Ideas and Society

PART TWO: Neutrality – Up to a Point

In Part One we discussed the challenge of according due importance to political involvement while recognizing that the fate of nations is on God’s hands, and that the end times are ever approaching.  We also considered the purposes and limits of the Church’s stance of “political neutrality,” as well as the insufficiency of “fairness” and “tolerance” as absolute criteria of moral and political judgment.  We concluded that “neutrality” makes sense in our present context, give the Church’s highest priorities and sense of urgency, and that the language of neutrality may serve, not only to keep a certain, fragile peace with external forces, but also to lower the temperature of political discussion within the Church.  

The Big Exception

Having outlined a number of ways to explain and validate the Church’s posture of political neutrality, it is time to notice the massive exception that accompanies the neutrality statement, an exception that might well prove to be more important than the rule:  The Church “reserves the right to address issues it believes have significant moral consequences or that directly affect the mission, teachings or operations of the Church.”  Of course, what counts as “significant moral consequences” or as directly affecting religious mission is a question open to interpretation, to say the least.  As Elder Oaks has himself argued with some force, all legal questions – and I would add, at some level, all political questions – are finally moral questions.  Despite the too common nostrum against “legislating morality,” we in fact never legislate anything else – or how can we claim that it is morally right to obey and morally wrong to disobey the law?

Now, to address the gorilla of the sexual revolution that is always present in our room, the room where politics and religion engage each other, we must note that the Church’s Family Proclamation, published in 1995 and still fundamental to Latter-day Saint engagement with the larger society, takes a position that is as far from apolitical or “neutral” as can be imagined:  “Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets. We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”  There is no evidence that this position has been repudiated; indeed, it is hard to conceive of the Church repudiating its commitment to the traditional or natural family or of a world in which that commitment would be politically irrelevant.  And yet it is quite clear that the Church in its public relations and political-legal efforts is not for the moment leading with this kind of stance.

Much would seem to depend, then on the Church’s interpretation of “significant moral consequences,” which obviously would require a highly contextualized judgment.  Just to cite the most obvious and troublesome example: is public policy regarding abortion morally “significant”?  It certainly would seem so.  But can the Church in its official capacity make a significant, constructive difference in determining such policy?  And if so, how?  And it certainly can be argued that there are circumstances in which it may actually be more advantageous, in terms of the Church’s essential mission, for it to remain “neutral,” or perhaps simply silent, even where matters of fundamental moral importance are at stake.  The moral issue may be simple for us Latter-day Saints, but the surrounding political questions, including a realistic assessment of actual risks, opportunities, and constraints, are more complex.

Our Pragmatic Situation

Having recognized that the Church’s political stance must depend on the specific political circumstances in which it chooses to intervene, let us consider briefly what are the most fundamental constraints that the Church and its members now confront as we face outward towards the political world in the United States.  A simple way of characterizing our political situation as a religion today might be simply to acknowledge (1) that there once was a culture war that defined much of political debate in the United States, (2) that the Church not long ago made certain efforts to intervene in that “war” (contributions to the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s; the Family Proclamation itself, 1995; mobilization in favor of Proposition 8 in California to prevent the radical redefinition of marriage. 2008), but (3) that now the moment of the culture war is over, not because the cause was not important or that our efforts were not legitimate, but simply because we have lost.

Is this characterization of our situation adequate?  There is no question our circumstances are fundamentally different than just a decade ago, and that there is no point intervening as if the year were 1995 or 2008.   On the other hand, we delude ourselves if we imagine that, just because we have lost a certain fundamental battle, the war is therefore over.  Because the plain fact is we can keep losing – at least if Scott Yenor (see above) is in any way right about the ascendant “sexual constitution” that now governs us.  The attack on moral Truth, or simply basic truths about human nature, male and female, is never done.  Tolerance or “respect for differences” is a very unstable virtue indeed, and the demand for “equality” (or, now, “equity”) is an inherently bottomless demand.

