Dallin Oaks on Religious Freedom

October 14, 2009 in Constitution by Greg | 4 comments

Yesterday, Dallin H. Oaks of The Quorum of Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave a landmark talk on religious freedom at Brigham Young University – Idaho. Elder Oaks reiterated the importance of preserving and maintaining religious liberty and stated,

Dallin H OaksIt was the Christian principles of human worth and dignity that made possible the formation of the United States Constitution over 200 years ago, and only those principles in the hearts of a majority of our diverse population can sustain that constitution today.

Previously, it was noted that a vote against last year’s Prop 8 in California would create a “tyranny of tolerance” which would lead to “inevitable clashes between religious liberty and free speech.”1 Elder Oaks said,

. . . there are other reasons why the public square must be open to religious ideas and religious persons. As Richard John Neuhaus said many years ago, “In a democracy that is free and robust, an opinion is no more disqualified for being ‘religious’ than for being atheistic, or psychoanalytic, or Marxist, or just plain dumb.”

The transcript of his talk – in addition to links to many of the sources cited – can be found at Religious Freedom. As with previous articles, please leave your comments below.

Sources:

  1. David A. Bednar on Proposition 8 Video.↩

Tags: Constitution, Dallin H. Oaks, Freedom, Religious Liberty

  1. S.FauxNo Gravatar on October 15, 2009 at 6:22 am

    Elder Dallin Oaks talk on religious freedom will be a required citation in the Church whenever the topic arises. I wish this talk was available for a \Teaching of Our Times\ lesson. The topic and the talk is too important not to discuss in Church.

    Thanks for posting the talk and bringing it to my attention.

  2. GregNo Gravatar on October 15, 2009 at 9:00 am

    Thanks Scott. I agree. This talk by Elder Oaks on religious liberty will be referred to often. It is significant for many reasons.

  3. David G.No Gravatar on October 15, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    From this post:

    Previously, it was noted that a vote in favor of last year’s Prop 8 in California would create a “tyranny of tolerance” which would lead to “inevitable clashes between religious liberty and free speech.” (emphasis added)

    From the earlier post:

    A vote against Proposition 8 will essentially create a “tyranny of tolerance”. On its face, a vote against “seems to be tolerant, but it only goes in one direction” and will create “inevitable clashes between religious liberty and free speech.” (emphasis added)

    I suppose it all depends on perspective in determining which side wants a \tyranny of tolerance,\ but I’m fairly sure this post just has a typo, albeit one that drastically changes the meaning of the statement.

  4. GregNo Gravatar on October 18, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    Thanks for the catch David G. The post above is now corrected.