Skip to main content
Religious Freedom Toolkit

Part IV | Select Quotes from Church Leaders

Category B | Principles

Topic 6 | Protecting conscience and conscientious objection

Conscience encompasses all deeply held convictions of an individual regarding what is right and wrong, including those based on religious belief. Conscientious objection, or “appeal to conscience,” is the refusal to follow a legal requirement based on conscience. Historically, state protection of conscience arose from the protection of religion-based conscientious objections to military service. If a state fails to protect religious conscience, the state will almost certainly fail to protect other conscience claims as well. Religion-based conscience claims have a heightened salience because of their appeal to an obligation higher than positive law. If duty to God is viewed as being insufficient to justify protecting conscience, then we should expect the state to view other grounds for protecting conscience, such as personal autonomy, to be insufficient as well.

◆ ◆ ◆

Elder D. Todd Christofferson: Heightened protection of religious freedom and the freedom of conscientious objection  

“This is all to say that our basic freedoms tend to rise and fall together. Courts that protect religious freedom tend to protect the freedom of speech and press, while courts that allow the government to infringe religious freedom tend to allow the infringement of other basic rights. I think, in particular, of the contrast in American history between World War I, when laws were upheld prohibiting dissent, and periods of heightened protection for speech and press that coincided with vigorous protections for religious freedom. Heightened protection for religious freedom in the United States during the 1970s tended to accompany heightened protections for other kinds of freedom—such as the freedom of conscientious objection during wartime, which protected sincere pacifists with no connection to a formal religious denomination or belief system during the Vietnam War.”

Previous - Topic 6 Analysis
See also Religious Freedom Library
Next - Topic 7 Summary