There’s rather less snow here at the moment than is shown in the photograph, which was probably taken in the earlier spring or in the fall. Last time I was here, a couple of years ago, it was much MORE snowy.
This is a really interesting issue, and the little essay below raises it nicely:
As both a Latter-day Saint and, rather distinctly, as someone with libertarian inclinations, I would prefer that the State’s role in such things be minimal.
I believe that I’ve recounted a story here about my experience at a Muslim-Mormon “dialogue” in Pocatello, Idaho, many years ago.
Near the end, my surprisingly hardline Muslim debating opponent declared that, when Islam gained power, all false religions would be outlawed.
I was shocked. This is an extreme position even for a Muslim. It has little or now historical precedent. I guess that I responded audibly, and he turned around to me, rather sharply and even angrily (or so it seemed to me), and told me not to pretend that, if Mormonism ever gained such power, we wouldn’t ban all religions other than our own.
I responded that we absolutely would not. That we regarded coerced choice as no choice at all, that the point of this life was to freely choose God and truth, that a pre-mortal council in which coercion was rejected and agency affirmed was a fundamental element of our canonical and scriptural belief. I’m not sure that I told him about the Church’s rejection of the right, which we could legally have enjoyed as a Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts during the first few years after World War Two in Austria and Germany, to have tithes at least partially extracted for us by the coercive tax-gathering institutions of the State. If not, I should have, because it demonstrates that our belief in religious liberty and individual agency isn’t mere lip-service.
Posted from Grindelwald, Switzerland
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