does prevent one religion from proscribing another in its spiritual privileges and denying the individual rights of citizens who happen to be members of a disfavored religion.

In the pluralistic society that this framework makes possible (a pluralism that is, in fact, indissociable from a democratic society), religion does not disqualify an individual from any public office or from performing their civic duties as citizens in any other capacity in society. WCS’s arguments in his Patheos article, however, trend in the other direction and should cause concern for Americans more broadly, not just Mormons.

WCS argues that Mormons are dangerous and therefore should not be eligible for President of the United States. But the same logic behind WCS’s arguments must apply to Mormons in any other capacity as well: Senators, Congressmen, Governors, Mayors, Police Chiefs, FBI Agents, school teachers, firemen — and there is nothing in WCS’s reasoning or logic that would prevent his view from extending into the purely private economy. Mormons should not be in positions as CEOs, industry leaders, partners at prestigious law firms or indeed any law firms, doctors, surgeons, professors at private universities, etc. WCS’s main reasons for concluding that Mormons are dangerous and therefore unfit serve as President of the United States include the following*:

• Unreliable — Mormons believe in continuing revelation. Because Mormons believe that God leads his Church now as in ancient times through inspiration to leaders ordained and set apart as Apostles (including the President of the Church and his counselors in the First Presidency) who are sustained by church members as “prophets, seers, and revelators”, they are dangerous. “If the beliefs are false, then the behavior will eventually—but inevitably—be warped” (Patheos).
• Errant — WCS points out that despite Romney’s and most Mormons’ ardent belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the World, as portrayed by the New Testament, Mormons generally do not subscribe to, and indeed explicitly reject as extra-biblical and unnecessary, the Nicene Creed. Romney (and any other Mormon candidate for President of the United States) therefore “has some explaining to do” (Patheos) because failure to “affirm the Nicene Creed” makes Mormons’ otherwise pious devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ “flawed and dangerous” (Religion Dispatches).
• Weird — Mormons have “highly idiosyncratic views of history” (Patheos) that stem from their religious beliefs. For example, “Mormons believe Lost Tribes of Israel came to the Americas, and that Jesus came too” (Religion Dispatches). Despite a fairly large body of Mormon beliefs that a secular, atheistic society could legitimately deem “weird” (in addition to the Divine Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ, the miracles he performed during his Ministry, his Atonement including his Resurrection from the Dead, among others), it is interesting that in continuing to emphasize this point about the Lost Tribes of Israel (in the Patheos article and the Religion Dispatches interview) WCS focuses on something that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not and has not taught as doctrine in the past.† Believing, for example, that after his death and Resurrection in Jerusalem (and after his Forty Day Ministry), Jesus Christ visited people in the Western Hemisphere who believed in him as the sought-for Messiah based on Old Testament scriptures, is according to WCS too weird and ahistorical and could interfere with “negotiating the outcomes of conflicts with real histories that go back thousands of years” because “conflicts in the Middle East, in Asia, and elsewhere require an understanding of history and human nature that are not fabricated out of whole cloth” (Patheos).
• Validation — Being President of the United States is a big deal. So if a Mormon is elected to that office, “there can be little doubt that the effect of his candidacy — whether or not this is his intent — will be to promote Mormonism. A Romney presidency would have the effect of actively promoting a false religion in the world” (Patheos). In fact, despite Romney’s clear record of actually living the life of a Christian disciple§ (as evidenced by the sum total of Mitt Romney’s existence, his actions, his family, his devotion — too squeeky clean, in fact, for anyone to be able to bring up any dirt on him in the 2008 election except precisely his pious devotion to Jesus Christ as a Latter-day Saint), Romney and all other Mormons are “unfit to serve” because in WCS’s opinion, and apparently in the opinion of an unquantifiable but arguably large number of primary voters, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a “false and dangerous religion” and a Mormon president could break down prejudices in people’s minds against Mormons resulting in, perhaps, more people joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The truly chilling aspect of WCS’s perspective is considering its ultimate implications for our pluralistic society in the United States. If WCS and likeminded people believe that these main reasons hold true when considering the capability of a Mormon to serve as President of the United States, then where does it end? We can very reasonably infer that the same list/reasoning applies in the minds of WCS and those who agree with him theologically when considering whether a Mormon (or other citizen who is a member of a religion that does not affirm the Nicene Creed) should be in almost any other position in our body politic, whether in the public or private sector. Particularly the last summary point about publicity/validation means that WCS and those who agree with him theologically are against Mormons in any high-profile position, whether in companies of their own creation and management or in government representing constituencies including WCS or those who agree with him theologically.

For most Americans, this whole idea should be very alarming and viewed as extraordinarily dangerous to the pluralism and good order that we enjoy today in our Constitutional Republic, the first fruits of which are to guarantee religious freedom and freedom of conscience. The society envisioned by WCS and those who agree with him theologically does not protect religious freedom in the manner conceived of in our Constitution by preventing religious organizations from mingling religious influence with civil government and thereby fostering one religious organization or dogma over another through government channels. To the contrary, the fruits of WCS’s society would inexorably be the proscription by adherents of one particular religious dogma of other religions/dogmas in their spiritual privileges and the denial of the individual rights of citizens who happen to be members of a disfavored religion. This might have been the standard operating procedure in the German Democratic Republic (where the state religion of atheistic party Communism proscribed the spiritual privileges and individual rights of all other religions/dogmas despite lip-service to religious freedom and equality in constitutional documents) or other totalitarian states but it is not what America is about.

Let us all work tirelessly to prevent this from happening and to promote a truly pluralistic society that is true to its first freedom in protecting the religious freedom of all of its citizens. The alternative is not only dangerous — for Americans, it is unthinkable.

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* It should be noted that at Religion Dispatches Joanna Brooks recently concisely summarized WCS’s reasons as Mormons are “errant, weird and unreliable” (the same list I employ above as an accurate summary), which curiously drew an objection from WCS despite the fact that they are a distillation of the premises on which WCS’s argument rests. The above list fleshing out Joanna’s shorthand shows that her descriptors were indeed an accurate summary of WCS’s reasons for concluding that Mormons are dangerous and unfit for President of the United States. Nevertheless WCS bristled at Joanna’s shorthand, telling her not to put words in his mouth and claiming to have “tons of Mormon friends”. To WCS’s Mormon friends if it is true that he has some, I ask, do you realize that he views you not just as misguided theologically — despite your wholehearted acceptance of Jesus Christ as your Savior (perplexities arising from the Nicene Creed aside) and your full fledged efforts to live every day as disciples of Jesus Christ — but actually as dangerous to our body politic?

† Latter-day Saints generally believe that God led select groups of families from the Ancient Near East, particularly Jerusalem, to the Western Hemisphere at various times throughout recorded history, and it is the religious history of these people that Mormons believe is contained in the Book of Mormon. It is not claimed that these people constituted the Lost Tribes of Israel. If Mormons’ beliefs are so weird, why does WCS need to overreach in this manner and characterize immigrant groups as the Lost Tribes to make it sound weirder?

§ As opposed to a mere abstract belief in the Nicene Creed — this is lived religion we’re talking about here, where the rubber meets the road. “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20).

