Established on Just and Holy Principles
What I Believe
America’s founding documents: The Declaration of Independence, The United States Constitution, and The Bill of Rights are the culmination of centuries of progress. Paving the way for freedom, they express the ideals that define “We the People of the United States” and inspire free people around the world. They represent the consolidation of eternal truths for the universal blessing of the human family, the common connection through which all the inhabitants of Earth will be blessed.
Envisioning an empire of liberty traveling westward, the Founding Fathers looked forward with eager expectation to the destined moment when America would give the “law” to the rest of the world in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah: “Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
Reflecting this sentiment, Thomas Jefferson wrote in his initial rough draft: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” Preferring a phrase which characterized the truths as grounded in rationality and reason–truths that could be understood by basic, original evidence and man’s innate moral common sense–not in the dictates or dogma of any particular religion, Benjamin Franklin changed the wording to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” In both cases, these statesmen were declaring that in its design and intent what they were proposing was to be established “according to just and holy principles” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:77).
It was this appeal of America’s values, through a willingness to engage in a war of ideas, that won us independence. Likewise, it has been the continued appeal of America’s values that has assured victory over totalitarianism and communism in modern times. Both generations realized that ideas had power which would prove stronger than weapons.
Now being challenged by those who are willing to undermine our founding principles through the advancement of progressive policies and increasing governmental power, we, as citizens who believe we are entitled to liberty and that our rights should be respected by a government whose legitimacy comes from our consent, are seeing unfold before our eyes what lawyer and diplomat James Russell Lowell may have had in mind when he said, “Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.”
In like manner, we are witnessing the deteriorating conditions in our culture and social environment which call attention to the words of John Adams, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Little by little, day by day, in a failure that would dismay the Founders, who knew the power of those truths they proclaimed nearly 250 years ago, we are losing the war in defense of self-evident truths–the war of ideas, ideals, and eternal verities–in America and around the world. A caution to each of us, we must awaken to the truth that the ideals which inspired the Founding Fathers remain inspiring today.
As to what we can do, we must understand that people and principles are superior to the governments they form. Thomas Jefferson emphasized principles in the Declaration of Independence by advancing the claim that all persons are entitled to equal rights and privileges before the law, that certain rights come from the Creator, and in themselves are divine and eternal in nature, and that these sacred rights pertain in part to the enjoyment of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Also focusing on correct principles, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that both governmental and personal leadership are successful when rooted in principle rather than expediency.
In the Great Declaration of Belief regarding governments and laws in general, members of the Restored Church in 1835 sustained the principle of a “higher law,” designed to protect the free agency of man. “We do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion; that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul” (DC 134:4). The doctrine of higher law is an ancient idea. It runs to the most basic considerations in religion. It is found in cultures throughout history.
For example, Aristotle distinguished between written laws, which are man-made, and the “law,” which he felt was in accordance with nature and therefore immutable. In Roman law, distinctions were made between the summa lex, or the highest law, and the lex scripta, or man-made law. Catholic philosophers from Augustine to Aquinas discussed the idea of an overruling law of nature, and other fundamental laws which were not capable of being changed by any civil authority. Anglo-Saxon political and legal tradition, including the philosophical method of John Locke and the scientific method of Isaac Newton, were also part of the “establishment” process which resulted in the formation of America’s founding documents and their assertion that people are created equal and have certain inalienable rights.
The Framers not only understood the significance of the legacy which history and tradition had bequeathed them but coupled that knowledge to their own colonial experience so when it came to political questions, they were at home not only in Virginia, Maryland, or New York, but also equally at home in Rome, in Athens, in Paris, and in London. “The Constitution was born, not only of the wisdom and experience of the generation that wrought it, but also out of the wisdom of the long generations that had gone before, and which had been transmitted to them through tradition and the pages of history” (J. Reuben Clark).
In 1842, Joseph Smith declared, “The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God.” Providing deep insight into the religious basis of our founding documents, members of the Church sustain several underlying principles which represent a practical guarantee in the political arena that individual freedom will not perish.
First, the basic elements of constitutional government, as embodied in our founding documents, “should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh” (DC 101:77). Each individual, whatever their race, color, or creed, is equally entitled to the protection of law in the exercise of personal rights.
Second, America’s government should be maintained “according to just and holy principles” (DC 101:77). The Framers, by divine inspiration, embedded within our founding documents certain eternal principles–self-evident truths. “Just and holy” in nature, these principles prove themselves without the need of further validation. They are the eternal, irrevocable, and inalienable “endowment” of all mankind.
