Legal practice involves a host of fiduciary relationships. Lawyers act as agents for their clients. Through legal instruments, lawyers establish agency relationships between employers and employees. Lawyers also litigate conflicts that arise when an agent violates duties to a principal. Problems surface in a principal-agent relationship when an agent’s interests conflict with the interests of the principal. In this circumstance, the agent may be tempted to act against the principal’s interests and, when possessing information not available to the principal, may succeed in doing so without detection.
Our relationship with God may be viewed through a principal-agent lens. When seen in this light, what stands out most is how different our relationship is from the principal-agent relationships we typically see in practice. In our relationship with God, there is no prospect of the agent possessing superior information. God, the ultimate principal, is omniscient. We, as agents, must learn His will. He provides prophets and personal revelation to help us do so. Indeed, the relationship between God and His prophets presents another principal-agent relationship. Of that relationship, God has said that whether He speaks directly or through His prophets, “it is the same.”1 He “will fulfil all that which [He has] caused to be spoken by the mouth of [His] holy prophets.”2 Through personal direction from our principal and through the teachings of His agents, the prophets, we can know the Father’s will.
As we learn that will, it becomes apparent that there is no potential conflict of interest. In our principalagent relationship with God, His will is always directed at our good. He declares, “[T]his is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”3 What’s more, as we do His will, He promises us not just an agent’s salary but “all that [He] hath.”4 Our best interests fully align with His, forming an ideal principal-agent arrangement.
Our task is to align our will with God’s will. Only the Savior did this perfectly. He proclaimed, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”5 And in the moment of greatest trial, He declared, “[N]evertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”6 At no point was there divergence between the Savior’s actions and the will of the Father. Unfortunately, our actions will not always conform to our Father’s will. I’m grateful that the Savior has provided both an example and, through His Atonement, the means to overcome these gaps.
As a byu Law community, we “seek to be . . . people of integrity who combine faith and intellect in lifelong service to God and neighbor.”7 We advance that goal when we discern and live the will of our Father, who wants us, His agents, to become like Him, our principal, and receive of His fulness. No principal-agent relationship offers more.8
notes
1 Doctrine and Covenants 1:38.
2 3 Nephi 1:13.
3 Moses 1:39.
4 Doctrine and Covenants 84:38.
5 John 6:38.
6 Luke 22:42.
7 “Mission Statement,” byu Law School, law.byu.edu/explore /byu-law-mission-statement.
8 I express gratitude to Gordon Smith for his insights on both fiduciary relationships and the nature of our relationship with God.
david h. moore
Dean, byu Law School
by david H. Moore dean of byu law school
illustrations by alex nabaum
y son Matthew was very energetic when he was a young child. When we lived in the Washington, DC, area, my wife, Natalie, took to having Matthew wear a harness for fear that he would dart out of the DC Metro at the wrong stop or dive into the Tidal Basin beside the Jefferson Memorial. When I was considering a teaching position at Washington and Lee University School of Law, we took a trip to Lexington, Virginia. During the trip, three-year-old Matthew jumped into the hotel pool and had to be rescued. That was traumatic, but there is another moment from that trip that has particularly stuck with me.
We were with a realtor walking through a beautiful home on a wooded hill in the Shenandoah Valley. Matthew and his older brother were running around on the hardwood floors and creating a lot of noise. Natalie stopped Matthew and asked, “Matthew, can you behave?” Without hesitation, Matthew replied, “I don’t want to ‘be Have.’ I want to be Matthew.”
I don’t know who “Have” was in Matthew’s mind, but Matthew did not want to be him. He wanted to be himself
This exchange has led me to consider whether we must choose between behaving and being ourselves. The answer to that question turns on who we are.
our primary identities
President Russell M. Nelson spoke of identity at a 2022 worldwide devotional for young adults. His counsel undoubtedly applies to all. In his remarks, President Nelson made a statement that struck me profoundly. He said, “I believe that if the Lord were speaking to you directly tonight, the first thing He would make sure you understand is your true identity.”1 Understanding our identity is that important.
First and foremost, the Savior wants us to know that we “are literally spirit children of God.”2 Yet, as President Nelson notes, perhaps we hear this so frequently that it registers “more like a slogan than divine truth.”3 It is truth, and it means that you and I have the potential to become like God. This life is critical to achieving that possibility.
Next, President Nelson taught that as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, we are children of the covenant.4 We have entered the covenant path, which both imposes responsibilities and offers all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, including, ultimately, “all that [the] Father hath.”5 Finally, we are disciples of Jesus Christ.6 Jesus Christ is the way to achieve our divine potential; following Him makes the blessings of the covenant possible.
These three primary identities are the foundation of personal identity. Why? They make possible the fulfillment of our potential, providing “a vision of who [we] can ultimately become”7 and inspiring choices that can lead to our eventual exaltation. These identities help us to realize that when we behave—when we enter and keep covenants to follow God’s will—we are being our true selves. By contrast, “[o]ther labels . . do not have the power to lead [us] toward eternal life in the celestial kingdom of God.”8 We cannot qualify for the celestial kingdom by being a Republican, Democrat, female, male, lawyer, professor, or dean. So, while other identifiers can be significant and personally meaningful, elevating these secondary identities over primary identities “can be spiritually suffocating.”9
our professional identity Our primary identities are also important to forming our professional identity. The American Bar Association Section of Legal Education has adopted standards that govern law school accreditation. aba Standard 303(b)(3) specifically requires law schools to “provide substantial opportunities to students for . . . the development of a professional identity.” 10 Interpretation 303-5 of this Standard explains, “Professional identity focuses on what it means to be a lawyer and the special obligations lawyers have to their clients and society.” 11 Professional identity formation includes becoming the sort of professional you want to be. This process extends beyond law school to every stage of a legal career.
Professor Harmony Decosimo has identified “three dominant approaches to professional identity formation . : value[s], well-being, and competency.”12 The first approach focuses on helping lawyers develop a set of values to guide their careers. Those values may be religious ones.13 Interestingly, Professor Decosimo cites former byu president Dallin H. Oaks’s remarks at the dedication of the byu Law School building as an example of the values-based approach to professional identity formation.14 In those remarks, President Oaks emphasized the religious motivation for and religious component of legal education at byu Law.15 An advantage of the values approach is that it leads to consistency in lawyers’ private and professional lives; it can also elevate the profession “by raising the bar as to what it means to be a good lawyer.”16
The well-being approach, as its name suggests, focuses on physical and mental health as well as career satisfaction. It seeks to produce well-balanced lawyers. The approach is particularly valuable given the challenges that law school and legal practice pose to wellness.17
The final approach—competency—focuses on developing the skills needed to succeed in a legal career. We see this approach play out in the movement toward increased experiential learning in law schools. The competency approach helps schools produce practiceready graduates.18
S o how do our primary identities intersect with our professional identity? Our primary identities can advance and guide the formation of our professional identity under each approach.
its own blessings including positive physiological effects.30 A focus on shared primary identities creates a community of love, unity, and support that sustains well-being in law school and legal practice. Finally, as children of God who make and keep covenants to follow Jesus Christ, we can receive personal revelation, reducing the uncertainty and stress of making important decisions in our careers. These are but some of the many ways our primary identities are foundational to our well-being.
