Part IV | Select Quotes from Church Leaders
Category B | Principles
Topic 8 | Distinguishing secularism and secularity
Secularism takes many forms, but it often represents an ideology that promotes a secular state and the formation of secular citizens. Secularity, in contrast, is a more modest concept that is designed to provide a framework for pluralism. While secularism can degenerate into its own type of rigid fundamentalism, secularity can help create the constitutional space for individuals and groups to live together, even with deep differences with respect to religious or other systems of belief.
◆ ◆ ◆
Elder D. Todd Christofferson: Lawmakers should seek an inclusive, religion-friendly “secularity”
“[L]awmakers should strive not for an aggressive secularism that expels religious beliefs from the democratic conversation or marginalizes the role of religion in society. They should instead seek an inclusive, religion-friendly ‘secularity,’ based on equal respect for religious and nonreligious persons and viewpoints, where no one religion or ideology officially dominates the state. A generous, inclusive religious liberty is far more likely to lead to an enduring pluralism than a rigid, ideological secularism that oppresses religion and religious believers.”
- D. Todd Christofferson, Religious Liberty: The Basis of a Free and Just Society, First Forum on Religious Freedom in the Southern Cone (Oct. 29, 2021), https://www.religiousfreedomlibrary.org/documents/religious-liberty-the-basis-of-a-free-and-just-society.
◆ ◆ ◆
Elder D. Todd Christofferson: The space for us to freely and openly live out our deepest beliefs will tend to shrink.
“As a Church and as individual Church members, we face difficult challenges to our fundamental right to live according to the dictates of our faith. Our basic understanding of morality, marriage, family, and the purpose of life is becoming foreign to the secular cultures in which we live. As President Thomas S. Monson has noted, ‘Where once the standards of the Church and the standards of society were mostly compatible, now there is a wide chasm between us, and it’s growing ever wider.’ Values we once shared with the great majority of our fellow citizens are now often considered outdated, naïve, and sometimes even bigoted. Because a society’s deepest values drive law and public policy, and because those values in many Western nations are now almost entirely secular, government is increasingly enforcing secular values at the expense of religious ones. And society itself—even without the force of government—can ostracize, stigmatize, and discriminate against religious believers in overt and subtle ways, leaving people of faith marginalized and sometimes even despised. As this happens—and it is happening more rapidly in some countries than others—the space for us to freely and openly live out our deepest beliefs will tend to shrink and our ability to participate in civic life as free and equal citizens will tend to diminish. We indeed face challenging times.”
- D. Todd Christofferson, Watchmen on the Tower, Religious Freedom in a Secular Age, CLARK MEMORANDUM, Spring 2015, at 4, https://www.religiousfreedomlibrary.org/documents/watchmen-on-the-tower-religious- freedom-in-a-secular-age.