Editor's note: This was previously published on the author's website.
Increasingly, there are individuals in society today who question the involvement of religious individuals — often Christians — in public roles in western society and in the world. This question is worth exploring.
Many people know or have heard of William Wilberforce, the great social reformer and member of British Parliament who worked tirelessly to outlaw slavery in Great Britain. He led a campaign that secured passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, outlawing the transportation of slaves aboard British ships. Even as his health failed, he worked in Parliament for the complete abolition of slavery and saw the British Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833, three days prior to his death.
The historical record and the movie, "Amazing Grace," not only recount his efforts to free slaves but accurately tie his persistent, persevering efforts to their roots: His convicted Christian conscience and his belief that to God slavery was a repugnant practice which good Christians were obligated to speak against and to end.
Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler, also a devout Christian, believed that she worked with and at God’s behest to repeal state-regulated prostitution in Great Britain and on the European continent during the Victorian era, particularly cognizant of its damning effects on all women’s lives.
Made aware of the widespread trafficking of women and children into sexual slavery, she also promoted and helped secure legislation in Britain and other European nations that criminalized human trafficking, helping bring to justice those involved in the heinous crime of profiting on enslaved women and children.
Although these and other lifelong campaigns — most aimed at greater equity for women — were often bruising and invited the wrath of many in society, she was able to persevere because she had a firm conviction that she acted according to Christian tenets and in God’s cause.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, was a devout Christian, aristocrat and influential member of British Parliament in the 19th century who successfully brought forward legislation that improved conditions in insane asylums, advanced and helped pass laws protecting chimney sweeps, and helped secure child labor and factory reform laws.
As president of the Ragged School Union, he oversaw the creation of numerous schools for poor children. Included in "Shaftesbury: A Biography of the Seventh Earl, 1801–1885" by Georgina Battiscombe is his explaination that, "If the Ragged School system were to fail I should not die in the course of nature, I should die of a broken heart."
It was Shaftesbury’s Christian conscience that drove him to work tirelessly to improve living conditions among the working classes, and he used his station in life to do so.
The list of committed Christian social reformers goes on, and on, and on, across the wide sweep of history: Florence Nightingale (nursing and health reform), Harriet Beecher Stowe (U.S. anti-slavery activist), Clara Barton (U.S. nursing), Susan B. Anthony (women’s rights), Elizabeth Fry (prison reform), Benjamin Waugh (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children), William and Catherine Booth (inner-city missions, founders of the Salvation Army), Frederick Douglas (U.S. anti-slavery activist), Ida B. Wells (journalist and anti-lynching activist), Martin Luther King, Jr. (U.S. civil rights leader), Mother Teresa (care of the poor in India), Heidi Baker (care of orphaned and abandoned children in Mozambique, Africa) and Celeste Mergens (sustainable menstrual management and education for girls around the world).
These individuals — and many, many more — were or are Christians who have worked or do now work tirelessly to help others and to create more equitable, compassionate and just societies — and each is stimulated by a deep-seated Christian conscience.
In the face of the great good that so many Christian reformers have affected, and continue to affect throughout the world, it begs logic and sensibility to hear some in today’s world suggest that religious individuals, that Christians — often inaccurately stereotyped as a threat to society, as dangerous, bigoted and narrow-minded — do not belong in the public world; that they should not be involved in political discourse and politics today, should not be involved in social policy decision-making and should not hold leadership positions in business and society.
Such demands contradict the historical record which provides powerful, persistent evidence that a multitude of the world’s great social reformers, politicians and leaders were Christians, that a multitude of social reform movements have not only been led by Christians but hundreds of thousands of Christians have been rank-and-file members of those causes, and that their efforts enormously benefited their fellow human beings.
In light of such incontrovertible evidence, isn’t the greater truth that, more than ever, individuals with a religious conscience who have been taught to love and serve God by loving and serving fellow women and men, who are willing to raise their voices in behalf of and to do for those in need, are exactly what is needed in the public world of business, politics, education and social reform today? Rather than calling for their withdrawal, perhaps the wiser position is to beg their wider and deeper involvement in every aspect of today’s world.
Kristine Frederickson writes on topics that affect members of the LDS Church worldwide in her column “LDS World." She teaches part time at BYU. Her views do not necessarily represent those of BYU.