Primary Identities and Values
Our primary identities also inform the values that should guide our actions as lawyers. byu Law is uniquely positioned to promote students’ development of values as they begin to form their professional identities. Indeed, the Aims of a byu Education states that “the development of character is so important that byu ‘has no justification for its existence unless it builds character . . . . It is not justified on an academic basis only.’”31 Forming a professional identity grounded in eternal values is central to byu’s purpose and existence. We might identify a host of values that should guide our legal practice, and I invite you to consider values you might adopt and develop. I’ll mention only a few. In light of our primary identities, one of the values that should guide our legal practice is a commitment to civility. We cannot be true disciples when we are contentious; Jesus said, “[T]he spirit of contention is not of me.”32 Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have spoken repeatedly about the need for civility, highlighting its critical importance.33 Our primary identities invite us to respond to this call by consistently treating others with dignity. Other values that current byu Law students have identified as consonant with our primary identities include honesty, integrity, humility, charity, compassion, and respect. byu Law encourages students to integrate these values into their professional identities beginning in law school.
behaving like ourselves
At the end of the day, I think three-year-old Matthew had it wrong. Given our primary identities, we are being ourselves when we behave. Our primary identities can motivate, guide, and further the formation of our professional identity. I am grateful for the strength my primary identities have provided as I have pursued all three approaches to developing my professional identity—increasing competency, achieving wellness, and living Christlike values. May our primary identities inspire and guide each of us throughout our careers.
notes
1 Russell M. Nelson, “Choices for Eternity,” worldwide devotional for young adults, May 15, 2022.
2 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
3 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
4 See Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
5 Doctrine and Covenants 84:38.
6 See Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
7 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
8 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
9 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
10 Standard 303(b)(3), aba Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools 2024–2025, American Bar Association, 2024.
11 Interpretation 303-5, aba Standards
12 Harmony Decosimo, “A Taxonomy of Professional Identity Formation,” Saint Louis University Law Journal 67, no. 1 (Fall 2022): 11.
13 See Decosimo, “A Taxonomy,” 11–18.
14 See Decosimo, “A Taxonomy,” 16–17n67.
15 S ee Dallin H. Oaks, “Ethics, Morality, and Professional Responsibility,” dedication of the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, Sept. 5, 1975.
16 Decosimo, “A Taxonomy,” 22n85; quoting Robert K. Vischer, “Heretics in the Temple of Law: The Promise and Peril of the Religious Lawyering Movement,” Journal of Law and Religion 19, no. 2 (2004): 454–55.
17 See Decosimo, “A Taxonomy,” 22–23.
18 See Decosimo, “A Taxonomy,” 32.
19 See Marvin J. Ashton, “There Are Many Gifts,” Ensign, November 1987, 20.
20 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
21 Bruce C. Hafen, “A Walk by Faith: Founding Stories of the Law School,” Clark Memorandum , Spring 2008, 24.
22 See Matthew 25:14–30.
23 S ee Standard 303(c) and Interpretation 303-6, aba Standards.
24 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”
25 Nelson, “Choices for Eternity”; emphasis in original.
26 Jane Mitchell, “Legal Education and the Threat Response,” Journal of Law Teaching and Learning 1 (2024): 159, 163.
27 See Jane Mitchell, “Stress and Prosecutorial Discretion,” job talk (under submission, August 2024).
28 See Mitchell, “Legal Education,” 156–210.
29 See Exodus 31:13; Ezekiel 20:20.
30 S ee Jane Mitchell, lunch keynote address at the byu Law Annual Law and Leadership Conference, January 27, 2023.
31 The Aims of a byu Education (March 1, 1995); quoting Spencer W. Kimball, “On My Honor,” byu devotional, September 12, 1978.
32 3 Nephi 11:29.
33 See, for example, Russell M. Nelson, “Peacemakers Needed,” Liahona, May 2023; Dallin H. Oaks, “Following Christ,” Liahona, November 2024.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADLEY SLADE
CARRIE MENKEL-MEADOW
Distinguished and Chancellor’s Professor of Law, UC Irvine School of Law
ONLY
TWO
SIDES
The legal world is peopled by binaries—opposing parties on two sides: plaintiffs and defendants, petitioners and respondents. Lawyers are taught to consider and debate two sides of a question, and we talk a lot in the law about winning and losing. But how many disputes really only have two sides? Very few do.
This last part of my career (I say last because I’ve been at this for 50 years) has been devoted to the questions “How are multiparty disputes different from two-party disputes?” and “What creative thinking can resolve the world’s problems?” When is it better to have more than two heads at the table? The answer is “Almost always.” Whether in a regular plaintiff-versus-defendant lawsuit, personal injury case, or virtually any kind of dispute, we’re going to have more resources, more ideas in the room, and more creativity with more problem-solvers involved.
I f you were going on a backpacking trip, who would you want with you? Perhaps a good cook, a good fire-maker, and a person who knows the topography. When I started teaching at ucla a long time ago, a group of law professors went hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains in October, and sure enough it started to snow earlier than expected. It snowed so much that on the way down, it wasn’t clear which route to take. Two of my colleagues had climbed in Nepal, so they considered themselves to be great experts. And what happened? They started to argue about how to go down the mountain. It became clear to me that in addition to the good cook, the fire-maker, and a tall person to put the food in the trees out of reach of the bears, what that trip needed was a disputeresolver. These two colleagues fought bitterly over whether to try to go down the trail we’d come up, which by now was covered with snow, or whether to try to use a topographical map to find a shorter route. Our group of law professors split up into three groups with three different leaders. I followed the least expert of the three leaders—the youngest and most cautious—and we got to the bottom first. The two experts who spent a lot of time arguing with each other to be the “winners” of this problem got lost in the snow.
S o, early in my career one of my mantras became “How do we solve problems by looking beyond the experts?”
MORE IS MORE
My heroine and the inspiration for my scholarship is Mary Parker Follett, a pioneer in the field of management consulting, who said there are three ways to resolve disputes: “domination, compromise, and integration.”1 Integration has been my preference for a long time. It involves trying to find out what the parties’ needs and interests are with the goal of integrating them. With more than two heads in a negotiation, we have the possibility of creating more ideas and therefore more solutions.
I was a class action lawyer for many years—dealing with mass torts, employment discrimination, securities litigation, and consumer law. Even in class actions, where procedurally the idea is to bring a lot of parties together, eventually the parties get assigned to one side of the “v” or the other. Later, when I became a mediator, I wondered, “Why do we always have to be on two sides?”
This article is adapted from remarks delivered on October 16, 2024, at byu Law’s annual lecture honoring former byu Law dean Bruce C. Hafen.
I was a mediator in Washington, DC, and the good thing about Washington was there were so many governmental agencies that when we had a problem, we could easily bring in experts from different areas. For example, in the employment discrimination context, if someone was upset about not getting a promotion or a job in their own department, we could reach out and find them a job in another department. From that experience, I concluded that having more people in the room and more parties involved helps solve problems. I’ll share a few high-profile examples of multiparty dispute resolution.
