“…though princes and rulers should tell us we shall not worship God only as we are permitted to, that we must accept and abide by popular opinion…may we still trust in Him, and still be found at the post of duty and devotion.”
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“Communism debases the individual and makes him the enslaved tool of the state, to which he must look for sustenance and religion. Communism destroys man’s God-given free agency.”
‘My brethren and sisters, if the Lord will bless me I desire to say a few words about a most serious worldwide threat. …I take these words of warning as my text, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” …any system which deprives men of their free agency, which weakens the home and family, which depends on butchery for power, which denies all moral responsibility, which holds that man lives by bread alone, and which denies the existence of God, is of the devil.’
“We of this Church have a particular regard for freedom under the protection of law. With us it is a religious tenet. …Only a free soul is fit to enter His kingdom. Men must learn here to live as free men and to apply the restraints which true freedom imposes to be fit for the heavenly realm. Hence we are unalterably opposed to the attempt of any nation or man or group of men, foreign or domestic, to take away or destroy or abrogate the freedoms guaranteed under the law of our land.”
“The conflict between individual rights to freely worship God and government attempts to regulate or interfere with religious practices remains today…. If past is prologue, the forces of local, state, and federal governmental power, now freed from the compelling governmental interest test, will increasingly interfere with the free exercise of religion. We fear that the end result will be a serious diminution of the religious freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution.”
“If we would make the world better, let us foster a keener appreciation of … freedom and liberty.”
“Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God’s greatest gift to man. Among the immediate obligations and duties resting upon members of the Church today, and one of the most urgent and pressing for attention and action of all liberty loving people, is the preservation of individual liberty.”
“We must never see the day when the public square is not open to religious ideas and religious persons. The religious community must unite to be sure we are not coerced or deterred into silence by the kinds of intimidation or threatening rhetoric that are being experienced. Whether or not such actions are anti-religious, they are surely anti-democratic and should be condemned by all who are interested in democratic government. There should be room for all good-faith views in the public square, be they secular, religious, or a mixture of the two.”
“… the most desirable condition for the effective exercise of God-given moral agency is a condition of maximum freedom and responsibility. In this condition men are accountable for their own sins and cannot blame their political conditions on their bondage to a king or a tyrant. This condition is achieved when the people are sovereign, as they are under the Constitution God established in the United States.”
“…these two systems have had an almost deadly rivalry for the control of society, the Civil Law and its fundamental concepts being the instrument through which ambitious men of genius and selfishness have set up and maintained despotisms; the Common Law, with its basic principles, being the instrument through which men of equal genius, but with the love of mankind burning in their souls, have established and preserved liberty and free institutions…”