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Religious Freedom Toolkit

Part IV | Select Quotes from Church Leaders

Category F | Doctrines

Topic 31 | Understanding limitations

While religious freedom is a universal right, it is not an absolute or unlimited right. A clear understanding of the boundaries of legitimate limitations on religious actions or manifestations is important. We can think of these principles as placing “limits on limitations” of religious freedom.

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President Dallin H. Oaks: Even religious rights cannot be absolute.  

“In responses to government, we should remember Jesus’ charge to ‘render [give] . . . unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.’ Even religious rights cannot be absolute. In a nation with citizens of many different religious beliefs or disbeliefs, the government must sometimes limit the rights of some to act upon their religious beliefs when doing so is necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all. In addition, some other citizens may even have competing constitutional rights against which some religious liberties must be balanced.

Our efforts to resolve challenges to religious liberty will be strengthened if we do not always seek total dominance for our own positions. Some accommodations may be necessary as we strive to honor legitimate laws and respect other persons’ highest ideals and human experiences. Conflicting claims are best resolved by seeking to understand the experiences and concerns of others, and by good faith negotiations. None of this requires any compromise of our core religious principles, but rather a careful examination of what is really essential to our free exercise of religion, in contrast to what other believers consider really essential to their beliefs. In this way we learn to live peacefully with some laws we dislike and with some persons whose values differ from our own.”

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Elder Gerrit W. Gong: Neither freedom of belief nor freedom of expression are absolute.

“Which rights, if restrained, would most strongly intrude on that individual´s human dignity? I am confident not only for this audience, but for a vast majority of people in the world, Freedom of Religion or Belief and Freedom of Expression would be at or near the top of the list. Together, these two rights protect the individual´s core conscience and right of self- determination, perhaps more than any other rights.

Of course, neither right is absolute. Governments define in different ways where the appropriate restraints exist, both as to Freedom of Religion or Belief and Freedom of Expression. I am not suggesting to any government where it should draw those lines. But I do highlight and reiterate the fundamental nature of these two freedoms with respect to individual Human Dignity and happiness.”

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