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Some thoughts for today on religious tolerance and liberty

Some thoughts for today on religious tolerance and liberty

Last updated on: July 5, 2026 at 3:07 pm by Dan Peterson

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Some thoughts for today on religious tolerance and liberty 2026-07-05T15:07:14-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The massacre of the Latter-day Saints at Haun’s Mill, Missouri (Carl Christian Anton Christensen, d. 1912); Wikimedia Commons public domain image

Here’s a heartwarming story from the Salt Lake Tribune. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shouldn’t deceive themselves into imagining that we would be welcome neighbors and fellow citizens in a society in which “Christian nationalism” has become dominant: “Pete Hegseth’s spiritual adviser longs for a day when Latter-day Saints can’t hold office or possibly even vote: So where do Latter-day Saints fit in Doug Wilson’s vision for a Christian America? Well, they don’t.”

Many Latter-day Saints, comfortable today in their jobs and homes and neighborhoods and communities, may be wondering why the First Presidency of the Church would call for a fast celebrating and praying for “religious liberty.” We tend, I think, to take our enjoyment of such liberty for granted.

We should not. I think a famous prediction from the author James Waterman Wise (d. 1983) that is often wrongly attributed to the novelist Sinclair Lewis: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” When I see denials that Islam is a genuine religion — which, if true, could well be used to deprive Muslims of their First Amendment right to the freedom of worship — I hear echoes of precisely similar declarations, and not just from generations in the past, regarding the faith of the Latter-day Saints. And I can’t help but think of the famous words of Pastor Martin Niemöller, who lived through the Nazi period in Germany (including, from 1937 to 1945, in the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and Dachau):

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

If you want to be reminded of the experience of the early Latter-day Saints with religious liberty — and the lack of it — in nineteenth-century America, this week’s installment of the Interpreter Foundation’s ongoing Becoming Brigham documentary series, Becoming Brigham, Episode 23 — Brigham Young Was Sent Away from Leadership? might be helpful. As might next week’s installment, which will go up tomorrow (Monday), but for which a very brief “teaser” is already available: “Who Didn’t Hate the ‘Mormons’?”

Many years ago, my father told me of an experience that had disquieted him very much. A quiet, meek, gentle late-in-life convert to the Church, he received an invitation to a dialogue that was to occur at nearby Biola University, in La Mirada, California, between an Evangelical Protestant and a local Latter-day Saint. Members of the Church were invited to attend what was described as a pleasant, friendly conversation between the two faiths.

What he encountered was a professional countercult anti-Mormon polemicist who was loaded for bear against an unsuspecting local Latter-day Saint leader. That ambushed local leader had, I expect, come prepared with some irenic notes about common ground and shared values, as well as, of course, about doctrinal areas where we undeniably differed. My father described it as a massacre. But what really shocked and unnerved him, he told me, was the naked hostility shown by many in the overwhelmingly Evangelical audience toward the Church and toward the poor sacrificial lamb up on the stand. Many of those in the audience, my father reflected, were probably neighbors of his in Whittier — and it really affected his feelings, at least for a few days, about his community.

Another story, again from many years ago: The independent Latter-day Saint historian Todd Compton was a graduate student at UCLA during the time that I was there, and he told me once of an experience that he had just had. It was during the time that the incendiary 1982 anti-Mormon movie The God Makers was all the rage in Evangelical Protestant churches, and he had gone out to either Covina or West Covina, as I recall, to attend a showing. After an impassioned anti-Mormon address by an invited speaker and following the screening of the movie itself, he reported to me, he would not have been altogether surprised if, had the author exhorted them to do so, at least some in the large audience had grabbed torches and proceeded down the street to a nearby Latter-day Saint stake center and burned it to the ground. They were, he said, that angry and riled up.

Here are a few opportunities for pondering religious liberty today, all of them published in the Deseret News:

A gas plume arising from Augustine Volcano during its eruptive phase 2005-06. Photo by Cyrus Read, Alaska Volcano Observatory, United States Geological Survey

I’ve tried to reach Alaska on two prior occasions, quite a few years ago now, but I failed both times. Once, I was scheduled to accompany a cruise, lecturing to a tour group, but the tour didn’t carry. Another time (perhaps in 2016), I was slated to speak to the BYU Alumni Association chapter in Anchorage (or the BYU Management Society; I don’t remember which it was), but the Pavlof Volcano erupted and all flights into and out of Alaska were canceled because of the threat posed to jet aircraft engines by volcanic particulates ejected into the air. On the trip, I was able to travel as far as Seattle. There, I spent the night in an airport hotel before flying back to Utah the next morning.

So actually making it here to Anchorage is something that I’ve waited to do for a long time, and I’m happy to be here.

I need to state right now, though, that no donors to the Interpreter Foundation were harmed in the funding of this trip. Nor have any tithing monies been diverted from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to support my being here. My most adamant critics will still be able to smell a rat in this seemingly harmless vacation, of course, but I think that they ought to have to work for it, even if only just a tiny bit.

Posted from Anchorage, Alaska

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