Many religious conservatives believe the traditional liberal order is failing. And looking at the data, they have a point.

Many things are moving in the right direction. Since the birth of classical liberalism, global poverty has plummeted from near 80% to under 9%, life expectancy has more than doubled, and violent crime is at historic lows. Religious liberty protections in the United States are stronger than virtually anywhere in human history.

But other things are breaking. Teen depression and anxiety rates have doubled since 2010. Marriage rates have fallen nearly 60% since 1970. Birth rates have cratered below replacement levels. Community bonds are dissolving. Loneliness has become epidemic. Political polarization has intensified to levels not seen since the Civil War era.

The family, the fundamental unit of society, struggles to survive in a culture that treats it as optional at best and oppressive at worst. Meaning structures that sustained civilization for millennia are weakening or disappearing entirely.

Secular liberalism promised neutral public spaces where diverse communities could coexist peacefully, but in practice those “neutral” spaces often became vehicles for harmful ideologies hostile to traditional religion and the virtue that flows from it. Public schools teach gender theory as settled science. Corporate HR departments enforce progressive orthodoxy. Administrative agencies regulate religious institutions. The state did not remain neutral. It just changed which comprehensive vision it enforces.

So the question religious conservatives are asking is reasonable: If secular institutions have failed to form virtue and preserve what matters most, shouldn’t we use government to restore what is being lost?

Many on the right are answering yes. If progressive ideology uses state power to advance its vision, we should use state power to advance ours. If secular institutions fail to form character, religious institutions backed by law should step in. If the family is collapsing, perhaps government should incentivize or even mandate family structures.

I understand this impulse. I share the alarm.

But as a Latter-day Saint, I believe we should take a different path. Coercion can never produce true goodness; it can only compel outward behavior. If we want to build a better society and protect our way of life in the long term, a more liberty-centric approach to cultural change is the best path forward.

Liberty as a Familiar Alternative

This does not mean abandoning virtue, family, or community. It means getting government out of domains where it has failed and trusting voluntary institutions to do the work that actually transforms lives. This approach has two complementary commitments:

First, protect liberty fiercely in the public sphere. Limit what government controls. Prevent majorities from using state power to enforce their vision on minorities. Ensure that families, churches, communities, and voluntary associations have the freedom to operate according to their values without government either forcing them to compromise those values or forcing others to adopt them.

Second, fight the battle for virtue in the private sphere. Build families so strong that people want to emulate them. Create churches so compelling that people choose to join them. Demonstrate through your life that virtue produces joy, meaning, and flourishing. Compete and win in a marketplace of free thought and association. We should not use state power to mandate virtue. We should prove through voluntary excellence that our way of life produces human flourishing and invite others to join us freely.

For Latter-day Saints specifically, this should feel natural. We are a tiny religious minority that thrives when government protects our liberty to worship, organize, build institutions, and live according to our values. We suffer when majorities use state power to enforce their vision of righteousness.

The liberty we preserve for others to make decisions we disagree with is the same liberty that protects our ability to live our peculiar religion. Liberty is not just morally right. It is the most durable protection we can give to our way of life. It is also where our theology points.  

Liberty in God’s Plan

The most fundamental question in Latter-day Saint theology is also the most politically relevant: What is the purpose of existence?

We believe humans can become divine beings. If the purpose of existence is transformation into beings with infinite potential, then moral agency is not optional—it is the necessary mechanism by which transformation happens.

You cannot force someone to become godly. Coerced compliance does not develop divine capacity. It produces obedience without understanding, behavior without character, conformity without transformation. God is independently good; His holiness flows from what He is, not from rules imposed on Him. If we are supposed to become like that, we must learn to choose righteousness freely, internalizing virtue until it becomes our nature, not just our compliance.

The War in Heaven expands our understanding of this. In the premortal council, Lucifer promised to save everyone by eliminating agency entirely. God rejected this plan—not because it would not produce behavioral compliance, but because it would destroy what He is trying to create: beings capable of independent righteousness. God chose agency knowing some would fail because the alternative would destroy the very purpose of existence. 