I would like to share my testimony with you. In primary today we read a poem called The Christmas Guest. In this poem a man dreamed that the Savior was going to visit him on Christmas Day. He was so excited that he prepared everything to be perfect for his guest. But as he waited he saw an old beggar at his door with torn shoes and clothes. He gave him a pair of shoes and a better coat and sent him on his way, wondering what was taking his guest so long. Next an old woman came to his door bent over under a heavy pile of sticks. She asked him for a place to rest and he allowed her to rest in his house and gave her something to eat. But he kept wondering where his guest was. Next a lost child came to his door and he knew he had to help her find her family. So he took her home to her house. When he came home Christmas was over and the man sadly went to his room and prayed to ask God why the Lord had not come. But when he was praying the Spirit told him that the Lord had kept his promise and that when he had helped those three people in need, he had been helping the Lord.

What really struck me about this poem was that the Lord was everyone so when we help everyone we are helping the Lord. And I bear that testimony to you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

We have neither encouraged nor discouraged the kids to go up to bear their testimony during Fast and Testimony Meeting but like we did when we were kids, they often choose to do so on their own, unprompted. When they do, however, they have never born the standard children’s testimony one frequently hears in Church*. This is different from when as kids we would go up and bear testimonies because I am pretty sure we always recited the standard testimony and sat back down.

I am grateful for my daughters’ thoughtful testimonies. (I’ve also seen this in Ronan’s then nine-year old son who bore his testimony at a Testimony Meeting that we held in my home at the instructions of our Stake Presidency one Sunday in January when the whole region was completely shut down with heavy snow. — These aren’t the rote testimonies that we used to bear as children.)

Earlier this year, my second daughter, six years old at the time, bore her testimony in Fast and Testimony Meeting and simply said “I am grateful to be a Christian and for the sacrifice of the Lord for me.” and sat down. These kids are miles ahead of where I was at their age. What better way to learn about the pure truths of the Gospel than from the mouths of our own children?

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* i know the church is true i love my family i know the book of mormon is true i know president [x] [when we were bearing this standard kids' testimony it was President Kimball and then President Benson] is a prophet in the name of jesus christ amen

I conducted our meeting this year and in introducing the readings-based program/format, I commented that this Remembrance Sunday program was not actually a “celebration” but rather an acknowledgment of the millions who paid the ultimate price for their countries. With some difficulty given the sheer magnitude of the loss in The First World War I explained my opinion that there were no winners in WWI and that the 15.1 million soldiers who died were not masters of their own destiny but rather only pawns in someone else’s political game.

Our program had a certain logic to it. The theme of the meeting was taken from Alma 36:2:

I would that ye should do as I have done, in remembering the captivity of our fathers; for they were in bondage, and none could deliver them except it was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he surely did deliver them in their afflictions.

The readings-based format allowed us to involve more people than a normal Sacrament Meeting with talks. After enjoying a reading of John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” (1915) by an old veteran in our ward, we had a string of scriptures read by various ward members of all ages from all different cultural and national backgrounds. The first readings included Doctrine and Covenants 134:2 and other scriptures generally outlining a possible argument for just war, including Alma 46:11-16 (The Title of Liberty). We had some somber hymns interspersed, such as “I Need Thee Every Hour” and “Nearer My God to Thee”. Then to bookend this portion, we heard a reading of Moina Michael’s “We Shall Keep the Faith” (1918) by the son of a British soldier who was taken captive at Dunkirk (rather than escaping with the majority in the flotilla) and spent the rest of the war in a Stalag followed by intensive hospitalization for four years after the war.

Isaiah 52:7 served as a somewhat blunt but always beautiful transition scripture from the war-focused portion of the meeting. The rest of the scriptures read emphasized our duty as disciples of Jesus Christ to make peace. I realize this could be considered slightly dissonant with a Remembrance Sunday church service but so much the better. This section of scriptures praising the earthly peacemakers also included acknowledgment of those who publish peace in the Spirit World, as found in Doctrine and Covenants 138:29-35, which was read as well.

In an attempt to turn our minds back to publishing peace in the here and now, we arose and sang “God Save the Queen” as is traditional on Remembrance Sunday in the UK. This was followed by a reading of the Twelfth Article of Faith. The last scripture read to close off this peace-focused portion was 4 Nephi 1:2-5.

The bishop gave concluding remarks before our Two Minutes of Silence. He focused on very traditional Remembrance Sunday themes of gratitude for those serving in defense of the country in the military. He pointed out that the readings in the program had been by old and young (we had very young primary children included as some of the readers), lifelong church members and new converts and by people from the full variety of walks of life and cultural backgrounds represented by our ward. He noted the contributions made in WWI by regiments from West Africa, India and Asia, East Africa, North America (Canada and the United States) and from Australia and elsewhere. Fittingly, he turned his attention toward the early Latter-day Saints who began their lives in England and Wales and emigrated to North American in search of Zion to find persecution, forced migration and death by exposure. It is the sacrifice of those who dedicated their lives to preserving our freedoms that we remember on Remembrance Sunday. So it was nice for him to give this British Holy Day a very Mormon twist in that way. As always, our bishop then tied our readings and the idea of Remembrance Sunday back in to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, ensuring that the outcome of the meeting was entirely Christ-focused. He did this in part by re-emphasizing the lead scripture, Alma 36:2.

Standing together with my ward, all with heads bowed, in the Two Minutes of Silence was very moving. The two minutes seemed very long but the chapel was extraordinarily quiet. Even noisy children were silent.

By 1528 at the latest Martin Luther had written the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, number 68 in our hymn book, as a homily on Psalm 46. The words to this hymn always turn my thoughts to Luther’s experience in taking refuge in the mighty Wartburg fortress at Eisenach in the German principality of Thuringia in 1521. We can imagine Luther reflecting on his isolation while sequestered in that fortress, in disguise as a knight for his own protection, as he later penned the words.

Martin Luther took refuge in the Wartburg near Eisenach in Thuringia in 1521

Luther’s reformist religious ideas quickly became a political matter as powerful members of the German nobility embraced his teachings and took him under their protection following the excommunication. The Protestant Reformation began to form out of Luther’s ideas, especially his tracts and essays written in response to criticisms of his reformist ideas.

The stakes were high for Luther and others in speaking their conscience on these religious matters. Luther’s refuge in the Wartburg fortress very likely saved his life following the Edict of Worms issued by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, in May 1521. The fortress dominates the top of a 1,230 foot cliff and is all but impregnable from three sides because of its perch upon this massive rock. This strategic position provided relative safety from those who intended Luther harm. It was during this time in the Wartburg that Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German, which in a certain sense laid some of the groundwork for the Restoration of the Gospel through Joseph Smith hundreds of years later because it had the effect of making the common people more intimately engaged with the scriptures in their own personal lives. But we also know from his letters that Luther endured some of his darkest times while in hiding in the Wartburg fortress. He described the experience as being his own personal desert.

Based on this description, it seems that the isolation and threat of danger under which Luther resided for nearly a year in the Wartburg became what we could perhaps describe as a “dark night of the soul” for Luther. The “dark night of the soul” has long been a recognized part of our spiritual journey in the Christian tradition. The concept appears to have been given this name by St. John of the Cross in the Sixteenth Century. But we are familiar with the Savior’s own dark night of the soul in Gethsemane and on the Cross. Gethsemane was a prelude when he pleaded with the Father that the cup might be taken from him and received the support of angels. Later, on the Cross, he was left without such support and revealed his sense of abandonment as he cried “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” in the culminating event of the Atonement.

Christ atoned for us so that we will not have to suffer for our own sins if we accept his sacrifice through faith and repentance and signal this faith and repentance through receiving the ordinance of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. His divine nature made the crisis he experienced during the atoning sacrifice unique to him alone. But it seems that in our own spiritual journey through life each of us inevitably will face a dark night of the soul that is perhaps also unique to each of us, based on our own unique perceptions of the world around us and our experiences.

