we celebrate our differences

Have you ever pondered on how the principle of respect for human dignity and equality is demonstrated through the simple way we dress in the house of the Lord? We all come to the temple united in one purpose and filled with the desire to be pure and holy in His holy presence. Dressed in white, all of us are received by the Lord Himself as His beloved children, men and women of God, progeny of Christ. We are privileged to perform the same ordinances, make the same covenants, commit ourselves to live higher and holier lives, and receive the same eternal promises. United in purpose, we see one another with new eyes, and in our oneness, we celebrate our differences as divine children of God.

Ulisses Soares

"Brothers and Sisters in Christ," General Conference October 2023

freedom consists

One hundred thirty years ago, President Abraham Lincoln asked whether a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could "long endure". President Lincoln’s question is no less a question for the present generation of Americans. Democracy cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and human community. The basic question before a democratic society is: "how ought we to live together?" In seeking an answer to this question, can society exclude moral truth and moral reasoning? Can the Biblical wisdom which played such a formative part in the very founding of your country be excluded from that debate?

Would not doing so mean that America’s founding documents no longer have any defining content, but are only the formal dressing of changing opinion? Would not doing so mean that tens of millions of Americans could no longer offer the contribution of their deepest convictions to the formation of public policy? Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

His Holiness John Paul II

Apostolic Journey to the United States of America. Eucharistic Celebration. Homily of His Holiness John Paul II. Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore. Sunday, 8 October 1995

an immoral choice

Many on the religious left criticize capitalism because all do not end up monetarily equal—or, as Churchill quipped, "all equally miserable." But the Bible's prescription of equality means equality under the law, as in Deuteronomy's saying that "Judges and officers . . . shall judge the people with a just judgment: Do not . . . favor one over the other." Nowhere does the Bible refer to a utopian equality that is contrary to human nature and has never been achieved. 

The motive of capitalism's detractors is a quest for their own power and an envy of those who have more money. But envy is a cardinal sin and something that ought not to be.
God begins the Ten Commandments with "I am the Lord your God" and concludes with "Thou shalt not envy your neighbor, not for his wife, nor his house, nor for any of his holdings." Envy is corrosive to the individual and to those societies that embrace it. Nations that throw over capitalism for socialism have made an immoral choice.


ARYEH SPERO, "What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism," Wall Street Journal. JANUARY 30, 2012, 11:38 A.M. ET.

we are all children of the same Father

If [the] empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and all morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine that we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to Him for our conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect each other’s self love.


John Adams written note in the margin’s of Mary Wollstonecraft’s French Revolution, as quoted in John Adams by David McCullough. Simon and Schuster, 2001. p.619

the premise of the nation was spiritual

The premise of the nation was spiritual, not secular. “Our ancestors who formed this government said, ‘We hold that all men are endowed by their Creator…’ Not by the accident of birth, not by the color of their skins or by anything else, but ‘all men are endowed by their Creator,’” Eisenhower stated. ‘In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept but it must be a religion that [believes] all men are created equal… Even those among us who are, in my opinion, so silly as to doubt the existence of an Almighty, are still members of a religious civilization, because the Founding Fathers said it was a religious concept that they were trying to translate into the political world.” Eisenhower understood something many Americans do not quite grasp even now: that “Nature’s God” resides at the center of the Founding.


American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Mecham. Random House. 2006. p.177

An odd but important fact is that, in what [Jefferson] called his "original Rough draft," he did put it more clearly. "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable," he wrote, "that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive certain inherent & inalienable rights..." "Created equal and independent" is better than the flat "created equal." because it focuses the meaning Jefferson intended for "equal": it implies social equality, with nobody naturally entitled to lord it over anybody else. Moreover, the original "from that equal creation they derive... inherent & inalienable rights" also clarifies the import of "all men are created equal" - that is, that all are equally entitled (regardless of innate disparities) to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," because these rights are derived from the equal creation. The equal creation and the entitlement to the inalienable rights are inextricably linked: one is essentially the meaning of the other. It is not known whether Jefferson made the changes on his own (although they appear to be in his handwriting), or whether they resulted from consultations with his committee members Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Either way, they are a demonstration that editing does not always guarantee improvement.


E.M. Halliday, Understanding Thomas Jefferson by E.M. Halliday, 2001. p.223