Speaking out against immoral or unjust actions of political leaders has been the burden of prophets and disciples of God from time immemorial. It was for this very reason that many of them were persecuted. Some of them were stoned, some of them were burned, many were imprisoned. Nevertheless it was their God-given task, as watchmen on the towers, to speak up. It is certainly no different today.
In the war in heaven the devil advocated absolute eternal security at the sacrifice of our freedom. Although there is nothing more desirable to a Latter-day Saint than eternal security in God’s presence, and although God knew, as did we, that some of us would not achieve this security if we were allowed our freedom—yet the very God of heaven, who has more mercy than us all, still decreed no guaranteed security except by a man’s own freedom of choice and individual initiative.
Now undoubtedly Moroni could have pointed out many factors that led to the destruction of the people, but notice how he singled out the secret combinations, just as the Church today could point out many threats to peace, prosperity, and the spread of God’s work, but it has singled out the greatest threat as the godless conspiracy. There is no conspiracy theory in the Book of Mormon —it is a conspiracy fact.
“It’s a little frustrating from our perspective to have people saying ‘well is he going to follow some kind of a policy line that the Church has?’ We have a long record in the Church…
“We as a Church do not get involved in political candidates of any persuasion. The reason we don’t is because we have Republicans and we have Democrats, and we have independents, and we have Libertarians,…
Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles discusses sustaining the U.S. constitution and its relationship to religious freedom.