Two is a dangerous number.
I prefer THREE
Multinational Treaties
I now teach international law and international dispute resolution, and some of our multiparty successes have been environmental treaties. I know some of you think we’re not making enough progress, but there is progress. For example, the Montreal Protocol sought to protect the ozone layer through more-developed countries agreeing to provide both technology and financial support to less-developed countries willing to discontinue their use of ozone-damaging chemicals.2 This multinational agreement is one of the most successful environmental treaties ever. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea involved multiple parties negotiating how to share the fruits of the seabed.3 Arguments had gone on for over 30 years among coastal countries that wanted to have the property rights to take out the minerals from the seabed and inland countries that also wanted these riches. It has not been enacted in the US yet, but there is a treaty.
The US Constitution
One of my favorite examples of multiparty dispute resolution is the drafting of the US Constitution. For me, the leading lesson of the Constitution’s drafting is the extraordinary process that was used. 4 The familiar portrait of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia is a fiction; all of these people were never in the room in quite this dramatic way.
Here’s what’s interesting about the process of drafting the Constitution. George Washington was the presiding officer at the Constitutional Convention, but he spoke only once on a substantive topic in the three months of deliberation. His job was simply to be the neutral facilitator. The delegates at the Constitutional Convention created a complex set of ground rules. For example, nobody could speak more than twice in a single session. So, if a delegate had something to say, it would have been important because there were only two speaking opportunities.
I’ve been a mediator in class actions with 50 or 60 lawyers in the room, and we have similar ground rules about speaking. As a professor I have used a Native American talking stick in my classes, and if I learn to keep my mouth shut sometimes, I pass the talking stick to students. Nobody can speak unless they have the talking stick. I also use the talking stick in meetings, in conversations with my husband, and when I’m with a group of friends and we all want to talk at the same time. Everyone has a chance to say what they want to say. This can be remarkably effective.
Other Convention ground rules established that all delegates had to be present for votes. They insisted on linkage—very important in dispute resolution—requiring that the vote be on the entire document, not serial votes on each piece. That allowed for a very important concept in dispute resolution: trading. Some of those trades we now think were pretty bad, such as the continuation of slavery until 1808. Many were compromises reached by the Southern states and the Northern states. But that was not the only schism. Some of the compromises were based not just on the classic North and South acrimony that you may have learned about in American history, but rather on friction between coastal cities such as Charleston that were becoming more mercantile and industrialized and aligned with Boston and the interests of inland cities such as Philadelphia.
In almost every major deliberation, whether it’s in Congress, in our state legislatures, or in our courts, we would do well to take a page from the book of these Convention deliberators.
Benjamin Franklin played an important role in the Constitutional Convention. One thing he did happens here at byu, which I love—we did it at Georgetown Law School too, since it’s also a religious institution: There was a prayer at the beginning of every session of deliberation for the Constitutional Convention.5 Why? Franklin wanted to remind the drafters of our Constitution that they were engaged in an important spiritual journey and that they should take it seriously and treat each other with respect and care. Franklin was the emotional mediator of the Convention deliberations. When things got heated, he stood up and insisted on a moment of silence. Both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were supposedly areligious, but Franklin got up at every one of those deliberations that were controversial and very hotly debated and suggested that everyone take a moment and ask for help from God. And whether Franklin was a believer or not, it almost didn’t matter, because he was introducing into the deliberations a peaceful spirit, which we mediators—whatever our religious or political commitments might be—seek to promote.
And finally, the person that is most responsible for everything that you’ve learned about the Constitutional Convention was James Madison, who was the scribe. Notice what we have here is process differentiation. Three different people are key to the success of the Convention: George Washington presiding, enforcing the rules of deliberation; Benjamin Franklin introducing peace and some sense of inspiration and quiet into deliberations; and James Madison taking notes. In almost every major deliberation, whether it’s in Congress, in our state legislatures, or in our courts, we would do well to take a page from the book of these Convention deliberators. Having more than two people making arguments and adding someone else to pay attention to everything that’s going on in the room is valuable.
THE MAGIC OF THREE
We negotiate with ourselves all the time. I might ask myself, “Can I have dessert tonight?” And my answer might be “If I exercise.” That’s a negotiation with myself. Or “Should I call my parents?” Well, I’m supposed to. So, my answer is “Yes, I should do that.” These are negotiations. And believe it or not, that’s how we first learn how to negotiate—with ourselves and with our parents.
In law school we study cases with dyadic negotiations, plaintiffs and defendants with lawyers on both sides. I’ve written many articles complaining that this duality leads to brittle results. There are winners and losers. Losers are resentful, so they either appeal or try to figure out some way to resist the ruling. Two is a dangerous number. I prefer three, where parties bring in a mediator or some kind of facilitator. This forces the parties to worry about coalitions, which is a very important factor in negotiation strategy. Two people can reach an
in defense of zion and her people
By Elder Alexander Dushku
General Authority Seventy and General Counsel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
dear brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues, I’m honored to be here with you tonight. I feel the weight of this assignment.
I’m especially grateful to be here in the presence of apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, including President Dallin H. Oaks. I hope we never take for granted the great blessing of being guided by living prophets, seers, and revelators. Under their direction, we are called to the great work of gathering all who are willing to let God prevail to the ordinances and covenants of the restored gospel and to the fellowship, communion, and safety of Zion.
As President Russell M. Nelson has declared, “That gathering is the most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty.” 1 This latter-day gathering has been the focus of prophetic vision and the burden of our heavenly charge from the Church’s earliest days. It is a work of global sweep and eternal significance. It will require
unprecedented faith, unprecedented organization, and unprecedented resources. And it will require religious freedom—not perfect religious freedom, because we aren’t going to have that, but a sturdy, generous, consistent, well-defended religious freedom. And that means, despite all the harsh things the scriptures say about us, this grand latter-day gathering to Zion will also require faithful and skilled lawyers!
For nearly 30 years, it has been my great privilege to represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on matters of religious freedom. Tonight, I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on the challenges that lie before us and the kinds of religious freedoms I envision the Church and our people needing in the years to come. Although I speak from a Latter-day Saint perspective, my thoughts apply as well to the sacred aspirations and freedoms of people from other faith communities. I offer these reflections as my own personal views and not as the official position of the Church or its leaders.
The Best of Times
In the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities , that classic novel set in the time of the French Revolution, Charles Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” 2 So may it be said today of religious liberty in the United States.
In the Supreme Court, these may well be the best of times. Scholars say the current Supreme Court is the most favorable to religious liberty in American history.3 I think they’re right. Some of the most important recent US Supreme Court victories were controversial and hotly contested, and yet significant majorities of the Court upheld religious liberty.
