Christ is the Reason

(Notes from my sacrament talk in early July...)

1. American Thoughts on Patriotism

Q: Do you plan on showing any patriotism on the 4th of July? I.e.: wear red white and blue, display the flag, go to a patriotic event, etc.?

A: “No. I don’t identify with American culture.”

Q: Do you consider yourself American?

A: “I don’t consider myself to be American. I am, but I’m like hyphenated. I would never identify myself as American, not even if I was in a foreign country. The rest of the world hates America. I don’t consider myself American because people don’t see me as American.”

2. Washington D.C.

3. Uniquely Judeo-Christian country

- There are Islamic nations, where personal expression and liberty is essentially outlawed by social controls imposed in the name of religion. Obviously we disagree with this. While certainly you can regulate immorality to a certain extent, you also get rid of something that we find essential to the plan of salvation, which is freely chosen virtue.

- On the other extreme, there are many secular nations. For example, France’s Constitution begins "France is [a] . . . secular . . . Republic." No mention of God anywhere. Most of Europe is like this. If you were waiting for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to invoke the name of God in the wake of this week’s terrorist attack in Britain, you will have done so in vain. They just don’t do that in Europe. Secularism in Europe has lead to the virtual destruction of the nuclear family, declining birthrates, increased drug use, and sexually transmitted diseases.

- There is one super power in the world, and it also happens to be the first and only uniquely Judeo-Christian country in the world. There is a Jewish country (Israel) and there have been Christian countries, but we are a unique country that also allows the greatest amount of religious freedom, not just in the world today, but in the history of the world. Why? Because our country was set built, not on religious neutrality, but on religious ideals.

- The same week that Congress submitted the Establishment Clause as part of the Bill of Rights for ratification by the States, it enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate.

- The day after the First Amendment was proposed, the same Congress that had proposed it requested the President to proclaim " a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed, by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many and signal favours of Almighty God."

- President Washington offered the first Thanksgiving Proclamation shortly thereafter, devoting November 26, 1789 on behalf of the American people " 'to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that is, that was, or that will be,' "

- The same Congress also reenacted the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787, 1 Stat. 50, Article III of which provided: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

- These actions of our First President and Congress and the Marshall Court were not idiosyncratic; they reflected the beliefs of the period. Those who wrote the Constitution believed that morality was essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion was the best way to foster morality. The Supreme Court said in 1963 the "fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself."

4. The beginning of the church and religious liberty.

This past week I’ve thought about why I am grateful for my country, and my first reaction, wasn’t one I expected. As I have studied the First Amendment, which gives us the so-called religion clauses, I have always felt that we, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with few exceptions, have never really done well by the First Amendment.

- We were driven from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois in search of a place to practice our religion in peace. Like many of you, my ancestors suffered every manner of privation during this time.

- My great-great-great grandfather Edward Partridge died from the effects of being tarred and feathered. His daughter Emily was forced to give birth in the wilderness after fleeing Nauvoo, a birth so traumatic that she lost all of her hair in labor.

- Of course, our refuge in Illinois was brief and we were forced to find religious freedom in an area outside of the United States, where we were no longer under the so-called protection of the First Amendment. We sought refuge in the Rockies, a territory that remained under Mexican control until the treaty of Guadelupe Hildalgo in 1848.

- We did not find refuge there. After Utah became a territory in 1850, rumors of a rebellion were spread by the enemies of the church and an army was sent to quash it in 1857. Though the so called rebellion was untrue, Brigham Young was replaced as the territorial governor by Alfred Cumming, though President Young eventually was given back the authority.

- The liberty of free speech and free exercise is now used in a somewhat detrimental way against the church in this generation, as courts have ruled in favor of those who want to distribute libelous literature around temple square or, as happened recently, burn holy temple garments in public effigy in from front of members coming out of general conference.

5. So why am I grateful to and for my country? Why do I revere the Constitution, which I do?

- Our church has been distinguished by the government because of our unique doctrine of the divine inspiration we believe was part of the forming of the Constitution.

- While reinforce the traditional Christian duty, spelled out in D&C 134, of "respect and deference" to civil laws and governments in general as "instituted of God for the benefit of man" We, as a church, attach special significance to the Constitution of the United States of America.

- D&C 101:80 the Lord "established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom [he] raised up unto this very purpose"

- The Prophet Joseph Smith described himself as "the greatest advocate of the Constitution of the United States there is on the earth" (Hc 6:56-57)

- President J. Rueben Clark, perhaps the greatest legal mind the church has ever produced, said the Constitution should be understood through "the wisdom of the long generations that had gone before and which had been transmitted to [the Founding Fathers] through tradition and the pages of history."

6. So why do I love my Country and the principles it stands for despite a rather ugly history the country has had towards the church?

- Because, with out it, the Church would not exist. The church could not have been established in Anglican England, Luthren Germany, Catholic Italy, or in the Islamic Middle East.

- It was the religious discourses allowed under the Constitution, that probed the mind of the boy Prophet into ‘asking God liberally and upbraiding nothing’ as he grew up in the religious fervor of upstate New York.

- So our country has provided us the historically unique opportunity to establish, and exercise our religion.

- And while our people have been persecuted for their religion under the color of law and by the lawless, those acts ran perpendicular, contrary to what our country was founded on.

- These principles of religious freedom were sound then and are sound now. With many a bump a long the way, this truly is, as the Book of Mormon says, a land of liberty.

- Church President David O. McKay affirmed that "there are some fundamental principles of this republic which, like eternal truths, never get out of date…. Such are the underlying principles of the Constitution" (p. 319).

7. Grateful for the Gospel

- Our country has also given me the personal opportunity to accept the gospel. It was in the freedom of my own bedroom, as a young teenager, as I stayed up late, in the quiet solitude of the night, and was able to ponder and pray about the gospel in perfect peace and liberty. The spirit bore witness to me as a young man about the truthfulness of the gospel and the Spirit has continued to confirm that witness through exponentially larger spiritual experiences

- Testimony/ Alma 33