Part IV | Select Quotes from Church Leaders
Category B | Principles
Topic 11 | Tolerance, respect, love
Tolerance, respect, and love are each important and valuable concepts, but each is most efficacious in a different sphere of legal, political, moral, and religious life. It is helpful to think of tolerance as primarily a legal and political principle, respect as primarily a political and moral principle, and love as primarily a moral and religious principle.
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Elder D. Todd Christofferson: Religious freedom teaches us first to tolerate, then to respect, and then to love our neighbor.
”Protecting and respecting religious freedom serves as a training ground for protecting and respecting other human rights and freedoms. It teaches us that government has limits: that there are aspects of life that are so sensitive and personal that the coercive jurisdiction of the state must yield to the jurisdiction of the sacred and individual conscience. Religious freedom teaches us to see the inherent dignity of each person. It teaches us first to tolerate, then to respect, and then to love our neighbor.
I fear that if our societies fail to vigorously protect and respect religious freedom, then we will lose not only religious freedom but many other freedoms too.”
- D. Todd Christofferson, Religious Freedom: Protecting the Good Religion Does, G20 Interfaith Forum (Sept. 27, 2018), https://www.religiousfreedomlibrary.org/documents/religious-freedom-protecting-the-good-religion-does.