F or example, in a recent case the Supreme Court unanimously held that the First Amendment protects Catholic Social Services’ right to participate in the City of Philadelphia’s foster care program without abandoning its religious beliefs and practices regarding traditional marriage. 4 In another, the Supreme Court ruled, again unanimously , that a religious school had an absolute right to decide whether to retain a ministerial teacher, even if doing so conflicted with federal civil rights laws. The Court held that religiously sensitive decisions about ministers must be left to ecclesiastical authorities.5 Since then, the Supreme Court has further strengthened this so-called “ministerial exception” to civil rights laws.6 The Court also upheld the free-speech right of a designer of custom websites not to support messages about marriage that conflict with her religion. This decision was highly controversial and not unanimous, but the Court stood firm in vindicating free-speech and religious rights.7
lgbt rights sometimes conflict with religious freedom. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has gone out of its way to provide assurances that religious rights will be protected even as LGBT rights are expanded. In the Obergefell same-sex marriage decision, the Court generously acknowledged that “[m]any who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises,” and then it assured
nervous churches and believers that they would be “given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.”8 None of this was necessary to the Court’s decision. Similarly, when the Supreme Court ruled that lgbt persons are protected from employment discrimination under federal civil rights laws, the Court again went out of its way to assure religious organizations that the Constitution and federal law contain ample protections to secure religious liberty rights.9
Not every US court is so favorable, but if you had to pick a court to have on your side, the US Supreme Court is not a bad one to have. Again, in many ways, these are the best of times for religious liberty in the United States.
The Worst of Times
But in other ways, these are very troubling times. The problem lies not so much in the law but in the culture. That’s a major challenge because sooner or later, where culture goes, the law will follow. Unfortunately, our culture is becoming more hostile toward institutions generally and religious institutions specifically. On the religion front, this follows from a broad-based decline in religiosity. A recent Gallup Poll indicates that over the last 30 years, weekly church attendance has dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent. 10 Meanwhile, between the years 1972 and 2020, the number of people in the United States who lack any religious affiliation—the so-called “nones”—has risen from 5 percent to 29 percent 11
Our culture increasingly extols rebellion against institutional authority while exalting the supremacy of the self. There is a growing desire to be free from any restriction that limits what some have referred to as the “autonomous” or “expressive self.” Berkeley sociology professor Robert Bellah coined the term “expressive individualism” to describe this notion. In the book Habits of the Heart, Bellah and his colleagues wrote, “Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.” 12 Since Western culture now sees the realization of individuality as life’s primary purpose, the modern moral imperative is to liberate the self from any constraint. Thus, anything that appears to suppress or limit the expression of individuality constitutes an injustice. Such constraints must be exposed and deconstructed as manifestations of arbitrary power and then swept away, so the individual is free to “find” himself.
IN MANY WAYS, THESE ARE THE BEST OF TIMES FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES.
This article is adapted from remarks delivered at the J. Reuben Clark Law Society devotional on January 19, 2024.
Historically, the meaning of one’s life derived largely from family relationships. Faith, church, school, profession, and nation supplied other powerful sources of meaning that shaped and defined the individual. But a major change in how we find and define ourselves has occurred. Now, “the meaning of one’s life for most Americans,” Professor Bellah and his colleagues explain, “is to become one’s own person, almost to give birth to oneself. Much of this process . . is negative. It involves breaking free from family, community, and inherited ideas.”13 And, I would add, often it involves breaking free from one’s belief in God, from one’s faith community, and from the truths and moral precepts one receives from those profound sources of meaning. “In the absence of any objectifiable criteria of right or wrong, good or evil, the self and its feelings become our only moral guide.”14 Other academics, such as Professor Charles Taylor of McGill University, have described this same phenomenon in different terms.15 Whatever the label for this cluster of ideas—expressive individualism, culture of authenticity, libertarianism, the “unencumbered self”16 —these ideas now exert an enormous influence on how we conceive of ourselves and how we react to anything that appears to limit our aspirations, passions, and behaviors. Just think of the slogans we constantly encounter: “Be true to yourself!” “Follow your heart!” “Follow your dreams!” “Live
your truth.” “Find yourself.” “You do you!” Many of these assertions would have been odd if not incoherent in earlier times. Clearly, we are now in a very different culture than the one that produced, for example, the Scout Oath, which speaks of honor, duty to God and country, obedience, law, sacrifice, and moral rigor.
Hence, we shouldn’t be surprised by the growing suspicion toward institutions at every level—and especially toward the family and religious organizations, which by their nature challenge the conceit that we can define ourselves any way we like. Ironically, many who seek to liberate themselves from traditional sources of meaning are now rigidly defining themselves and others according to racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, class, and other characteristics. These identities, not faith and family, are allegedly most fundamental, with religion often portrayed as merely a private hobby rather than a core, defining element of a person’s very existence.
Obviously, much of this current ideology is irreconcilable with the doctrine of Christ and the call to Christian discipleship. At the outset of the Restoration, the Lord rebuked a modern world:
For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world.17
Sound familiar? Modern philosophy in effect asserts that each person should be a god unto himself or herself—one that is free from all external sources of moral authority.
By contrast, Jesus Christ invites us to follow Him and, by losing ourselves in His service, thereby find our highest and best selves. And so the Lord gave us commandments and covenants, precepts and principles, prophets and pastors, to help define us as a peculiar people— as His people—and to guide us back into His eternal presence. Those sources of personal and collective identity sharply differ from the self-centered ethos we hear constantly from elite and popular culture. That culture, sooner or later, will produce laws and regulations, judges and bureaucrats, that are hostile toward a Church of divine identities, covenants, and prophetic leaders. So while these are indeed among the best of times for religious liberty legally, the state of our culture means that serious challenges assuredly lie ahead.
What Latter-day Saints Need to Freely Practice Their Religion
To meet these cultural challenges, we must understand clearly what we as Latter-day Saints need to freely practice our faith and fulfill our divine mission. Since we can’t have perfect liberty, the liberties we most diligently seek should correspond with the liberties we most urgently need . So what do we need as the Lord’s covenant people? Here, we must ultimately look to inspired leaders to guide us. But I’d like to offer some of my own thoughts based on my observations over the last three decades. In short, I see at least three vitally important zones of religious freedom that the Church and its members need and thus must advocate for and defend.
FIRST, as Church members we must be free to believe, live, and express our faith in our private and family spaces. Religious freedom cannot exist without the “privilege
of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience.”18 This includes the freedom to embrace and live the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and to transmit our faith to our children. That means mothers and fathers must be able to inculcate in their children the doctrine of Christ—all of it, including revealed truths about marriage, family, gender, and sexuality. It means that parents must have a say in their children’s education. While most nations with Western-based legal systems respect this basic zone of individual and family autonomy, there is growing pressure to shrink that zone to ensure that faith and family do not interfere with hardening social orthodoxies.
SECOND, as Church members we must be free to express our faith and live the gospel openly as equal citizens. We live not only in the intimate spaces of family, friends, and fellow Church members but also in wider communities, societies, and ultimately nations. We have jobs and professions. We participate in community, educational, artistic, and recreational organizations. We have talents, expertise, opinions, and experiences to share. We have the truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and we live in societies that desperately need it! Church members have a basic need and moral right to
participate in and contribute to the social, civic, and professional lives of the societies where we live. Put more starkly, we have a moral right not to be treated as second-class citizens, social pariahs, or outcasts—such as by being excluded from professions, the academy, or public office.
