A: The church does
not endorse any particular candidate or political party, however:
“The Church does… Reserve the right as an institution to
address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant
community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interests of the
Church” (Official Statement on Political Neutrality, http://www.mormonnewsroom.org).
This has been the case throughout the church’s history. For instance, the church expressed support
for the so-called (and much praised) “Utah compromise” (Utah senate bill 296)
which contained language designed to protect LGBT individuals from
discrimination, while also protecting and preserving religious freedoms. In the case of California Proposition 8, the
church sent a letter to congregations in California encouraging members to get
involved in efforts to pass the proposition, but the church was not directly
involved, nor did it donate any money to those efforts. Less recently, church leaders encouraged
members to speak out against ratifying the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in
the United States. There are many other
examples of the church urging members to speak up on one issue or another on “issues
that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that
directly affect the interests of the Church.”
Note the careful wording in the passage quoted at the top of
this article. The church reserves the
right to “address” issues. In the recent
letter about marijuana, the strongest language used by the first presidency is
that they “urge” the members to speak up in opposition to the legalization of marijuana. (Note that nowhere in the letter is anyone
specifically told to vote one way or another). That’s because such letters
constitute counsel rather than commandment.
As such, they do not represent any kind of direct mandate to the members
to vote one way or another. That means
that you are left to reason for yourself as to what the right course of action
should be. Even if they could force the
members to vote a certain way, the brethren would not do it.
“Some may believe that reason is not free when religious leaders
have spoken, but I doubt that any religious leader in twentieth-century America
has such a grip on followers that they cannot make a reasoned choice in the
privacy of the voting booth. In fact, I have a hard time believing that the
teachings of religions or churches deprive their adherents of any more autonomy
in exerting the rights of citizenship than the teachings and practices of labor
unions, civil rights groups, environmental organizations, political parties, or
any other membership group in our society.” (Dallin H. Oaks, “Religious Values
and Public Policy,” address given 29 February 1992, Brigham Young University
Management Society, lds.org).