Here is what Pierre Manent, French political philosopher, wrote in response to the radical redefinition of marriage in his own country:

The demand for the right to marriage on behalf of … [homosexual] couples must be considered a metaphysical demand, that is, a demand that bears on the meaning and the whole of human life… Insofar as marriage was the crucial institution of a human world organized according to natural law, the law of which we are speaking aims to overturn or abolish this very order.  Henceforth societies living under this law are involved in an experiment that is equally crucial and whose consequences yet to come, public as well as private, will no doubt be commensurate with the audacity or imprudence of what has been done.

This legislation … owes [its] ascendancy to the ambition I have called metaphysical, the claim to inscribe into positive law the thesis according to which the just or legitimate human order excludes all reference to a natural norm or purpose.

The attack on natural norms or purposes cannot be sated, and so there is little ground for hoping that the enemies of truth will be content to enjoy their past victories and adopt a “live and let live” posture towards individuals, families, or churches and other communities that wish to maintain the more traditional norms and practices that are now increasingly seen as “alternative lifestyles.”

Elder Hales stated in October Conference, 2013, “The world is moving away from the Lord faster and farther than ever before.  The adversary has been loosed upon the earth.”  Many of the brethren have echoed this assessment of our practical situation.  If we accept this assessment, then it is hard to see how we might expect a posture of neutrality or hope of reciprocal “fairness” to offer a long-term solution, or a viable long-term approach, to our political and cultural circumstances as a Church.  It is more likely that we will need more of the harder virtue of courage praised by Elder Russell M. Nelson in April 2014 General Conference (quoting Pres. Monson, 1986): “Of course we will face fear, experience ridicule, and meet opposition.  Let us have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle.  Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God’s approval.” (my emphasis)

Pres. Oaks offered an even more bracing assessment of our practical (political and cultural) situation in an address to the BYU-Idaho community in 2015. “The denial of God or the downplaying of His role in human affairs that began in the Renaissance has become pervasive today,” he said.  While observing that “the glorifying of human reasoning has had good and bad effects,” Elder Oaks went on to explain, “prophecies of the last days foretell great opposition to inspired truth and action. Some of these prophecies concern the anti-Christ, and others speak of the great and abominable church.”  Pres. Oaks thus associated the core teaching of nothing less than this “great and abominable church,” which “must be something far more pervasive and widespread than a single “church,” as we understand that term today” with Korihor’s teaching of “moral relativism” in the Book of Mormon: “Break free of the old rules. Do what feels good to you. There is no accountability beyond what man’s laws or public disapproval impose on those who are caught.”  This is, to say the least, a sobering perspective on our practical circumstances as members in interface with the larger culture and with political and legal powers and principalities.

The Perils of Pragmatism

To the considerable degree that the doctrine of “the anti-Christ” or the “great and abominable Church” increasingly pervades our society, it seems unlikely that anything resembling “neutrality” will be a viable posture for the long term for Latter-day Saints.  To be sure, there may be many times when the Church judges it prudent to keep its head down in view of its most important and urgent religious priorities.  But it is important that we as members guard against interpreting this prudent or pragmatic posture as a compromise regarding basic principles and eternal truths.

It is natural, almost irresistible, as we enter into necessarily political compromises that we begin to adapt our understanding of truth and morality to the terms of that compromise.  Thus the Respect for Marriage Act “specifically recognizes that ‘diverse beliefs about the role of gender in marriage are held by reasonable and sincere people based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises.’”  It is easy for a kind of counter-morality of compromise, essentially a stance of moral relativism, to become dominant in our outlook and to replace or heavily color our fundamental convictions.  It requires a certain mental and emotional agility to maintain that “the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints related to marriage between a man and a woman is well known and will remain unchanged” and at the same time to grant that contradictory views deserve respect as “honorable religious or philosophical premises.”

It is hard to remember Pres. Oaks’ warning about the increasing ascendancy of the anti-Christ of moral relativism when we feel compelled to adopt a relativist vocabulary in order to reach what may be a very temporary political settlement.  To be sure “patience, negotiation and compromise” may be seen, not only as means to [political and social] ends, but “as social and spiritual ends unto themselves,” as public intellectual Jonathan Rauch recently argued, in praise of what he takes to be Latter-day Saint political theology.   There is no doubt that there is something to be learned and real virtues to be refined by earnest and temperate engagement in the great moral debates that now shape American politics.  Rauch is certainly right that believers benefit from learning how to check the impulse to “impose my will politically to limit your agency.”  At the same time, however – and this is a simple truth Rauch seems to ignore –, politics is not a debating society in which the conversation never ends and consequential decisions can be deferred indefinitely.  Law and policy will be determined one way or another, and individual agency will have to bend to this determination.   In any case, moral agency makes no sense without a moral framework, and civil legislation will always partake of and contribute to a shared moral vision.  As Pres. Oaks has taught [“Truth and Tolerance”], all law involves the “legislation of morality” – one morality or another. Marriage as we know it has, for public and legal purposes, been radically redefined and essentially compromised in a way that has real consequences for the well-being of Americans.[1]