Third, the purpose for which these “just and holy principles” exist is to assure that “every man may act in doctrine and principles pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment” (DC 101:78.) This pronouncement suggests that principled limitations upon the government are ordained to provide the maximum possible range of freedom of choice as people engage in the pursuit of happiness and the creation of a more perfect union.
Fourth, “It is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another. And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose,” (DC 101:79-80). The most common charge leveled against the Founders, and hence against our country itself, is that they were hypocrites who did not believe in their stated principles, and therefore the country they built rests on a lie. This charge is false!
Even so, “Many Americans labor under the illusion that slavery was somehow a uniquely American evil” (1776 Report). In truth, “It was the Western world’s repudiation of slavery, only just beginning to build at the time of the American Revolution, which marked a dramatic sea change in moral sensibilities. The American Founders were living on the cusp of this change, in a manner that straddled two worlds” (Ibid). Our Founding Fathers knew that slavery was incompatible with the idea that “all men are created equal.” Yet, in the formative years of the United States, there was insurmountable social, cultural, and political opposition in the fight to end human bondage in America.
Following the loss of over 600,000 lives, the clashes in the halls of Congress and on the battlefields of America were finally resolved by amendments that abolished slavery. However, amplified by the machinations of politics and selfish human interests, the damage done by the denial of core American principles proved widespread and long-lasting. Continuing to this day, they form the basis of some of the destructive theories that continue to divide us and tear at the fabric of our country.
In the fight against tyrannical practices, we need to remember that our history is one of common struggle and great achievement. Our ancestors won independence, created a government, and tamed a wilderness. Interpreting the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln noted, “They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all . . . and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
Having based our political legitimacy on the eternal principles of liberty, justice, and consent of the governed, Jefferson was singled out by Lincoln, who wrote, “All honor to Jefferson–the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce in a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, . . . a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
Hence, in their appeal to both reason and revelation, our founding documents speak to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” to the principle of freedom, and to the will of “We the People.” Working together, they are “an outgrowth, in practical terms, of man’s desire to protect the principle of free agency by defining the role and limits of civil authority” (G. Homer Durham). In other words, “just and holy principles,” championed by the hands of wise men who were raised up for that very purpose, provide the foundation and legitimacy of our nation.
In a recent address on the Constitution, Dallin H. Oaks told of an experience in the 1960s when he began teaching law at the University of Chicago. An older professor, who had taught at the University of Utah’s College of Law early in his career related that he met many students who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “They all seemed to believe that the Constitution was divinely inspired,” he said, “but none of them could ever tell me what this meant or how it affected their interpretation of the Constitution.”
President Oaks went on to say that he believes the Constitution is divinely inspired because it contains principles and rights that bless not only this nation but also the world. To him, the attribution of sovereign power to the people, the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, and the balancing of powers between the federal government and the states is the foundation for a well-ordered government of laws, and not of men.
Respecting the divine nature of human relations, Friedrich A. Hayek declared, “If old truths are to retain their hold on men’s minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations.” In other words, every generation needs someone to interpret the wisdom of the past for the present, for every generation must rediscover true history and the gospel anew.
This is especially true in our day “because error is preached all the time.” As a result, “Truth has to be repeated constantly” (Goethe). Our collective task is both exhilarating and foreboding: “We must stop the mindless destruction of historical America” (David McCullough).
Think about it! As Americans, the story we have to tell is exciting beyond measure! As one of 56 delegates who gathered in Carpenters’ Hall in 1774, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that “he thought he had come to one of the greatest conclaves of the greatest minds of all time. He was amazed by the range and variety of talents on display” (McCullough). Two years later, this group of patriots would pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the cause of freedom.
Years later, having again finished their work in Independence Hall, James Madison wrote of his colleagues: “Whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction, derived from my intimate opportunity of observing and appreciating the views of the Convention, collectively and individually, that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the members of the Federal Convention of 1787.”
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in our desire to champion civic awareness and the common good, it is our privilege and responsibility to affirm that, “History is not an accident. Events are foreknown to God. Long before America was even discovered, the Lord was moving and shaping events that would lead to the coming forth of the remarkable form of government established by the Constitution” (Benson). It was not by chance that the Puritans and others who followed later left their native land and sailed to New England where they were inspired to establish the God-given system of government under which we live. Laying the foundation for the 1820 vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the unfolding Restoration, this series of historical events is described by the biblical prophet Isaiah as “a marvelous work and a wonder.”
We need not pretend to a divine commission and a sacred destiny. America is a part of redemptive history, of divine prophecy fulfilled, of God’s grand design. Established for the rights and protection of all flesh, America’s founding documents represent the practical guarantee in the political arena that adherence to natural law and Christian teachings will protect freedom, that liberty of conscience and individual moral agency will not perish from the Earth.
This is why I believe.