THIRD, as Latter-day Saints—as a people we have a need and a divine mandate to gather and to be “of one heart and one mind, and [dwell together] in righteousness,” as the Lord said of Zion.19 Indeed, one of the greatest tasks in defending religious liberty is to ensure that we have sufficient freedom to gather together and establish Zion—to become a Zion people—and to invite everyone of good will to join us. Elder David A. Bednar has warned that “if the faithful are not gathering, sooner or later they will begin to scatter. . . . [B]ecause gathering lies at the very heart of religion, the right to gather lies at the very heart of religious freedom.”20
A Zion People
As noted, the call to gather has been a constant theme since the outset of the Restoration. That imperative is greater now than ever, and there are many dimensions to it. President Russell M. Nelson has called the gathering of Israel “the greatest challenge, the greatest cause, and the greatest work on earth.”21 God’s work of salvation and exaltation on both sides of the veil includes a massive, coordinated effort to take the gospel—including temple ordinances—to the ends of the earth. All this requires a peculiar people—the covenant people of God.
As mo dern covenant Israel, we are not just an accumulation of individuals who happen to come together for Church meetings and activities. By virtue of the gathering, we are no longer “strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”22 We are to be gathered and bound by covenant to the Lord and to each other. The gathering entails the forging of a people prepared to meet the Lord at His coming. This is the vision of Zion. Joseph Smith taught:
The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age; it is a theme upon which prophets, priests and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight; they have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live; . . we are the favored people that God has made choice of to bring about the Latter-day glory.23
I am convinced that gathering together to build Zion—especially in the stakes of Zion—is not just a millennial hope or some far-off possibility. I believe it is essential to our very survival. The Lord revealed “that the gathering together upon the land of Zion, and upon her stakes, [is] for a defense, and for a refuge from the storm, and from wrath when it shall be poured out without mixture upon the whole earth.”24
What is at stake is nothing less than our very identity. One of the most daunting challenges we face as Latter-day Saints is that worldly philosophies increasingly intrude upon every aspect of our consciousness. The modern world is saturated with ideologies that are hostile to faith. Through technology and media, they permeate our language and influence how we perceive the world around us and even our very selves. If we are not vigilant in centering our lives on Christ and “thinking celestial,” as President Nelson has taught,25 little by little the world will strip us of our identity and make our faith, beliefs, covenants, and even how we speak seem incoherent to our world-soaked minds. “It is not reasonable that such a being as a Christ shall come,” said people in the Book of Mormon despite having seen many signs and wonders.26 The power and threat of an unchecked culture of disbelief is that the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ—including who we are—can come to seem unreasonable, even to those who know better.
That is why we need Zion. Zion is a refuge from the storm of faithlessness. It is a shelter from the spiritual and moral chaos of our time. It is a place where we can gather, unite, and
THE POWER AND THREAT OF AN UNCHECKED CULTURE OF DISBELIEF IS THAT THE TRUTHS OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST—INCLUDING WHO WE ARE—CAN COME TO SEEM UNREASONABLE, EVEN TO THOSE WHO KNOW BETTER.
be who we are—where the truths we cherish, the standards we live, the practices and patterns that define our lives, and the very gospel language we speak are natural and well understood. It is where we—not the world— define the narrative. It is where we can live our true identities as sons and daughters of God, children of the covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ.27
We need religious freedom to be a Zion people. We need the freedom to live in the world but also to be separate from the world in meaningful ways. In the early days of the Church, we were often quite separate, as establishing Zion meant gathering to a centralized location, eventually to Utah and other settlements in the West. Beginning in the early 20th century, the Church and its members integrated more fully into American society. During much of the last century, American society tended to be supportive of Church standards. But that has changed dramatically. Many of our basic beliefs are now in deep tension with modern culture. How do we remain a peculiar people when powerful forces insist that only one way of thinking and believing and living is reasonable? Does that portend a tighter-knit gathering so we can better preserve our identity and faith, even as we invite and welcome everyone to join us?
Those are hard questions, and the answers may vary over time as new challenges and opportunities arise. But what is certain is that these are our questions to answer. We as a Church and a people need the freedom and autonomy to answer those questions on our own terms, within our own institutions, and as guided by our own prophetic leaders.
In sum, in my view there are three zones of freedom that we as Latter-days Saints especially need: freedom to live the gospel in our families and other private spaces, freedom to live our faith openly as equal citizens and participants in society, and freedom to gather as a people to build Zion.
Legal Doctrines Essential to Our Cause
There are critical legal doctrines that we must all work to uphold if these vital religious interests and needs are to be protected. We could spend hours discussing each one. I’ll touch on them very briefly here.
First, we must uphold the rule of law. In his April 2021 general conference address “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution,” President Dallin H. Oaks identified the rule of law as one of the most fundamental protections the Constitution affords.28 We must never take for granted the noble tradition of affording each person the right to be governed by laws established by legitimate authority and applied fairly and without bias by legitimate government officials. Indeed, the Lord Himself linked the rule of secular law with the freedom of His people to obey divine law. To the Kirtland Saints, He promised:
[T]hat ye shall obtain power to organize yourselves according to the laws of man; That your enemies may not have power over you; that you may be preserved in all things; that you may be enabled to keep my laws; that every bond may be broken wherewith the enemy seeketh to destroy my people.29
We will not be free to live our faith if we lose the rule of law.
Second, we must uphold the principle of equality before the law and basic nondiscrimination rights. One of the greatest legal accomplishments in centuries, and a key aspect of the rule of law in any democratic society, is a legal regime that protects basic rights of equality before the law and nondiscrimination in essential areas of society. Tensions that may arise from the occasional abuse of nondiscrimination laws should never obscure the enormous achievement of the modern civil rights movement, which gave concrete reality to the Declaration of Independence’s lofty assertion that all men are created equal. Protections against unjust governmental and marketplace discrimination are a bulwark against religious persecution and efforts to turn our people into legal and social outcasts. No one should be denied the right to be a public servant, lawyer, doctor, professor, or therapist because of his or her religion.
and great glory” (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:36), He will bestow countless privileges, blessings, and miracles upon the faithful.33
Nephi too “beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.”34
I b ear witness of the glorious future of latter-day covenant Israel and of the Church and kingdom of God. And I bear witness of Him whose Church and kingdom this is— even our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May we each do all we can to uphold the sacred liberties that allow us to hasten this great work and make that glorious future a reality.
notes
1 Russell M. Nelson and Wendy W. Nelson, “Hope of Israel,” worldwide youth devotional, June 3, 2018, supplement to the New Era and Ensign, 8.
2 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (London: Chapman and Hall, 1868), 1.
3 Be tween 2005 and 2019, under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court adjudicated 16 cases where religious rights were directly at stake. Religious claimants won 81% of those cases—a dramatic increase from the roughly 50% average under earlier Chief Justices going back to 1953. See Lee Epstein and Eric A. Posner, “The Roberts Court and the Transformation of Constitutional Protections for Religion: A Statistical Portrait,” Supreme Court Review, April 19, 2021.