If a dark night of the soul (or multiple dark nights of the soul) is indeed a necessary part of our individualized spiritual journey toward a closer, more permanent union with God and eventual exaltation as joint-heirs with Christ, perhaps the reason is that if we have not become acquainted with or come to grips with our own fallen, unfixable and corrupted nature, we cannot claim to have truly felt Christ’s grace, either.

We find evidence of this in the writings of Nephi, one of the greatest of the Book of Mormon prophets. In the “Psalm of Nephi”, Nephi describes this experience as follows:

17 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
18 I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.
19 And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.
20 My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep.
21 He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh.

[...]

25 And upon the wings of his Spirit hath my body been carried away upon exceedingly high mountains. And mine eyes have beheld great things, yea, even too great for man; therefore I was bidden that I should not write them.

[...]

34 O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.
35 Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss; therefore I will lift up my voice unto thee; yea, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness. Behold, my voice shall forever ascend up unto thee, my rock and mine everlasting God. Amen. (2 Nephi 4:17-21; 25; 34-35)

Nephi describes how the Spirit has carried him to the heights of mountains from the depths of this realization and he mentions trusting in God as his rock. Martin Luther found similar strength in a dark time by trusting in Christ’s Atonement as he focused on translating the New Testament while safely ensconced on the rock of the Wartburg.

Another of the greatest figures in the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin, touched on this realization of his own nothingness in his notable speech to his people:

25 And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you.
26 And I, even I, whom ye call your king, am no better than ye yourselves are; for I am also of the dust. And ye behold that I am old, and am about to yield up this mortal frame to its mother earth. (Mosiah 2:25-26)

Like Nephi, King Benjamin also identifies the solution to the implications of this realization in the same sermon:

17 And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. (Mosiah 3:17, emphasis added)

We should perhaps emulate the response of King Benjamin’s people who, when they heard this speech, responded as follows:

2 And they had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the earth. And they all cried aloud with one voice, saying: O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created heaven and earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of men. (Mosiah 4:2)

I believe this reaction shows us the way forward when we encounter our own dark night of the soul. Do we cry, “O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that I may receive forgiveness of my sins, and my heart may be purified; for I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created heaven and earth, and all things”? Too often we do not take that next step when we are brought as low as the dust of the earth.

Thousands of years earlier, Moses had learned the same lesson in his Epiphany (which followed his own dark night of the soul) as recorded in the Pearl of Great Price:

9 And the presence of God withdrew from Moses, that his glory was not upon Moses; and Moses was left unto himself. And as he was left unto himself, he fell unto the earth.
10 And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man; and he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed. (Moses 1:9-10)

Following this realization, Moses turned to the Lord and received power to overcome this dark night of the soul as well as revelations of great knowledge.

Finally, to bookend this set of examples, we look from the early example of Moses to the late example of Joseph Smith, who experienced spiritual darkness as he pondered which church to join. His experience is recorded in his History in the Pearl of Great Price.

15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.
16 But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.
17 It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! (Joseph Smith–History 1:15-17)

Interestingly, the work of Martin Luther and other Reformers led inexorably to this moment when Joseph Smith faced his own religious crisis and, in simple childlike faith, followed the injunction of James in seeking guidance directly from God. As a result of his First Vision and the prophetic work that Joseph Smith would be called to do, he would face many more such crises in his life, turning each time to the “rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God” to build his foundation (Helaman 5:12). Like Martin Luther before him, Joseph Smith continually found security and protection in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, a mighty Rock upon which to build an impregnable fortress of faith.

Luther felt as though he was in his own personal desert while in refuge in the Wartburg fortress. The imposing and massive rock upon which the fortress stands offered protection against those who meant him harm. While sheltered there, he pondered the Atonement as he translated the New Testament. In another desert, the children of Israel wandered in despair, seeking the water necessary to sustain their life. Moses saved them by striking a mighty rock, from which water miraculously flowed, saving their lives. This straightforward teaching about the living waters offered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ remains an inspiration for us today. We must look to the Atonement of Jesus Christ when we are in our own personal deserts in our lives or when we face the inevitable long, dark night of the soul in our personal spiritual journeys. In both cases it is a time when we come to a realization of our own nothingness before God. When we wander in our own personal deserts, like Martin Luther in the Wartburg fortress or the Children of Israel during their 40 year sojourn, we must seek the living waters spoken of by Christ in his discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:13-14, as Brother S. discussed in his talk. When we find ourselves in our long, dark night of the soul — a time when we lack wisdom like Joseph Smith and are looking for God’s guiding light — we should ask of God, believing, trusting, or, failing that, merely hoping, that he does indeed give to all his children liberally without reprove, as promised by James, as we heard from Sister M. in her talk. When we do so, we have the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, as recorded by Matthew and read by M. [a primary child], that when we ask, it shall be given us, when we seek, we shall find, and when we knock, it shall be opened unto us (Matthew 7:7-12).

My testimony is that God will not give us a rock when we ask for bread. But I have experienced the living waters that he can and does cause to flow from the rock. May we never hew out for ourselves broken cisterns that hold no water, forsaking the fountain of living waters offered by the Atonement of Jesus Christ, as admonished by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 2:13). Rather, may we look to Jesus Christ himself, the well of living waters, and be healed and sanctified by his grace.

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* Thanks to Rebecca J., Mark Brown and Brad Kramer for some of their thoughts over the last couple of weeks that contributed to and inspired the approach I have taken in this talk.

Interestingly, at the same time, the ECHR found in a parallel case (Schüth v. Germany, application no. 1620/03) that there had been a violation of Article 8 where Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court had similarly ultimately upheld the Catholic Church’s dismissal of Bernhard Schüth from employment as an organist and choirmaster in a local parish for adultery and bigamy.

In the press release issued by the ECHR on September 23, 2010 relating to the Obst and Schüth judgments, the Registrar of the ECHR summarized the ECHR’s holdings in each case.

As to Obst v. Germany, in which the ECHR found in favor of the Mormon Church, the Registrar summarized the holding as follows:

The fact that, after a thorough balancing exercise, the German courts had given more weight to the interests of the Mormon Church than to those of Mr Obst, did not itself raise an issue under the Convention. The conclusion that Mr Obst had not been subject to unacceptable obligations was reasonable, given that, having grown up in the Mormon Church, he had been or should have been aware when signing the employment contract of the importance of marital fidelity for his employer and of the incompatibility of his extra-marital relationship with the increased duties of loyalty he had contracted towards the Church as director for Europe of the public relations department.

This was a victory in every sense for the Church, as discussed further below, and signals robust protection of religious autonomy/freedom in the European Court of Human Rights and, by extension, in the 47 nations that are signatories to the Convention.

By contrast, in Schüth v. Germany, the ECHR found that the German courts had not adequately balanced the the privacy interests of Schüth against the interests of the Catholic Church as his employer. The German courts had therefore improperly dismissed Schüth’s employment case against the Catholic Church in finding in favor of the Catholic Church and upholding its dismissal of Schüth, meaning that Germany had violated Schüth’s rights under Article 8 of the Convention. As the Registrar summarized:

The labour courts had moreover made no mention of Mr Schüth’s de facto family life or of the legal protection afforded to it. The interests of the Church employer had thus not been balanced against Mr Schüth’s right to respect for his private and family life, but only against his interest in keeping his post. A more detailed examination would have been required when weighing the competing rights and interests at stake.