That answer is not emotionally satisfying. Liberty is costly. But if God chose agency despite its risks, we cannot justify using coercion to produce virtue.

Our scripture shows us how the righteous should tolerate error. Alma 30:7-11 describes Nephite prophets facing false teachers willfully corrupting souls. God’s command? They are explicitly forbidden from using law to control religious belief: “there was no law against a man’s belief.” Here God refused to let even His prophet use state power to create forced virtue.

Doctrine and Covenants 121 makes this structural: “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned.” Notice: “can or ought.” Not just “should not”—cannot. Coercion breaks divine authority. This is not a temporary accommodation for mortality. It reveals something eternal about righteous power.

Living prophets affirm this often. In his October 2025 General Conference address, Elder David A. Bednar taught about the “eternal importance of moral agency” which he defined as “the divinely designed power of independent action that empowers us as God’s children to become agents to act and not simply objects to be acted upon.” 

And in prior times of cultural turmoil, prophets have made it clear this extends to the political. President Ezra Taft Benson warned: “one of Lucifer’s primary strategies has been to restrict our agency through the power of earthly governments.” He did not isolate left-wing tyranny, but any use of state power to coerce private virtue.

Our history teaches the same lesson. For our entire history, we have been a religious minority headquartered in a Christian majority nation. When Christian majorities wielded state power to enforce their vision of virtue, we were often the targets. Missouri’s governor ordered our “extermination.” Joseph and Hyrum were murdered by a mob that believed they were defending Christian civilization. This was state power wielded by Christians convinced their religious vision justified coercion. When we are tempted to use government to restore virtue, we should remember we know exactly what that looks like from the other side.

The Risks of Reaching for State Power

Reaching for state power instead carries serious risks. First, you hand those with views opposed to yours the blueprint. Every tool you build, every precedent you establish, every expansion of government power you create to enforce your values becomes available to your opponents when they win elections. And they will win elections.

You might establish laws promoting traditional marriage. They will use the same state machinery to enforce gender ideology in schools. You might require religious education in public schools. They will mandate intersectional social justice curriculum. The power does not stay in your hands. It transfers. And when it does, you will face the very machinery you have built to advance their values.

The authority you claim to enforce your values is the identical authority that will be used to suppress them. The liberty you extend to others to build institutions you disagree with is the same liberty that protects our Church’s freedom to operate. The most durable defense to our LDS community is not winning the culture war through state power. It is ensuring state power cannot be used to settle cultural questions at all.

Second, you teach the next generation that politics determines virtue. Once you establish that state power is the proper tool for cultural formation, the only question becomes: who has more votes? 

Third, you signal that voluntary persuasion is not sufficient. If Christianity truly produces human flourishing, why do you need state enforcement?

The gospel succeeds through attraction, not compulsion. People become Christians because they encounter Christ and recognize Him as the source of life abundant. They join churches because they see communities living with joy, purpose, and love that they want for themselves.

When you reach for state power to enforce religious values, you are announcing that attraction is not working. You are saying your faith cannot compete on its merits in a free marketplace of ideas. That is spiritually devastating. If we really believed that truth freely chosen would prevail, we would not need state coercion.

All of this is to render unto Caesar what is God’s.

The Path Forward

We are facing real and serious problems. The concerns driving religious conservatives toward government solutions are legitimate and urgent. 

But Latter-day Saints have unique resources to see why that response is both theologically wrong and strategically unwise.

Our theology teaches that transformation requires freely chosen action, not coerced compliance. Our scripture commands tolerance even of false teachers. Our prophets warn against restricting agency through government. Our history shows what happens when Christian majorities wield state power to enforce virtue.

Let’s build the Kingdom of God through persuasion, not coercion. Let the state protect rights while God transforms lives through voluntary institutions. Compete in the marketplace of ideas with confidence that truth, freely chosen, will prevail.

God chose liberty over guaranteed outcomes in the War in Heaven because agency matters more than safety and freedom matters more than forced righteousness. As Latter-day Saints, we should understand why that choice was right and why we must make it in our politics today.

Let’s start rendering unto God what is God’s.

 

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