What to do with illegal immigrants is another great debate that divides Americans and the Republican party itself. The Economist reports ($$) this snippet that got me thinking about how a typical LDS member's response would be quite different."The Roman Catholic cardinal of Los Angeles said that he would urge his priests and lay Catholics to ignore a ban on aiding illegal immigrants."Wow! That's foreign to the modern LDS way of looking at things. We don't ignore laws or commit acts of civil disobedience against laws we don't like, whatever they might be. We are people that have been trained in our youth to use the system. In short, we aren't revolutionaries.
LDS Articles of Faith12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.And yes. I know that Thomas Jefferson thought a revolution was good every 20 years or so, but that isn't us. We will defend our lives if we have to. But at our core, we are organizational men who work within the system, even when a system might have flaws.
And when the system is deaf to our needs -- inflicting or allowing persecution, unjust incarceration or murder by mobs. Civil Disobedience? Revolution? Nope. Not us. History has shown that even in such a dire scenario our LDS propensity is to simply leave and be left alone.
3 comments:
Does this take into account the early Utah Mormons who defied the federal government, even going to jail in principal, to continue living a polygamist lifestyle? Some of these families went into hiding, others went to jail for their beliefs. They did not simply submit to the kings and rulers. No matter your views on polygamy, is this not a form of civil disobedience?
No, my opining does not take into account the early Utah Mormons who defied the federal government. The early saints seem to have practiced a form of civil disobedience. But, there was such a mish-mash of conflicting obedience and competing power between church, state and federalism.
There was the merging of church and state and who to obey, since the ecclesiastical leader, Brigham Young, doubled as the political leader, Utah's governor.
There was also the bigger struggle in the Union between territory / state and federal rights. We call it the War between the North and South, even though posturing seemed to have started in Utah. President Buchanan set the example that the territory of Utah was expected to follow federal laws and federally appointed state leaders. Then things really began to heat up. The Republicans swept into power insisting that polygamy and slavery be abolished.
So, it sounds to me that in the early days there was a great deal of muddledness when it came to obeying the government.
It was a confusing time. Who actually had the supremecy of authority?
I think the republicans were swept into power by a sectional minority on the platform of sectional interests. There was no national consensus to bother slavery or polygamy. The indecision of the rest gave the big government loving republicans the presidency.
Bob
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