4 S ee Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 141 S. Ct. 1868 (2021).
5 S ee Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. eeoc, 565 U.S. 171 (2012).
10 “Religion,” In Depth: Topics A to Z, Gallup, news.gallup .com/poll/1690/religion.aspx.
11 “Modeling the Future of Religion in America,” Pew Research Center, September 13, 2022, pewresearch .org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of -religion-in-america/.
12 Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 1996), 333–334.
13 Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart, 82–83.
14 Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart, 76.
15 S ee Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007), 475.
16 Michael J. Sandel, “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self.” Political Theory 12, no. 1 (February 1984): 86. In criticizing the notion of “the unencumbered self,” Sandel writes: “No role or commitment could define me so completely that I could not understand myself without it. No project could be so essential that turning away from it would call into question the person I am.”
17 Doctrine and Covenants 1:15–16.
18 Articles of Faith 1:11.
19 Moses 7:18.
20 David A. Bednar, “‘And When He Came to Himself’ (Luke 15:17),” address given for the 2020 byu Law School Religious Freedom Annual Review, June 17, 2020, newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article /bednar-byu-religious-freedom-review-speech.
21 Nelson, “Hope of Israel,” 8; emphasis in original.
22 Ephesians 2:19.
23 Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (The Church of Jesus Christ, 2007), 186; from “The Temple,” editorial, Times and Seasons, May 2, 1842, 776.
24 Doctrine and Covenants 115:6; emphasis added.
25 Ru ssell M. Nelson, “Think Celestial!” Liahona , November 2023.
26 Helaman 16:18; emphasis added.
27 See Russell M. Nelson, “Choices for Eternity,” worldwide devotional for young adults, May 15, 2022.
28 S ee Dallin H. Oaks, “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution,” Liahona, May 2021.
29 Doctrine and Covenants 44:4–5; emphasis added.
30 S ee Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990).
6 S ee Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. MorrisseyBerru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020).
7 See 303 Creative llc v. Elenis, 600 U.S. 570 (2023).
8 Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, 672, 679–80 (2015).
9 S ee Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1753–54 (2020).
31 Timothy 4:12.
32 S ee D. Todd Christofferson, “Watchmen on the Tower: Religious Freedom in a Secular Age,” Clark Memorandum, Spring 2015, 11.
33 Russell M. Nelson, “Overcome the World and Find Rest,” Liahona, November 2022, 95; emphasis in original.
34 1 Nephi 14:14; emphasis added.
The pursuit of happiness
by JEFFREY ROSEN president and ceo of the national constitution center
This article is based on remarks delivered at a Wheatley Institute lecture on November 13, 2024, and at a byu forum address on January 28, 2025.
by
illustrations
chris wormell
Another thing that struck me about the list was that I hadn’t read all of the books on it, and I’d had a marvelous liberal arts education! I was an English major in college, and I’m so grateful for my professors, but I’d never read these books of moral philosophy because they’d fallen out of the curriculum when I was in college in the 1980s. In the ’80s, I remember yearning for this kind of guidance about how to lead a good life. It was the “greed is good” and Bonfire of the Vanities decade, and I was looking for an alternative to the hedonism and materialism that were celebrated by pop culture. I did not find it in the Puritan literature I was studying as an English major. This was perhaps because I’m Jewish, and also because the Puritan prescriptions of faith purely by grace, without the possibility of good works assuring salvation, were not compelling to me. So I was looking for an alternative, and I didn’t realize that all the wisdom I was looking for was hiding in plain sight. “I’ve got to read all of these books!” I decided.
I was also inspired by Jefferson’s schedule: (1) get up every morning before sunrise; (2) read science and moral philosophy for
two hours while the mind is fresh; (3) watch the sunrise; (4) read law and political philosophy before lunch; (5) in the afternoon, read history; (6) eat dinner, followed by a little Shakespeare and light poetry for mild entertainment; and then (7) go to bed.9 This schedule was to be adhered to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
I don’t know what got into me, but this was during the covid -19 quarantine and we all had more time, so I tried Jefferson’s schedule. I got up every morning to read moral philosophy for two hours, and I watched the sunrise. It is just glorious to make that a daily habit! I found myself writing sonnets to sum up the wisdom that I’d read, which seems incredibly weird in retrospect, but I later found out that all sorts of people in the founding era would read this moral philosophy and write sonnets, including Alexander Hamilton; Phillis Wheatley, the first published Black poet in America; Mercy Otis Warren, the poetical genius of the Revolution; and John Quincy Adams, one of my great heroes, who would wake up and read Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and the Bible in the White House, watch
the sunrise, write abolitionist sonnets, and then get on with his day. It’s just remarkable. There’s something in this wisdom that craves to be summed up in harmonious, practical form. So that’s what I did, and it was a revelation to me.
Revelation—there’s no other word strong enough to describe the force of this insight for the founders, for the ancients, and for people throughout human history. Happiness means being good, not feeling good; it involves the pursuit of long-term virtue rather than immediate pleasure. But by virtue, they meant something in particular: self-mastery, self-improvement, character improvement, being your best self, overcoming your ego-based passions and emotions so that you can serve other people and connect to the divine.
☞ THE QUEST FOR MORAL PERFECTION
This pursuit is ultimately a quest for moral perfection, and it was rooted in the classics and in the Bible. Jesus in Matthew instructs, “Be ye therefore perfect.” 10 The founders and the ancients took seriously the injunction to try to become a bit more perfect every day and every hour, because the pursuit of virtue requires daily and hourly mindfulness to master your unreasonable passions and emotions so that you can achieve that calm tranquility and self-mastery that Cicero said defines happiness.
To prepare for the honor of this talk, I asked some friends who are Latter-day Saints about the ways the Church cultivates virtue, and I was so struck by how focused the Church has been on cultivating virtue since the beginning. My friend Sheldon Gilbert, the new head of the Federalist Society, who is one of my former students and a former colleague at George Washington University Law School, called my attention to Luke 2:52, which states, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” 11 Sheldon shared with me that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social personal development. And I just had the most wonderful conversation with byu academic vice president Justin Collings, who called my
Wıthout virtue,
happiness cannot be.
friendship, and Adams and Jefferson eventually reconciled.
Wha t did they want to talk about when they’d made amends? Spiritual selfmastery—that’s the topic that they corresponded on when they were old. They wanted to talk about the books they’d read. It’s so moving that they were in their 70s and 80s, and they were still reading and learning and growing and writing.
☞ THE QUEST FOR RELENTLESS IMPROVEMENT
Adams and Abigail imposed all of their emphasis on self-improvement on their son John Quincy Adams. And if I had to pick a hero from the founding era, it would be Quincy, because he was so mindful in trying to live the virtues he was bombarded with constantly from his dad and especially his mom. I thought having a Jewish mom could be tough; it turns out that having a Puritan mom is even harder! Abigail was always on his case, urging him to be more perfect.