While the Court accepted that in signing the employment contract, Mr Schüth had entered into a duty of loyalty towards the Catholic Church which limited his right to respect for his private life to a certain degree, his signature on the contract could not be interpreted as an unequivocal undertaking to live a life of abstinence in the event of separation or divorce. . . .

The Court found that the German labour courts had failed to weigh Mr Schüth’s rights against those of the Church employer in a manner compatible with the Convention.

The Mormon Church, therefore, prevailed[2] in the European Court of Human Rights where the Catholic Church lost.

In these cases, the ECHR needed to weigh an individual’s privacy rights/interests under Article 8 against a church’s rights under Article 9 (freedom of religion) and Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association) — and consider whether German courts had adequately weighed these interests.[3]

In Obst v. Germany, the Church was a Third Party Intervenor and filed a brief, authored by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Robbers, a Professor of Public Law at the University of Trier, in support of its position in dismissing Obst for adultery. The Application for Third-Party Intervention (dated June 13, 2008) is very interesting reading. It functions simultaneously as the Church’s Brief drafted for the purpose of persuading the ECHR that the Church’s dismissal of Obst should be upheld in the ECHR (that is, the German labor courts’ upholding of the Church’s dismissal of Obst should be upheld in the ECHR).

As can be expected, in its Application, the Church argued vigorously in defense of its dismissal of Obst. It noted that the case had major implications, going so far as to argue that “the present case can turn out to be of decisive importance for the very existence of religious communities in Europe and beyond” (para. 11). And it stated that “A positive decision would result in an important strengthening of the Church’s freedom of religion, whereas a contrary outcome would completely compromise its ability to act as an employer in accordance with teachings of the Church and thus to perform its mission in the world” (para. 2, emphasis added). A theme to which the Church returns through its Brief is the idea that “rulings by a secular court on those sensitive policies [worthiness compliance by Church employees] would constitute a profound intervention in its internal affairs” (para. 2).[4]

The Brief goes on to argue to allow the Church to intervene and substantively on the issue of Obst’s dismissal. The Church’s arguments are founded largely on the following statement: “Marital fidelity thus is one of the core principles of the teachings of the Church. It is not just one rule among others, but one of the highest order commandments that lies at the core of its ethical and religious principles” (para. 15). The Brief cites Doctrine and Covenants 42:22-28 in support of this argument.

The Church also emphasizes the standard language apparently contained in Church employment contracts, including notably that “Conduct on or off the job contrary to Church standards (e.g. failure to maintain eligibility for a temple recommend)” would be grounds for immediate dismissal and that “Any employee that is excommunicated or disfellowshipped from the Church will be immediately terminated from Church employment” (para. 30).

The Church went on to argue that

A Church member such as Obst would clearly have understood the reference to maintaining eligibility for a temple recommend. A “temple recommend” is a certificate that confirms that a member is eligible to participate in services in the Church’s temples. At the time of Obst’s dismissal, there were fewer than 100 temples worldwide. These are not facilities for regular weekly worship, but rather places where particularly significant and sacred rituals are performed. The temples are open only to worthy members of the Church. At the time of Obst’s termination, temple recommends had to be renewed annually. In order to obtain or renew a temple recommend, a member must have a private interview with the hierarchically appropriate priesthood leaders confirming among other things that the member lived the law of chastity, paid a full tithing, abstained from coffee, tea, tobacco, alchohol and hard drugs, engaged in regular church attendance, was honest in his or her dealings with others, and in general was true to gospel teachings and standards. It would have been absolutely clear that adultery was grounds for loss of a temple recommend, and this would have been brought home to any church member seeking a recommend during the then-annual (now biannual) interview. (para. 31)

Based on these and further arguments,[5] the German labor courts, the German Federal Constitutional Court and ultimately the ECHR[6] found that Obst’s dismissal was proper under his employment contract under which he owed “increased duties of loyalty” to the Church,[7] which duties were founded in the temple recommend as backed up by scriptural doctrine, in the case of marital fidelity.[8]

In effect, the temple recommend might actually have played a determining factor in the different outcomes in the Obst case and the Schüth case. The ECHR notes that, in the context of (1) the explicit provisions of Obst’s employment contract he had signed and (2) his awareness of Church standards from having grown up in the Church (as evidenced by being a temple recommend holder, as pointed out in the Church’s Brief), Obst’s voluntary confession of adultery while knowing the provisions of his contract and Church standards as a lifelong member meant that the Church’s summary dismissal was properly affirmed by German courts. (The ECHR also noted the rational balancing analysis performed by the German courts in considering the Church’s interests in its public reputation against Obst’s privacy interests as a result of Obst’s position as the public affairs director for Europe[9] as well as Obst’s relatively young age as relevant factors.)

This judgment upholding the Church’s dismissal of Obst, as requested by the Church in its Application, has resulted in, to quote the Church’s Application, “an important strengthening of the Church’s freedom of religion” (para. 2). In fact, the ECHR notes the Church’s strong emphasis on this and a related argument the Church made about the indispensability of religious pluralism in a democratic society[10] in its findings (see paras. 37-38 of the ECHR judgment).

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[1] The European Court of Human Rights is the court of last resort for citizens of the 47 countries that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights under the auspices of the Council of Europe, who allege a state violation of their human rights as codified in the Articles of the Convention and as implemented in the national laws of the state signatories.

[2] In a certain manner of speaking. The ECHR was actually evaluating the appropriateness of the German labor courts’ treatment of these cases. In Obst, the ECHR found that the German labor courts properly upheld the Mormon Church’s termination of Obst in the face of Obst’s complaint that the termination violated his privacy rights. So the ECHR was upholding the Church’s victory in the German courts.

Ironically, although the discussion in the post above focuses on how this outcome for the Church signals a strengthening of religious freedom, one reason why the outcome was favorable for the Mormon Church’s dismissal of Obst but not for the Catholic Church’s dismissal of Schüth might admittedly be a result of German labor courts giving tougher scrutiny to the actions and position of the Mormon Church as a distrusted minority religion. As a result of this a rigorous balancing exercise and analysis was performed in the German labor courts that provided a record sufficient to convince the ECHR that the German labor courts had not found in favor of the Mormon Church without adequately considering Obst’s rights under German labor law, German constitutional law and Article 8 of the Convention. By contrast, in Schüth’s case, as the Registrar noted, the German labor courts “appeared to have simply reproduced the opinion of the Church employer” about the harm Schüth’s actions would cause the Catholic Church’s credibility. Reading between the lines on this little detail, one could infer that such a major player as the Catholic Church in southern Germany (one of the few officially recognized state religions, in fact) had perhaps been given undue deference by the German state — meaning that a record as sufficient as that in Obst was not available for the ECHR to examine in its efforts to determine whether the German courts had adequately balanced Schüth’s privacy interests against the Catholic Church’s interests. But this also could imply a privileged or preferenced position for religion (at least that religion) in the public square of this European country.

