🕊️ Religious Freedom or Agency?
🕊️ Religious Freedom or Agency?
Why Narrow Defenses of Liberty Will Not Hold
I recently watched a video that gave me pause. It asked a simple but piercing question:
👉 What good is “religious freedom” if all the foundations it rests upon are quietly being removed?
⚖️ A Narrow Definition That Fails
The LDS Church has published a manual on religious freedom. At first glance, it seems noble. But tucked inside is a dangerous phrase:
Religious practices may be restricted “when necessary to protect public health and safety.”
That wording may sound harmless. But history shows it can open the floodgates to tyranny.
1879 Reynolds v. U.S. — Supreme Court ruled beliefs are protected, but practices may be outlawed.
Japanese Internment, Sedition Acts, Prohibition, War on Drugs — all justified in the name of “safety.”
This is not abstract to me. One of my best friends spent his childhood in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. His family lost their home, their business, their freedom—all because the government decided it was “necessary for public safety.” The scars of that injustice never left him.
When the state is both judge and executioner of rights, religious freedom quickly becomes paper-thin.
🏛️ Religious Freedom Needs a Foundation
Religious freedom is not a stand-alone tree. It grows only because its roots are deep in three other liberties:
Property Rights — to build and control worship spaces.
Freedom of Speech — to declare truth without gag orders.
Freedom of Association — to gather, organize, and even exclude.
Cut the roots, and the tree falls. Defending “religious freedom” without defending all liberty is like trying to save a branch after the trunk has been chopped.
🕊️ Agency Is the Heart
For Latter-day Saints, this is not just political. Agency is divine. It is the very principle upon which God’s plan rests.
The prophet Lehi declared:
“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh… to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death” (2 Nephi 2:27).
Alma also warned:
“Stand fast in this liberty wherewith ye have been made free, and entangle yourselves no more in bondage”(Mosiah 23:13).
The Nemenhah bear the same witness. The Peacemaker’s gospel is always described as “free to all, with no compulsion.”Stewardship and liberty are inseparable—tyranny destroys both.
Any system that curtails agency strikes directly at heaven’s design. To reduce liberty to a single, narrow “religious” category is to misunderstand God’s intent.
🚨 The Danger of Delay
James Madison once warned:
“We should take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.”
Moroni said the same to our generation:
“Awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain” (Ether 8:24).
In the Book of Mohrhohnahyah (Nemenhah Records), Moroni warns that in the last days the nations will “become drunk with power and riches,” while a small flock builds Zion apart from tyranny (Mohrhohnahyah 4:6–8). Later he cautions against trusting in armies and governments for protection, for they will consume liberty in the name of safety (Mohrhohnahyah 8:10–12).
Timothy (Tsihohnayah) prophesied likewise, that the “foreign strangers” would trample down the remnant in the name of order—until the Refuge (Tsiahn) is built by those who refuse false authority (Tsihohnayah Ahkehkthihm 14:59–61).
If we wait until freedom is already dismantled, it will be too late. Religious liberty cannot be defended in isolation. We must stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of all freedoms—or none will stand at all.
✝️ A Call to Zion
The Lord’s Church should be the loudest voice in this fight. Not only for its own sake, but for the widow, the dissenter, the humble follower of Christ who lives conscience over convenience.
Broader coalitions.
Earlier resistance.
Unflinching defense of agency.
That is how Zion rises. Not by institutional survival alone, but by honoring the eternal truth:
👉 “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17).
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