Warning: We’re going to dive into an important Latter-day Saint principle here and then discuss how screwed up that principle has become in a world where religion and politics have been blended or are trying to be blended by some to the point of obliterating the principle’s proper application.
What is that principle?
Agency.
Anyone who is or has been a member — I know, such a crass term — or a follower of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knows that fundamental concept is at the core of the faith’s beliefs. The thinking goes that one of the purposes of existence in the human form on this Earth and away from the immediate presence of God is to freely choose what to believe, what to do, how to behave, how to live. The church teaches its followers to comply with its interpretations of correct divine principles and commandments.
But, according to agency, it is left up to individuals to make their own decisions regarding how to live.
In fact, it is taught that in the preexistence (the faith’s term for a life condition all humans were a part of before being born on Earth), that the spiritual daughters and sons of God — you, me, everyone — were given a choice, a vote, as to whether to follow a plan presented by Satan, in which all in the physical form here would be compelled to follow God’s laws, with Satan getting the glory for it all, or the Almighty’s plan, championed by Jesus, which was for all to be given agency whereby they could choose for themselves what to believe and how to comport themselves, all with the glory going to God.
It is taught that there was a subsequent “war” fought over the plans, with the plan from God and his Son being the winner. Thus it was written, thus it was done.
And here we all are, left to decide for ourselves, as pilots of our own lives, to live as we will. To live and let live.
The problem — the screwup — arrives in those last two words — let live.
The blurring of church and state
It’s one thing for a religion — any religion, particularly the Latter-day Saint one — to exhort its followers to live a certain way, to believe a certain way, and to stand firm in those beliefs and lives. It’s another for those followers to then make the attempt to force others, people who have chosen or are choosing a different path, to comply with those standards and beliefs by way of legal means.
In Utah, the differentiation there is especially blurred since a vast majority of the state’s Legislature — and governing groups of other kinds in other settings — is made up of Latter-day Saints. So, what happens? Interpretations of Latter-day Saint teachings, some of them extreme, some of them warped, are brought into bills and policies that mandate compliance by all residents, whatever their religious or political views are.
At times, there’s abject disagreement among residents, even among Latter-day Saints themselves, regarding those mandated interpretations that wipe away agency. The book bans in Utah’s public schools is a recent example. Was barring books ever a good idea? This is a case of conservative — often Latter-day Saint — parents not just telling other parents how they should rear their children, what books they can be exposed to or learn from, but enforcing it with policy.
The complication comes in differences of opinion regarding what is helpful for kids to absorb and what isn’t, from what they should be shielded and from what they can benefit by more openly being aware of and dealing with life’s realities — feelings they might harbor within about sex, LGBTQ issues, racism and more — with responsible forethought and discussion stemming from literature in an educational setting.
What emerges is people not just handling their own parental duties as it pertains to their own children but telling other parents how they should handle their duties as it pertains to their children.
It’s part of an ongoing conflict — a religious-political battle — regarding what people can and cannot do not just with their own bodies but also with their own minds.
Religion’s fingerprints
There are and have been many examples in Utah of religious imposition by political leaders allowing and disallowing behaviors, accesses, opportunities, controlling and peering into and piercing the lives of individuals in ways that oh-so-ironically rob them of their agency, such as passing prohibitive liquor laws, unloading DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion programs), dictating what can be sold on Sundays, determining who can and can’t receive certain medical treatments as prescribed by trained physicians, regulating who is and who isn’t what gender and who as a result can participate in high school sports. And the list goes on and on. Religion’s fingerprints are everywhere.
Some limitations are, of course, basic to fundamental communal decency — no killing, no stealing, no perjuring, no assaulting, no drinking and driving, and so on.
But when followers of a single religion in Utah swing such a heavy hammer, it’s more than a disservice to those in dissent, even followers of the faith who disagree. It’s a betrayal of the religion’s aforementioned foundational core. Is that a misunderstanding of the faith or straight-up hypocrisy?
The next time the Legislature or a school board or city council or county commission or any governing body of any kind in Utah intends to lay down a policy or a law stemming from an interpretation of Latter-day Saint doctrine, let those decision-makers answer the following question first: Do they want to follow God’s plan or Satan’s?
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tribune columnist Gordon Monson.