Abigail soft-pedals Adams’s faults, surmising that those who called him “haughty” or “unsociable” were intimidated by his brilliant intellect.18 He counters with his typical tact, pointing out that she needs to improve her card playing and learn to sing, plus she walks “with the Toes bending inward . . . commonly called Parrot-toed, I think.”19 So she with great self-possession replies that she will try to practice and improve, but “a gentleman has no business to concern himself about the Leggs of a Lady.”20 Well, they overcame that initial dating bump and went on to have one of the great romantic, intellectual, political, and spiritual friendships and marriages in all of American history. They were always urging each other to be their best selves and to overcome vanity.
☞ PURSUING RECONCILIATION
Among the most inspiring moments in all of American letters is the reconciliation between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. With the election of 1800, the union almost fissured in its infancy. Our current times are extremely challenging, but they were similarly challenging then. Adams and Jefferson didn’t talk for about 10 years. Abigail sent Jefferson a lock of her hair as a gesture of
Adams was so excited when he learned that Pythagoras, a founder of Greek moral philosophy, may have traveled to the East and read the Hindu Vedas. Adams was struck by the fact that the central lesson of the Vedas—to renounce attachment to external events and enjoy eternal salvation—is the same lesson as the Stoic dichotomy of control, which is, “Don’t focus on trying to control the thoughts and actions of others. Focus on the only thing you can control—your own thoughts and actions and self-mastery.” Adams was particularly focused on the possibility that Pythagoras read the Bhagavad Gita, supporting the premise that the wisdom traditions of the East and the West are devoted to this same idea of spiritual self-mastery. Adams didn’t know whether Joseph Priestley, who was writing a comparison of Hinduism and Pythagoreanism, had lived long enough to complete his work. When Jefferson told him the good news “that Priestly finished the comparative view of the doctrines . . . [and] that I can have a copy of his work forwarded from Philadelphia,”21 Adams was so excited to have access to this book, which he expected to show the consonants of the wisdom traditions. It’s beautiful to see they talked about this. Today we are living in a world where books from around the world are free and online, and we can appreciate what a miraculous time we live in.
S o Quincy had this constant sense that he was making a hash of it and falling short, that he wasn’t mastering his temper enough, and that he wasn’t productive enough. There is a passage in his diary on his 45th birthday; he had recently turned down an appointment to the US Supreme Court, he was ambassador to Russia living in St. Petersburg, and he lamented,
I have done Nothing to distinguish [my life] by usefulness to my Country, or to Mankind—I have always lived with I hope a suitable sense of my duties in Society, and with a sincere desire to perform them—But Passions, Indolence, weakness and infirmity have sometimes made me swerve from my better knowledge of right, and almost constantly paralyzed my efforts of good.
22
He set a very high bar for himself. Two years later he wrote, “I have this Month frequented too much the Theatre, and other public amusements. . . I am growing uncomfortably corpulent. . . . May I be cautious not to fall into any habit of indolence or dissipation!”23 To the contrary, Quincy was incredibly productive. Before becoming ambassador, he was a professor of classics at Harvard University, where he taught Cicero, including his favorite book, the Tusculan Disputations. In 1824 he was elected president of the United States— and then he had two terrible blows that cut him to the quick. First, he lost reelection in 1828, and soon after, his oldest son, George Washington Adams, committed suicide. It’s an incredibly sad story. Imagine having the burden of being named George Washington Adams. Also, Quincy was a very demanding
father. He wrote a series of letters from a Christian father to his son,24 which are very inspiring parsings of the proverbs in the Bible based on Quincy’s close reading. But it was just too much pressure to impose on a son, and George Washington Adams descended into alcoholism and then jumped off a steamship.
John Quincy Adams was devastated and spent a year returning to the most profound texts he knew—Cicero and the Bible—and he read them daily. Based on his close reading of a Bible passage where Jesus promises to free the captives, 25 Adams resolved to become the most ardent white abolitionist of his time. He reached a conclusion similar to the one that Joseph Smith reached when he concluded that the scriptures forbid slavery. 26 Adams next was elected to the House of Representatives, the first president to return to the House, and he became a fervent abolitionist based on his scriptural reading. He denounced the gag rule, which forbade the reading of abolitionist petitions, and he introduced a constitutional amendment to end slavery. Adams later voted against awarding medals for the MexicanAmerican War, yelling “No!”—and then he collapsed in the House. He was carried to a sofa, and his last murmured words were “I am composed.”27 He got that from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. It’s just this breathtaking, mindful end to a virtuous life.
☞ ACKNOWLEDGING HYPOCRISY
Jefferson concluded at the end of his long life that he was no longer the Stoic he was as a youth but an Epicurean. By that, he didn’t mean wanton hedonism (that’s a libel on Epicurus by the Stoics) but rather the rational contraction of virtuous desires. An Epicurean does not value pursuing luxury nor waste effort on external events that can’t be controlled; an Epicurean’s goal is to achieve virtuous self-mastery. It’s remarkable that these great statesmen, these great founders of America, when they were old they wanted to talk about moral philosophy, religion, spirituality, art, and literature, and they were learning and growing until the end. They pursued happiness through virtuous industry, becoming a little bit better and learning a bit more every day, and they
had started developing these industrious habits in their youth.
I do have to say a word about Jefferson and slavery. On close examination, Jefferson becomes more of a shocking hypocrite, not less. How is it possible that someone who exalted the virtues of self-mastery and believed that slavery violated the Bible and natural law continued to own slaves and at his death freed only a handful? I found clarifying a letter written by Patrick Henry, famous for his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech (referencing Addison’s Cato , his favorite classical play). 28 Henry laments, “Would any one believe that I am Master of Slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them[.] I will not, I cannot justify it.”
29 In moments of candor like this, all the enslavers of that generation recognized that they were
guilty of the same hypocrisy. They liked the lifestyle slavery afforded them, and they didn’t want to give it up.
Jefferson was guilty of this hypocrisy on a flamboyant scale, because while Jefferson exalted industry, virtuous self-mastery, and frugality, he was a shopaholic. He lived wildly beyond his means. He was always buying French furniture and wine and gratifying his desire for these luxuries, and because he was basically in debt his whole life, that was his justification for why he couldn’t free his own enslaved population. He did fulfill his promise to Sally Hemings that he would free their children on his death, but nearly his entire enslaved population had to be sold to pay his crushing debts.
This is a shocking blind spot in Jefferson’s moral life. And it’s one that was not shared to the same degree by other founders, including George Washington, who appears
self-improvement, and for your spiritual and moral benefit.
I want you to take advantage of the fact that you are blessed to be at this great university, which has put learning about the Constitution front and center. You have a right, an opportunity, and even a duty to do this. Unless you learn about the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration and the American idea, and unless you understand how important it was for the framers to listen to different points of view, to disagree without being disagreeable, and to go deep on the principles that define this nation, then the republic will fall.
My final injunction is from John Quincy Adams. As I told you, he is my hero. On the jubilee of the Constitution in 1839, Quincy feared civil war—things looked then kind of like they do now. And he delivered a spiritual imperative, connecting his close reading of the Bible with that of the Constitution.34 He insisted that the nation’s survival would turn on adherence—or not—to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, quoting from the book of Deuteronomy to emphasize principles of political salvation:
[L]ay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates 35
Tha t’s how important it was to John Quincy Adams for us to learn the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution. I know you are going to do exactly that. Thank you for the blessing of being able to talk to you today.
notes
1 Thomas Jefferson, et al., The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
2 S ee The Mission of Brigham Young University (November 4, 1981) and The Aims of a byu Education (March 1, 1995).
3 See Benjamin Franklin, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, 1st edition, ed. John Bigelow (J. B. Lippincott, 1875), 229–230, 242.