[3] The Frankfurt Labor Court had, in the first instance, dismissed the Church’s termination of Obst as void. On the Church’s appeal to the German Federal Labor Court, as the Registrar of the ECHR summarized in the press release, the Federal Labor Court quashed the dismissal of the termination, “observing that by his conduct Mr Obst had not honoured the obligations arising from provisions in his work contract.” The Federal Labor Court went on to refer to

a leading judgment by the Federal Constitutional Court of 4 June 1985 concerning the lawfulness of the dismissal of Church employees after a violation of their loyalty obligations. Following this judgment, Church employers had the right to govern their affairs in an autonomous manner, while at the same time labour courts were bound by the principles of the Church employers’ religious and moral precepts only to the extent that they did not conflict with the fundamental principles of the legal order of the State. According to the Federal Labour Court, the requirements of the Mormon Church regarding marital fidelity did not conflict with the fundamental principles of the legal order, because marriage was also of pre-eminent importance under the German Basic Law. The dismissal had been necessary for the Church to keep its credibility, which was under threat in view of Mr Obst’s responsibilities as director of public relations for Europe. The Church had moreover not been obliged to give an advance warning, as given his long career with the Church, Mr Obst must have been aware of the severity of his misconduct. Following the remittal, the labour court of appeal overturned the first-instance judgment in January 1998. (emphasis added)

Obst then appealed to the German Federal Labor Court once more without success and then to the Federal Constitutional Court, also without success, at which time he sought redress in the European Court of Human rights, claiming that Germany had violated Article 8 of the Convention by finding in favor of the Mormon Church in the case.

[4] Later in the Brief the Church went into great detail on this point, noting, for example, that “The exact contents of the requirements of loyalty and personal worthiness of church employees cannot be determined by State law. They must be left — within the limits drawn from the Convention — to the free discretion of the churches themselves. Any State definition of these obligations would involve a violation of the obligation of the State to remain neutral in matters of religion, and to refrain from evaluating religious doctrines and practices” (para. 80, emphasis added).

[5] Prof. Dr. Robbers gave an exhaustive overview of German public law on principles of self-determination of religious communities and religious freedom in relation to the rights of individuals and the German state and argued very persuasively from a legal perspective that the Church’s dismissal had been appropriate under principles of contract law, public church-state law and religious autonomy. The Church was very fortunate to have him on its side for this purpose as he is a recognized expert in this field.

As part of this larger exposition, the Church also made an interesting, discrete argument that “Mere emotional ties among adults do not constitute family life” (citing the ECHR case of Herz v. Germany, judgement of 17 April 2003, application no. 52853/99) in the context of Obst’s reliance on Article 8 of the Convention as the basis for his claim that Germany had violated his rights (para. 45). As the Church noted, Obst “did not live together with the other woman and did not form a family relation with her”.

[6] The ECHR held that

50. Aux yeux de la Cour, les conclusions des juridictions du travail, selon lesquelles le requérant n’avait pas été soumis à des obligations inacceptables, ne paraissent pas déraisonnables. La Cour estime en effet que l’intéressé, pour avoir grandi au sein de l’Eglise mormone, était ou devait être conscient, lors de la signature du contrat de travail et notamment du paragraphe 10 de celui-ci (portant sur l’observation « des principes moraux élevés ») de l’importance que revêtait la fidélité maritale pour son employeur (voir, mutatis mutandis, Ahtinen c. Finlande, no 48907/99, § 41, 23 septembre 2008) et de l’incompatibilité de la relation extraconjugale qu’il avait choisi d’établir avec les obligations de loyauté accrues qu’il avait contractées envers l’Eglise mormone en tant que directeur pour l’Europe au département des relations publiques.

51. La Cour considère que le fait que le licenciement a été fondé sur un comportement relevant de la sphère privée du requérant, et ce en l’absence de médiatisation de l’affaire ou de répercussions publiques importantes du comportement en question, ne saurait être décisif en l’espèce. Elle note que la nature particulière des exigences professionnelles imposées au requérant résulte du fait qu’elles ont été établies par un employeur dont l’éthique est fondée sur la religion ou les convictions (voir, au paragraphe 27 ci-dessus, l’article 4 de la directive 78/2000/CE ; voir aussi Lombardi Vallauri c. Italie, no 39128/05, § 41, CEDH 2009-… (extraits)). A cet égard, elle estime que les juridictions du travail ont suffisamment démontré que les obligations de loyauté imposées au requérant étaient acceptables en ce qu’elles avaient pour but de préserver la crédibilité de l’Eglise mormone. Elle relève par ailleurs que la cour d’appel du travail a clairement indiqué que ses conclusions ne devaient pas être comprises comme impliquant que tout adultère constituait en soi un motif justifiant le licenciement [sans préavis] d’un employé d’une Eglise, mais qu’elle y était parvenue en raison de la gravité de l’adultère aux yeux de l’Eglise mormone et de la position importante que le requérant y occupait et qui le soumettait à des obligations de loyauté accrues.

52. En conclusion, eu égard à la marge d’appréciation de l’Etat en l’espèce (paragraphe 42 ci-dessus) et notamment au fait que les juridictions du travail devaient ménager un équilibre entre plusieurs intérêts privés, ces éléments suffisent à la Cour pour estimer qu’en l’espèce l’article 8 de la Convention n’imposait pas à l’Etat allemand d’offrir au requérant une protection supérieure.

In this holding, the ECHR specifically referred to paragraph 10 of Obst’s employment contract with the key provision that required him to observe “high moral principles” (quoted by the ECHR in para. 50 of its holding, quoted above), which the Church argued “clearly precluded marital infidelity” (para. 85 of the Church’s Application). The Church supported this argument by noting that

When defining the term “high moral principles” as stated in the labour contract of the applicant the labour contract has to be seen together with the teachings of the Church. This is mentioned in the labour contract itself, at the very beginning of the same subsection of the paragraph that obligated the applicant to comply with the high moral standards by saying that the “employee acknowledges the fundamental principles of the Church” and that they are known to him. The conduct expected by the applicant was laid out in detail in the holy scriptures of the Church and in the standards of temple recommend worthiness referred to in the contract. (para. 92, emphasis added)

The Brief notes further at this point that Obst would have been aware of these standards having grown up in the Church (para. 94).

[7] The Church argued that “By entering into contractual obligations vis-à-vis his employer the applicant accepted a duty of loyalty and maintenance of high standards of conduct towards the Church which limited his freedoms guaranteed in Article 8 of the Convention to a certain extent. Similar obligations may also be agreed with employers other than the Church or its institutions. The Convention permits contractual obligations of this kind if they are freely entered into by the person concerned. A violation of such obligations normally entails the legal consequences stipulated in the contract, including dismissal. Their enforcement with the assistance of the competent State authorities [in this case the German labor courts] does not as such constitute an ‘interference by public authority’ with the rights guaranteed by Article 8 of the Convention [citing ECHR cases]” (para. 54, emphasis added). The ECHR ultimately sided with this argument in a holding that arguably strengthens both freedom of contract and freedom of religion in Europe.

[8] Alluding to the arguments made in the German labor courts, and the material that presumably found its way into the record there, the Church noted that “The German courts rightly referred to the Church’s scriptures as giving further substance to the loyalty obligations of the applicant towards his church as stated in the labour contract” (para. 100).

[9] The Church had argued in its Brief that “because of the visibility of Mr. Obst’s position, it would have been particularly awkward and inappropriate for him to stay on in his position. From the Church’s standpoint, this would have sent a highly inappropriate signal to all the other employees and Church volunteers whom he supervised and to others with whom he worked at the European headquarters of the Church” (para. 104).

[10] This is another very interesting aspect of the Church’s Brief and would merit its own separate analysis. In short, the Church argued that church autonomy to direct its own affairs, as guaranteed in international law and in the self-determination principle of German law, is essential in a democratic society. This principle of autonomy is so important that “The pluralism indissociable from a democratic society, which has been dearly won over the centuries, depends on it” (para. 113); “Indeed, the autonomous existence of religious communities is indispensable for pluralism in a democratic society and is thus an issue at the very heart of the protection which Article 9 [freedom of religion] of the Convention affords” (para. 115).