We may therefore find comfort in the assurance that “Congress has now reaffirmed that our beliefs ‘are due proper respect,’” but it is easy to get swept up in the worldview according to which all views deserve respect – but only because they are equally groundless, that is, because there are no rules and no truths about human, political power.  It is one thing prudently to recognize the Church’s limited scope of action in the present political environment.  It is quite another to define that environment in the relativistic or liberationist terms of our enemies.  It is one thing to honor the commandment to love our enemies.  It is quite another to imagine we do not have enemies.

In his most recent General Conference address, Elder Christofferson expounded on the importance of the gathering of Israel and the sealing power of the priesthood.  The highest purpose of the sealing power is to bind families together forever.  One purpose of the gathering is to make the blessings of this sealing available to the saints; another is to protect the faithful from the wrath that must be poured out on mankind as a natural consequence of disobedience to God’s laws and commandments.  “Without the sealings that create eternal families and link generations here and hereafter,” Elder Christofferson taught, “we would be left in eternity with neither root nor branches, neither ancestry nor posterity.”  He then described the two types of disobedience that merit God’s wrath:

It is this free-floating, disconnected state of individuals on the one hand, or connections that defy the marriage and family relations God has ordained on the other hand, that would frustrate the very purpose of the earth’s creation.  Were that to become the norm it would be tantamount to the earth being smitten with a curse or utterly wasted at the Lord’s coming.  (September 30, 2023)

Extreme, relativistic individualism and the perversion of the true idea of marriage and family are ideas and lifestyles that portend nothing less than the devastation of the earth.  Whatever practical compromises we find it necessary to make in the political realm, we must not delude ourselves that what is at stake in our understanding of the family and of the purpose and limits of sexual expression is a mere matter of individual taste or inclination, a topic upon which reasonable people can reasonably disagree without some being right and others being profoundly, disastrously mistaken.  Nothing less is at stake than the very purpose of creation.   Of course, the outcome of our political efforts is finally in the Lord’s hand.  President Russell M. Nelson has prophesied: “In coming days, we will see the greatest manifestations of the Savior’s power that the world has ever seen. Between now and the time He returns … , He will bestow countless privileges, blessings, and miracles upon the faithful.”[2] This promise must give us great comfort and assurance as we navigate the storms of contemporary society.  But our responsibilities to our families, communities, and fellow citizens remain: whatever the scope and limits of our moral agency in the present moral and political world, we must exercise that agency in light of our best understanding of God’s ultimate purposes for his creation.

Pragmatism in politics, including, when necessary, a public posture of “neutrality,” can no doubt be a necessary and thus a legitimate virtue.  But we must not forget that the virtue of pragmatism can be very unstable.

Notes: 

[1] Jonathan Rauch, a long-time advocate of same-sex marriage, would not appear to be eager to re-open that debate. Rauch once described himself as a “radical incrementalist.”  He presents himself as moderate or even conservative (and admirer of Edmund Burke), but espouses no overarching moral framework, no permanent moral principles, except for what he understands to be the American creed of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In place of a moral or religious framework, he has proposed the fundamental authority of a “constitution of knowledge” – defined by the progressive development of a purely rational or scientific and morally neutral consensus of opinion.  This purely secular “constitution of knowledge” would exclude all religion-tainted conviction; Rauch makes this point by comparing the doctrine of the virgin birth to the belief that “Elvis lives.” But how can naturalistic, amoral science contribute to a society’s necessary moral foundations?  It may be doubted, in any case, whether such an absolute reliance on a presumed scientific consensus is the best foundation for religious liberty.

[2] October 2022 General Conference