4 See Franklin, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, 233–234.
5 “ Thomas Jefferson to Amos J. Cook, 21 January 1816,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders .archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-09-02-0243; in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 9, September 1815 to April 1816 , ed. J. Jefferson Looney (Princeton University Press, 2013), 374–375. In Cicero’s original Latin, it reads, “nec quidquam sine virtute laudabile: beata igitur vita virtute conficitur”; see Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. J. E. King, Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press, 1927), 474.
6 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 367.
7 You can find Jefferson’s reading list on the website founders.archives.gov and in his letter to Robert Skipwith. (I’ve become an evangelist for the transformative power of primary texts.) See “From Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, with a List of Books for a Private Library, 3 August 1771,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives .gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0056; in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Volume 1, January 1760 to December 1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton University Press, 1950), 76–81.
8 Jefferson later added Francis Hutcheson to his reading list; see “Thomas Jefferson to John Minor, 30 August 1814, including Thomas Jefferson to Bernard Moore, [ca. 1773?],” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents /Jefferson/03-07-02-0455; in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 7, 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814, ed. J. Jefferson Looney (Princeton University Press, 2010), 625–631.
9 See “Thomas Jefferson to John Minor.”
10 Matthew 5:48.
11 Luke 2:52.
12 Doctrine and Covenants 101:77–78.
13 Doctrine and Covenants 4.
14 Franklin, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, 230.
15 See Pythagoras, Golden Verses , trans. Nicholas Rowe; in The Life of Pythagoras, with His Symbols and Golden Verses: Together with the Life of Hierocles and His Commentaries upon the Verses, ed. André Dacier (London: J. Tonson, 1707), 155–157.
16 See Plato, The Phaedrus of Plato, ed. William Hepworth Thompson (London: Whittaker, 1868), 45.
17 Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards, 1776: A Musical Play, premiered at the 46th Street Theatre in New York City on March 16, 1969 (Bantam Books, 1972), 58–59.
18 “Abigail Smith to John Adams, 30 A pril 1764,” Founders Online , National Archives, founders
.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0032; in The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield (Harvard University Press, 1963), 41–42.
19 “John Adams to Abigail Smith, 7 May 1764,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives .gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0035; in The Adams Papers, 44–46.
20 “Abigail Smith to John Adams, 9 May 1764,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives .gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0037; in The Adams Papers, 46–47.
21 “Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 22 August 1813,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives .gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0351; in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 6, 11 March to 27 November 1813, ed. J. Jefferson Looney (Princeton University Press, 2009), 438–441.
22 John Quincy Adams, “11 July 1812,” in John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1779–1821, vol. 1, ed. David Waldstreicher (Library of America, 2017), 298.
23 John Quincy Adams, “30 November 1814,” in John Quincy Adams, 401.
24 S ee John Quincy Adams, Letters of John Quincy Adams, to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings (James A. Alden, 1850).
25 See Luke 4:18–21.
26 See Joseph Smith Jr., General Smith’s Views on the Government and Policies of the United States (Nauvoo: John Taylor, 1844), in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University, contentdm.lib.byu.edu /digital/collection/ncmp1820-1846/id/24473; also printed in Times and Seasons 5, no. 10 (May 15, 1844).
27 John Quincy Adams in Tony Coelho, John Quincy Adams (Chelsea House Publishers, 1990), 107.
28 See Joseph Addison, Cato, a Tragedy, premiered at the Royal Theatre Drury Lane on April 14, 1713 (G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1755), act II, scene IV: 28–29.
29 Patrick Henry, “Letter from Patrick Henry to Robert Pleasants, 18 January 1773”; in George S. Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (University of Pennsylvania, 1937), 443.
30 Samuel Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (W. Crosby and H. P. Nichols, 1847), 104.
31 See George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, “Farewell Address,” Daily American Advertiser, September 19, 1796.
32 James Madison, “The Federalist No. 55,” The Federalist Papers (Buccaneer Books, 1992), 281.
33 S ee Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Edinburgh: Kincaid and Bell, 1761).
34 S ee John Quincy Adams, “The Jubilee of the Constitution,” speech delivered at Middle Dutch Church in New York City on April 30, 1839 (Samuel Colman, 1839).
35 Deuteronomy 11:18–20.
A Call for Dignity
by tami pyfer chief of staff and vp of external relations for unite and cocreator of the dignity index
When I was growing up, I had no idea how my neighbors voted. I didn’t know if my aunts and uncles were Republicans or Democrats. But now it seems impossible to not know someone’s political party. A fixation on political divisions has created a culture of contempt that is swirling around us.
This turbulence began to affect my family because each of us has different political views; by 2020 there were no conversations at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. Distressed, I began to focus on strategies to combat this negativity to help my family and others. As an advocate for unite—an initiative to promote civility and national unity—I used to spend 15 minutes presenting data on how divided Americans are. I don’t need 15 minutes anymore. We all feel this.
Donna Hicks, a conflictresolution specialist who has worked in war-torn countries across the globe, champions dignity as the most powerful strategy for conflict resolution. Dignity affirms the inherent worth we all have from birth, the acknowledgement that we are all brothers and sisters and we are all children of the Divine. Dignity means treating others fairly and ensur-
ing they feel seen, heard, and safe when sharing ideas. Hicks observes in her book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict that when warring parties are trying to negotiate an agreement, if one of them offers even the smallest gesture of dignity to the other side, that’s when the conversation changes and solutions start to manifest. Hicks correlates a loss of dignity with contempt, and if dignity is repeatedly violated, the result is war or divorce or revolution, because the natural response to a dignity violation is a desire for revenge. Think about bullies: Someone has treated them with contempt, and their desire for revenge plays out in their bullying behavior.
language in mind, we might catch ourselves before speaking and think, “I want to be a 5, 6, or 7. How do I respond in that way?”
This article is adapted from remarks delivered at byu Law’s Founders Day Dinner on August 27, 2024.
The problem is, it’s hard to maximize something if you can’t measure it. How do you measure dignity? The Dignity Index measures language that we use when we disagree, when we’re angry, when we’re afraid, and when we’re hurt. It’s a scale that goes from one to eight. On the lower end of the scale is contempt, and at the higher end we find dignity. When we treat people with dignity, what does that look like? It looks like this: “I disagree with what you did, and here’s why”— rather than: “You’re an idiot.” With the index
If we can shift the culture to a place where more people are choosing dignity than contempt, our families, our schools, our communities, and our democracy will be better. Let’s treat others with dignity, not contempt. Many of you are byu graduates or are associated with the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, and this means that many of you have made covenants with God and taken oaths to uphold the laws of the land. You are uniquely positioned to be a powerful force in your communities and bring us out of this toxic polarization that we find ourselves in. Welcome to the dignity movement.
