This last Sunday was “fifth Sunday” where the bishopric chooses a topic for the “fifth Sunday lesson.” Rather unusually, the First Presidency sent out an assigned topic for this lesson and it was religious freedom and the Constitution. A 22-minute video of a pleasant conversation about the topic between President Christofferson and Elder Cook was included with the suggested materials, along with some paragraphs lifted from GA talks, associated discussion questions, and links to a couple of talks by President Oaks. Like the 2021 Conference talk “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution.”

As fate would have it, I taught the lesson in my ward (and a second time later that day). So I thought I’d share my notes, just throwing out a few points, then get some feedback from readers for how the discussion went in your ward if you were able to attend the lesson. I know from a few discussions that plenty of bishoprics were worried the lesson might turn into a messy political discussion, but that didn’t happen in my lessons (which was part of the reason I sort of volunteered to teach it, so the discussion would not head in that direction).

  • I started off the lesson reading this exact quote from the video: “This is not a history lesson or a political discussion.” But I didn’t show the video (I know some teachers did). Too much good stuff to talk about and the video would have taken most of the time.
  • We talked about the First Amendment for ten or fifteen minutes: the Freedom of Speech Clause, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. There is no “thou shalt have religious freedom” paragraph in the Constitution. What we call “religious freedom” rests on those three clauses and a few other minor references in the body of the Constitution, plus the body of US Supreme Court cases that apply and extend the relevant First Amendment clauses.
  • In the United States, we swim in the water of religious freedom. You don’t generally realize that until you serve in a foreign country as an LDS missionary or live overseas for work or otherwise. So I invited those who worked or served in foreign countries to share their experience and observations. There were some nice productive comments shared. A good direction for the lesson.

In one of the lessons I went ahead and read most of the long quotation from President Oaks’ 2021 talk, which quotation was included with the materials sent out by the FP. I’m going to paste it here because it is really ought to get more attention. I’ll highlight some of the more important sentences.

On contested issues, we should seek to moderate and unify. …

There are many political issues, and no party, platform, or individual candidate can satisfy all personal preferences. Each citizen must therefore decide which issues are most important to him or her at any particular time. Then members should seek inspiration on how to exercise their influence according to their individual priorities. This process will not be easy. It may require changing party support or candidate choices, even from election to election.

Such independent actions will sometimes require voters to support candidates or political parties or platforms whose other positions they cannot approve. That is one reason we encourage our members to refrain from judging one another in political matters. We should never assert that a faithful Latter-day Saint cannot belong to a particular party or vote for a particular candidate. We teach correct principles and leave our members to choose how to prioritize and apply those principles on the issues presented from time to time. We also insist, and we ask our local leaders to insist, that political choices and affiliations not be the subject of teachings or advocacy in any of our Church meetings.

So how did things go in your ward lesson? Did anyone outside the US get the lesson or was it just US wards and stakes? Was it a positive lesson or did it go off the rails into politics?

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