This leads to the point that, “If religious autonomy were not preserved State supremacy would be the outcome. State neutrality would be compromised, as would the undisturbed authenticity of religious life and practice. Separation of State and religious communities would become impossible” (para. 116, emphasis added). In other words, the reason that religious pluralism is indispensable is because without it (as based on the autonomy of religious communities), the separation of church and state would be impossible. In making this argument, the Church underscores the desirability of the separation of church and state and equates it with the religious pluralism that is literally “indissociable from a democratic society”.

This separation of church and state is desirable because it allows religious communities to conduct their internal affairs according to their own interpretations of their own doctrines. “The first requirement for pluralism is to respect the different identities of religious communities. Without respect for the differences of religious communities from general secular behavior, pluralism would be an empty word, and would lack institutional grounding” (para. 118). Thus, the teachings of the Church, including teachings relating to the seriousness of adultery as an excommunicable sin, “must be respected by secular authorities as a part of the very identity of the Church. This respect must be rendered even if secular law and secular convictions do not agree with such a belief, or hold that more lax standards should apply to society at large” (para. 121). The point of this argument is that “A religious community should not be forced to guess when it is free to require its employees to follow Church teachings, and when (or with respect to what class of employees) it may be required to compromise those standards” (para. 123). Thus, ultimately, “Secular courts are not free to substitute their judgment for the religious judgment of the community” (para. 124), meaning that religious organizations should not have “the burden of predicting which of their activities a secular court might consider religious” (para. 145, citing Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327).

The end result is a “more complete separation” of church and state, an outcome that is implied to be desirable, rather than any impermissible entanglement of the two. The lengthy argument about this point in the Church’s Brief, explaining the significance and necessity of church autonomy in a democratic society, constitutes a very strong endorsement of a robust separation of church and state in the interest of church autonomy.

Setting aside the obvious Mormon angle to this mosque situation[1], and overlooking the regrettable statement by a Romney aide on August 10 that “Governor Romney opposes the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero”[2], this situation seems like it could be such an opening for Romney. Could he even turn the Tea Party (back) into the Federalist Party and thereby get Republicans back on track after the meltdown of 2008?

In Federalist No. 71, Alexander Hamilton lauded political leaders who had “courage and magnanimity enough to serve [the people] at the peril of their displeasure.” A bold but principled statement in support of the Muslims here, it appears, would indeed be issued at the peril of the displeasure of many who have been swayed by the demagoguery of certain high-profile “Tea Party” political pundits. But, as Hamilton notes, “the republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.”

The mosque controversy is a “sudden breeze of passion” — it is in every sense a “transient impulse” that the people have received “from the arts of men [and women], who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests”. As noted in a recent New York Times opinion piece[3], plans to build an Islamic community center did not seem to bother anyone, even among Fox News’ commenters, when they were first announced in December 2009. As an important mid-term election year wore on, it seems that political pundits and demagogues recognized it as a powerful wedge issue and cynically employed it as such. Charged with emotion, especially as framed and presented by such calculating pundits, it has had the power to induce normally relatively tolerant and reasonable people to betray their own interests to see it through. These people are not bigots and are likely truly opposing the plans to build the community center out of a sense of indignation provoked by the way the political leaders they trust have framed the issue.

But successfully influencing the owners of Park51 not to build their planned community center there would indeed be a betrayal of all Americans’ interest, even if the people whose passions have been inflamed at the moment do not see it right now. If these Muslims are pressured not to build at Park51, it will be a strike against the “diversity of our cultural expression, and the vibrancy of our religious dialogue,” both of which truly set America apart, as Mitt Romney noted in his “Faith in America” speech during his 2008 presidential campaign. All people of faith in the United States, and particularly adherents of minority religions, should be interested in maintaining our atmosphere of religious and cultural pluralism. This diversity and indeed pluralism is made possible by our robust First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which collectively incorporate the lofty ideals of the Declaration of Independence — the Lockean triumvirate of Life, Liberty and Property (in Jefferson’s gloss) — into the concrete Constitutional framework that makes our society possible. Romney continued in his speech, explaining that in this atmosphere of diversity, “we do not insist on a single strain of religion — rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.” That symphony is turning into a cacophony before our very ears and the dissonance will affect everyone eventually if the Muslims of Park51 are shouted down.[4]

Hamilton continues, noting that in a republican government, “when occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection”. This is where we need leadership from Mitt Romney. Given his background and the principles he has stated, he is the person to whom we should be able to look at this time to stand firm against this sudden breeze of passion and to pursue the right course through principled leadership.

In the end, this might have been a missed opportunity for Mitt Romney after all. What might have put him in an even better position for a new bid for the presidency (because after “more cool and sedate reflection” the people will realize that it was right to support the community center and wrong to bully or pressure the owners of the site not to build their community center there, under any pretext), might instead mire him down in mediocrity and populism with the other Republican hopefuls, rendering him unremarkable.

If Mitt Romney does not take a stand, perhaps this will create room for another Republican politician who has already shown his value as a leader embodying the republican principle described by Hamilton in Federalist No. 71. New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently weighed in again on the issue, saying, “We must have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy. And we must put our faith in the freedoms that have sustained our great country for more than 200 years.” Now this is a Republican statement if I ever heard one.

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[1] Stephen Prothero writes that in the end analysis, he holds Mormons to a higher standard on issues of religious freedom:

I thought that Romney, as a Mormon, might speak out passionately for the First Amendment. I thought he might remember how the founder of his religion, Joseph Smith Jr., was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. I thought he might recall how the U.S. government brought down much of its coercive power against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Apparently not. According to a statement released on August 10 by his spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom, “Governor Romney opposes the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero. The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compel rejection of this site.”

But Romney’s aide’s initial (delayed) comment about the mosque violates his own principles, as adroitly noted in a recent Boston Globe editorial, with reference to Romney’s speech on religious freedom from his presidential campaign.

The more obvious Mormon angle to this mosque issue actually only seems to surface in discussions among Mormons. It can be summed up by a line in a friend’s recent exasperated email, “Mormons who want to keep Muslims from constructing a place of worship ANYWHERE make me sick to my stomach.” — The point being: How could any Mormon in good conscience side with a populist movement to influence a religious group not to build on property they own? Is this not what Mormons face nearly every time we try to build a temple, and sometimes even when we try to build a chapel?

The Muslims at issue here obviously have every right to build at the Park51 location under principles of religious freedom and private property, subject to compliance with zoning ordinances. As a result the pundits who are (cynically?) trying to use this as a wedge issue during an election year are appealing to a “sensitivity” argument instead. It would be insensitive of Muslims to build a community center here because Ground Zero is a couple of blocks away. This argument is based on flawed premises, as noted below, but it ultimately boils down to a statement that building the community center at that location in Lower Manhattan is in “bad taste”. If Mormons do not stand up in support of these Muslims on this issue, what will we say the next time residents oppose the building of a Mormon chapel or temple in their neighborhood? They can argue that building it there is in bad taste and add that to often pretextual arguments about blocking views and increased traffic.

Mormons should also be able to identify the following two main flawed premises underlying the insensitivity argument. The first one, in particular, should motivate Mormons to support these Muslims as a similar argument is often aimed at Mormons:

(1) The insensitivity argument necessarily relies on a false equivalency between the Islamist extremists who perpetrated 9/11 and the Muslims who are involved in building this mosque. Absent this false equivalency, the argument does not make any sense. Would it be insensitive for a group of Sikhs to build a temple on that spot? Of course not because Sikhs did not perpetrate 9/11. Is it insensitive for these Muslims to build a community center in Lower Manhattan? Of course not because these Muslims are not affiliated with Al Qaeda or other terrorists responsible for 9/11.

