And now, I pray that those who belong to this Church will hearken to that warning. I sincerely hope the American nation will turn for counsel toward these great mountains where the House of the Lord is established, where His inspired servants may be found, and, above all, that this nation’s people will hearken to that counsel, to achieve the place that Thomas Jefferson predicted would be our blessing if we followed the fundamentals of government as laid down by the founders of this great nation, and to avoid the catastrophe that now lies immediately ahead:

Let us then with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and republican principles, our attachment to our Union and representative government. Kindly separated by Nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal rights to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting, not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter; and with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

As members of this Church we know what our relationship to the Government of the United States is. We know what our responsibilities are, for God has revealed them to us. I sincerely pray as citizens of the United States, as members of this great Church, we will set an example which will create, if it is possible, a restitution of all those glorious privileges and blessings that we have lost and are losing—and we will arouse America by our example.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1941

Topics: America, Future; Freedom, Loss of; Responsibility

Upholding The Constitution

Finally, if we would make the world better, let us foster a keener appreciation of the freedom and liberty guaranteed by the government of the United States as framed by the founders of this nation. Here again self-proclaimed progressives cry that such old-time adherence is out of date. But there are some fundamental principles of this Republic which, like eternal truths, never get out of date, and which are applicable at all times to liberty-loving peoples. Such are the underlying principles of the Constitution, a document framed by patriotic, freedom-loving men, who Latter-day Saints declare were inspired by the Lord.

This date, October 6, has been set apart by churches as “Loyalty Day.” It is highly fitting, therefore, as a means of making the world better, not only to urge loyalty to the Constitution and to threatened fundamentals of the United States government, but to warn the people that there is evidence in the United States of disloyalty to tried and true fundamentals in government. There are unsound economic theories; there are European “isms,” which, termite like, secretly and, recently, quite openly, and defiantly, are threatening to undermine our democratic institutions.

Today, as never before, the issue is clearly defined—liberty and freedom of choice, or oppression and subjugation for the individual and for nations.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, October 1940

Topics: Government, Downfall; Responsibility

A hundred and fifty years ago, the founders of our Republic announced the sublime truth that men are free and equal. A century and a half have rolled away since then, and the history of the world has no chapter to compare with the accomplishments of America in that time. Standing on Saxon foundations, and inspired by Latin example, we have done what no race or nation or age has ever accomplished. The American people have founded a Republic on the unlimited suffrage of the millions of souls that inhabit this land. They have worked out the problem that a man, as God created him, may be entrusted with self-government.

Our forebears had a virgin continent to conquer. The fundamental problems they met with hard work and a faith in themselves. They had inherited from their fathers, the ideals of home-life, freedom of religion, the free state, the public school, and the lands of the vast continent to till, on which they built their homes.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1937

Topics: America, Heritage; Free Agency

May the Lord be with us at all times, under all circumstances; may he bring into our lives a burning desire to uphold the Constitution, a living faith in its inspired origin, that we may always be found among those who shall support it to the last breath.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1935

Topics: Responsibility

Latter-day Saints Should Set Example

Eighteen months ago, when first I stood before you I called attention, as earnestly and seriously as I knew how, to what looked to me to be the dangers that were ahead, and I urged you at that time to practice the old virtues of thrift, of honesty, of truthfulness, of industry, and so on through the list of those I named. All that I said then I say again.

One year ago, on this occasion, I called your attention to the abuses that had crept into the distribution of our public funds, and I urged you and pleaded with you that, so far as the Church and its membership were concerned, we do not soil our hands with the bounteous outpouring of funds which the government was giving unto us. I renew that plea now. My brethren and sisters, for the sake of the government which we love, for the sake of the government which we believe was divinely inspired, be honest with it. Be honest, just ordinarily gold honest. That is all I ask.

Do you know that all of the money that we are spending, that the government is spending, must come from you? The government has no great pile of gold to which it can go to get what it gives you. The government has not one cent that it does not take from your pockets. Do not imagine, do not believe, do not go on the theory that you are not to pay this bill, unless the fundamentals of our government are to be overturned.

What we get, we members of the Church, compared with the total mass that is distributed, is almost microscopic, but the spirit in which we might take it, the spirit in which we might spend it, is the leaven that might leaven the whole lump. Let us be patriotic; let us love the government under which we live.

I am persuaded, from all the facts that have come to me, that it would have been possible, if we had functioned as the Lord intended us to function, if we had paid our tithes and our offerings as the Lord intended us to pay them, we might have gone on without one dollar from our federal government. And has it ever occurred to you what a mighty influence we should have exercised for good and for respect and for all of the virtues that we have been taught, and that God has commanded us to exercise and cultivate and practice, if we had just followed along what he has asked us to do?

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Economics; Freedom, Loss of

The Latter-day Saints believe that they must be loyal to their country, honoring its laws, upholding its institutions, its constituted authorities, and doing all things that American citizens ought to do. They are taught that the Constitution of the United States was inspired of God and framed by wise men whom the Almighty raised up for this very purpose, and that it “should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh,” so that every man may act according to the moral agency which God has given him, that he “may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.”

Believing this, they cannot be otherwise than loyal. They do not blame the government of the United States for their past persecutions at the hands of lawless mobs. They realize that such things were not because of the Constitution and the Government, but in spite of them; and they stand ready at all times to honor the laws of this nation and to defend it against foes without or within.

Source: Elder Reed Smoot
General Conference, October 1933

Topics: Citizenship; US Constitution, Inspired

No Tyranny

Freedom is the Gospel’s sign manual. Tyranny has no place therein. There is no room in all the Government of God for the exercise of unrighteous dominion.

Eternity’s Constitution

The God we worship is no respecter of persons, but He is a respecter of men’s rights, and a guardian of them—a fact clearly shown in the heaven-inspired Constitution of our country, and in the Gospel itself, which might be termed the Constitution of Eternity.

Source: Elder Orson F. Whitney
General Conference, October 1930

Topics: Rights

Mormonism is pre-eminently an American religion, as was more fully presented by the First Presidency this morning. It stands for America, North and South, and particularly for the government of the United States. It teaches that this western hemisphere is a land choice above all other lands—a land of liberty dedicated to freedom and righteousness. The Constitution of the United States is believed in with religious devotion, that its framers were heaven-inspired. And well may such a belief be cherished.. Gladstone, the great English premier, said of it:

“As far as I can see the American Constitution is the greatest and most wonderful work ever struck off at one time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Source: Elder Charles H. Hart
General Conference, October 1928

Topics: America, Heritage

A Land Of Liberty

Think of the blessings that came to America. How Columbus was inspired to go out upon the great waters and find his way to this western land. Then the settlers of Jamestown, the pilgrim fathers, and all those early pioneers who came to America because they desired to serve God according to the dictates of their conscience. The Lord blessed them and finally raised up a nation that is the wonder and the admiration of the earth. Those men who framed the Constitution of the United States were not only wise in the things of this world, but they were inspired by our Heavenly Father who raised them up for that very purpose. This marvelous government that we enjoy in this favored land of liberty, was given to man that it might be a blessing to him. Here men and women are permitted to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience. Our Heavenly Father will not coerce or compel mankind, but in loving kindness has given to them from the age when the world was first peopled until now, opportunity to know the tuth.

Source: Elder George Albert Smith
General Conference, October 1928

Topics: America, History; Heavenly Interest in Human Events

•  ⟨⟨ 
•  ⟨ 
•   |  
•  ⟩ 
•  ⟩⟩