Religious Freedom Essential to the Plan of Happiness

Religious freedom is as vital today, and in many ways more so, as it was throughout the age of man, particularly as it applies to the Plan of Happiness.

From time immemorial, the concept, understanding and avocation of religious freedom was critical to the uplifting and edification of all societies who cherished the sacred, divine and eternal nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ, otherwise known as the Plan of Happiness.

Human beings are, generally speaking, and all things being equal, religious individuals. It has been said, that we are “spiritual beings having a human experience”, and that this life is a spiritual journey. Religion, defined in the strictest sense, means “binding oneself to God again” because we were bound to God before we came into mortality.

There is a battle over religious freedom, and the meaning of that freedom. Elder Dallin H. Oaks stated, “The contest is of eternal importance, and it is your generation that must understand the issues and make the efforts to prevail.” (Oaks, Religious Freedom) While Americans of faith and conscience do not generally face the physical violence or coercion found in other nations, freedom of religion and conscience in the United States is nonetheless increasingly at risk. Secularism is becoming more and more of a threat to our God-given inalienable rights of religion as those who support secularism desire to erode or completely remove religion and morality from the public square and the moral fabric of our society.

Religious freedom is the human right to think, act upon and express what one deeply believes, according to the dictates of his or her moral conscience. Religious freedom has always been correlated to “freedom of conscience” which is the liberty to develop and hold moral convictions and to act accordingly. This incorporation of the freedom to act, to speak freely in public, to live according to one’s moral principles and to advocate one’s own moral vision for society is critical to our American way of life as embedded in our nation’s founding documents and the principles extolled by our Founding Fathers.

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and more importantly, as children of our Heavenly Father, it is our responsibility at this time in mortality to valiantly stand for freedom, liberty, morality, conscience, as we once did in our premortal life, and to act upon these principles and virtues, both privately, and publicly. The war in heaven and the Plan of Happiness are in full effect. And while separation of church and state is appropriate and lawful under our Constitution at this time, it does not mean the separation of religious values and principles from public life, or policy.

Peter Knobloch