This fundamentally flawed premise should motivate Mormons to stand up for the Muslims who are being scrutinized here. How often does the same public that is opposing the building of this community center employ a false equivalency between Mormons and the FLDS? Would it be insensitive for Mormons to build a chapel a few blocks away from where the FLDS committed some bad act? Of course not — as Mormons we do not view ourselves as in any way affiliated with the FLDS, so we would protest being burdened with a collective blame or guilt for something done by the FLDS.

(2) The “insensitive” argument also seems to necessarily rely on the premise that “survivors” of 9/11 are uniformly offended by Muslims unaffiliated with 9/11 building a community center in Lower Manhattan. But among the casualties of 9/11 were many Muslims. Do their survivors object uniformly to building a community center there? Also, some survivors (family members of victims) support the idea of Muslims building a community center there. So which survivors matter, those who are taking offense or those who support the proposed building? Why should the preferences of the survivors who oppose the building, if there really are any, hold sway over the preferences of survivors who support it?

[2] The aide went on to say that “The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compel rejection of this site.” In a certain sense, this statement by Romney’s aide could be seen as rendering the inquiry in this post merely theoretical because Romney might feel unable to speak out in support of the Muslims now given the accusations he fielded during his presidential campaign of having changed his position on key issues.

[3] Frank Rich, How Fox Betrayed Petraeus, The New York Times, August 21, 2010 (noting that “there was zero reaction to the ‘ground zero mosque’ from the front-line right or anyone else except marginal bloggers when The Times first reported on the Park51 plans in a lengthy front-page article on Dec. 9, 2009. The sole exception came some two weeks later at Fox News, where Laura Ingraham, filling in on ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ interviewed Daisy Khan, the wife of the project’s organizer, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Ingraham gave the plans her blessing. ‘I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it,’ she said. ‘I like what you’re trying to do.’”). Interestingly, Rich points out another way that the opposition to the community center is clearly against our interests as a people and in particular against the interests of the most hawkish among the Tea Party/Republicans:

You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan ‘surge’ [led by General Petraeus] would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. . . .

After 9/11, President Bush praised Islam as a religion of peace and asked for tolerance for Muslims not necessarily because he was a humanitarian or knew much about Islam but because national security demanded it. An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda’s recruitment spiel. This month’s incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster for that reason — Osama bin Laden’s “next video script has just written itself,” as the former F.B.I. terrorist interrogator Ali Soufan put it — but not just for that reason. America’s Muslim partners, those our troops are fighting and dying for, are collateral damage. If the cleric behind Park51 — a man who has participated in events with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, for heaven’s sake — is labeled a closet terrorist sympathizer and a Nazi by some of the loudest and most powerful conservative voices in America, which Muslims are not?

In the latest CNN poll, American opposition is at an all-time high to both the ostensibly concluded war in Iraq (69 percent) and the endless one in Afghanistan (62 percent). Now, when the very same politicians and pundits who urge infinite patience for Afghanistan slime Muslims as Nazis, they will have to explain that they are not talking about Hamid Karzai or his corrupt narco-thug government or the questionably loyal Afghan armed forces our own forces are asked to entrust with their lives. The hawks will have to make the case that American troops should make the ultimate sacrifice to build a Nazi — Afghan, I mean — nation and that economically depressed taxpayers should keep paying for it. Good luck with that.

Poor General Petraeus. Over the last week he has been ubiquitous in the major newspapers and on television as he pursues a publicity tour to pitch the war he’s inherited. But have you heard any buzz about what he had to say? Any debate? Any anything? No one was listening and no one cared. Everyone was too busy yelling about the mosque.

It is not in America’s interest to give Islamist extremists evidence that, contrary to President Bush’s assurances that America is not at war with Islam but rather only with the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11, America really does oppose Islam in general, as shown by the strong opposition to allowing Muslims to build a community center that contains a prayer room on land they own in Lower Manhattan.

[4] What, for instance, will Mormons argue next time a sizeable group of people band together in opposition to the building of a Mormon temple in their community, especially if Mormons raised their voices in opposition to the building of the community center? (In the case of Mormon politicians, they will have raised their voices in opposition to the community center out of a perceived political expediency that runs directly contrary to Hamilton’s counsel in Federalist No. 71; in the case of other Mormons as a result of wanting to go along with a sizeable minority or even majority of those they view as political allies.)

Thanks to Turkey’s decidedly secular state (in a country where 95% of the inhabitants adhere to the Islamic faith, a large majority of whom practice this faith very piously), a Christian is uniquely free in Turkey, in comparison to most other Muslim countries in the Middle East, to live according to the precepts of his or her religion.

Turkey’s secular state is in the spotlight today as UK Prime Minister David Cameron expressed his support for Turkey’s bid at joining the European Union. Cameron rightly noted that without Turkey’s membership, the European Union would be “not stronger but weaker . . . not more secure but less . . . not richer but poorer”. Alluding to France’s role in putting obstacles in the path of Turkey’s membership bid, Cameron hit upon a salient element in the opposition to Turkey’s candidacy:

Those who wilfully misunderstand Islam, they see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the problem is Islam itself. And they think the values of Islam can just never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies or cultures. . . .

All of these arguments are just plain wrong. And as a new government in Britain, I want us to be at the forefront of an international effort to defeat them.

Cameron seems to be right in identifying protectionist, nationalist and prejudicial motivations behind opposing Turkey’s EU membership. This is because, from a rational perspective, it seems that every European country should be eager to promote the Turkish model of a secular democracy established in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. Put simply, this model deters the ascendacy of an Islamist state that does not provide any protections of religious freedom, such as seen in most of the rest of predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East. However, we do not see this type of eager endorsement by European democracies happening on a large scale; the debates surrounding opposition to Turkey’s membership often refer to Europe’s Christian heritage and ethos and that Turkey does not share this tradition (despite, of course, the fact that the universal Christian Church was headquartered in Constantinople for an extended period in the early days and the Apostle Paul’s epistles to and ministry among the scattered primitive churches in the Greek cities of Western Turkey).

But Turkey’s secular state is patterned after the French principle of laïcité, which translates simply as “secularism”. In practice, it means the separation of church and state. This model is rigorously enforced in France itself.

In contrast to other Muslim countries in the Middle East, Turkey opted for a secular state in the 1920s when its new nation was founded out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. By secular state is simply meant that care was given to create a secular public sphere for the benefit of the people for the purpose of avoiding the establishment of an Islamist state — political organs cannot be used to establish or enforce religious doctrines of Islam. Citizens were not thereby forced to stop being Muslims or believing very piously in Islam. However, the effect of a laïcité approach is to restrict religious expression for those working as civil servants, in the government, or in state-run schools, particularly universities, where the students themselves, and not just the teachers, are subject to heightened restrictions on religious expression.

The famous and controversial issue in Turkey relating to restrictions on religious expression in the university setting is, of course, the ban on wearing Islamic headscarves by students attending state universities. In the context of Turkish laïcité, the ban was upheld when appealed in Turkish courts and then at the European Court of Human Rights in 2004 and again in 2006. In 2008, after the election of a party with Islamist tendencies in 2007, the Turkish Parliament amended the Turkish Constitution to loosen the laïcité principle enough to allow a woman to wear a headscarf in state-run universities. (To the American mind, this is eminently reasonable and, in fact, the established norm — more on that below.) But a few months later, Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that removing the ban was against the founding principles of the Turkish Constitution, thus reinstating the ban.

Turkey is not a perfect country. A lot can be improved in Turkish society and politics, and in internal and external Turkish relations. Some of this is relevant to the debates about Turkish membership in the EU (e.g. treatment of certain ethnic minorities and of course the Maastricht and Copenhagen convergence criteria, which as we know are not being complied with by most current EU members either). But perhaps the laïcité principle is appropriate in Turkey as a means to provide a real secular public square in a predominantly Muslim country, which otherwise would perhaps succumb to the tendency to establish an Islamist state, implementing Islam as a religion through political channels through the force of the state. It should hopefully not be controversial to point out that this would be inimical to fundamental religious freedoms of all citizens as those who do not subscribe to Islam would be subjected to its precepts and perhaps disallowed from exercising their own religions, as is the case elsewhere in the Middle East.

The laïcité principle is not appropriate in the United States or in the United Kingdom (or perhaps in many other countries), but that does not mean that a rigorously secular public sphere (that nevertheless does not infringe on citizens’ private religious beliefs) is inappropriate in some situations, such as in Turkey — and perhaps elsewhere throughout the Middle East it could be a guiding principle to help those countries become more just to their citizenry. But in the United States, religion and politics/public life are related in a different and more accommodating way such that the extreme of laïcité is not called for. This is thanks in large part to our intellectual inheritance of the moral philosophy of the English Enlightenment (worked out by Hobbes, Hume, Locke and their seventeenth century peers) in our founding institutions. The thinkers involved in this movement broadly sought to outline a system of moral philosophy that did not derive strictly from religion but rather that tied in to more general principles and could therefore be more widely applicable than in the narrow contours of specific creedal frameworks.

The American founders were shaped by this English intellectual inheritance in crafting the institutions of government that would best fit in the context of American liberty and beliefs. An accommodating toleration, stemming straight from Locke and transmitted via continual waves of emigration, was central to this project. As de Tocqueville noted in his observations in the 1830s, the unique co-existence of religion and liberty in the American system was a defining characteristic of the young American republican democracy. (Of course, at the same time during the 1830s that de Tocqueville was collecting his notes from his 1831 visit to America to write his landmark book about Democracy in America, Mormons were being driven about the country, from state to state, experiencing a very real deprivation of their liberty because of their religious beliefs — Mormons should be in a unique position to recognize and value the protections offered by a robust institutional separation of church and state, as is now theoretically found in the American system with the incorporation of the First Amendment against the states).

Given this foundation of American republican democracy in a moral system that subtly unites the possibility of religion with real liberty, laïcité is neither necessary nor appropriate in the American polity. But this does not mean that it is not appropriate in other contexts. Context really matters. Societies that do not benefit from the same conflux of Enlightenment-era moral philosophy and Lockean religious toleration will perhaps find themselves needing to shore up the line against elements seeking to establish or impose theocratic political institutions, subjecting citizens of other religions or of no religion to the religious doctrines of a specific group. This is injurious to real liberty.

In the United States, however, relevant protestations are not out of place in cases where perhaps too much emphasis is put on getting religion out of the public eye — a symptom of laïcité. Getting religion out of the public eye was never meant to be part of the American project. But neither was subjecting American citizens of one religion or of no religion to the religious doctrines of a religion to which they do not subscribe, as is done in many Middle Eastern states that do not employ Turkey’s secular model. So, for instance, school prayer in public schools can be properly restricted in the United States because inevitably the Evangelical creedalist majority in a Texas town will prevent the Mormon child from praying or participating in the prayer (or, in another location, the Mormon majority will in some way negatively impact a Baptist child’s prayer or ability to participate in the prayer). But a politician or the President can and should be perfectly comfortable talking about religious experience or perspectives as he or she goes about the daily work of negotiating legislation or speaking with constituencies (this would be prohibited by laïcité). The individual’s religious principles will guide him or her in every action, which includes legislation. American democracy accommodates this obvious point. The Lockean liberty, and the moral philosophy of the English Enlightenment more broadly, that animated the Founders — which were both concepts thoroughly infused with principles of (Lockean) religious toleration — were themselves an outgrowth of the unique co-existence of religion and liberty identified by de Tocqueville in American democracy.

* * *

For Turkey’s membership bid to the EU, everyone is a winner: the European Union reaches out to the Muslim world by incorporating into its polity a predominantly Muslim country with a rigorously secular public sphere that prevents the establishment of an Islamist state, even if large numbers of the populace might ultimately want that; the Muslim world sees Turkey as a model of a democracy constituted of faithful Muslims who are living their religion and yet still taken seriously as an economic and political partner (rather than a Banana Republic Regime merely tolerated for its natural resources). Europe is enriched culturally and demographically with the presence of millions of adherents of Islam, and the Middle East has further reason to take Turkish laïcité seriously as a pathway to opportunity.

I started out the lesson chit-chatting with the kids about our belief in Jesus Christ as our foundation. Everyone seemed to agree that we believe in Jesus Christ. Check. So how should people that believe in Jesus Christ behave on a day to day basis, how should we live our lives? They answered, good behavior, good works, etc. What does discipline mean? Predictably their collective answer more or less revealed a conception of discipline as imposed from the outside, more or less synonymous with punishment. This was the perfect opening to pave the way for a Christ-centered lesson on self-discipline, i.e. not imposed from the outside. Exhibit A: Luke Skywalker.

Trying to segue smoothly from this intro into the meat of the lesson, The Empire Strikes Back, I sort of said something like “This is just like when Yoda and Luke yadda yadda yadda.” The perfect transition — except that I noticed blank stares. No tinge of excitement at my discussion of The Empire Strikes Back together with the sight of my laptop set up with the projector pointing to the front of the class. Either these kids had major impairment of deductive logic faculties or . . . the unthinkable: they had not seen or even heard of The Empire Strikes Back. I was feeling a peculiar anxiety, a rising desperation — how could I even speak to these kids without a shared, lowest common denominator of mutual cultural understanding?

In a last ditch effort I glanced over to one of the four full-time missionaries in our ward who had accompanied me into the class because we had two young investigators along with us. “Elder X, remember how Luke yadda yadda yadda.” BLANK STARE FROM THE MISSIONARY!!! He confessed he had only seen it once “a long time ago” when he was “like 14″. I almost fell down. Not in my wildest imagination had I thought the kids wouldn’t know The Empire Strikes Back. I had thought a lot could go wrong with the lesson but that was not something I had foreseen.

I regained my composure and pressed forward. We took 10 minutes to watch a 4 minute clip of Luke’s Failure at the Cave as I paused it every so often to comment on what was happening and how it related to developing self-discipline and developing spiritual lives characteristic of followers of Jesus Christ (i.e. appropriately controlling our desires and emotions).

In the end it turned out great because it forced me to make a lot of points explicitly which, in what I had thought was the real world, would have come across implicitly as we all sat back and enjoyed reviewing this important episode from our cultural canon. I paused it when Luke put on his gun belt and we discussed his actions in light of Yoda’s admonitions. We discussed Yoda’s statement “Only what you take with you” in response to Luke’s question of what was in the cave. And, of course, we went into some detail when Vader’s mask explodes to reveal Luke’s face beneath.

The kids genuinely liked the lesson — hard to imagine they wouldn’t given that we watched such an important scene. The missionary was literally raving about the lesson afterward, saying he had never seen so much meaning in a movie scene before. Ah to be 19 again.