As the nation grapples with how to unite in the face of what can seem like an ontological political divide, prosocial religion offers one of the best avenues by which people from various backgrounds and political persuasions learn from one another and put people before partisanship.
This week, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns this paper, is holding its 187th Semiannual General Conference, a series of church-wide meetings in which the faith’s leaders communicate directly to Latter-day Saints and the world.
The conference comes at a time when the United States faces significant political, social and even humanitarian challenges. Polling data show that many Americans have vastly different views on issues such as immigration, foreign policy, health care, tax reform and matters of morality and culture.
How can people of conscience bridge this divide and navigate the shoals of contemporary American society?
In the opening session of general conference held last week, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the First Presidency of the LDS Church cited a Boston University study in which researchers interviewed “Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East, and Republicans and Democrats in the United States.”
The study found that “each side felt their own group (was) motivated by love more than hate, but when asked why their rival group (was) involved in the conflict, (they) pointed to hate as (the other) group’s motivating factor.”
As President Uctdorf pointed out, villainizing one’s political opponents can have dire consequences for a nation as well as the soul.
A German emigrant, President Uchtdorf cited his own home country during World War II as an example of what can happen when a society gives way to hate.
“In the year I was born,” he said in the opening session of the conference last Saturday, “the world was immersed in a terrible war that brought agonizing grief and consuming sorrow to the world. This war was caused by my own nation — by a group of people who identified certain other groups as evil and encouraged hatred toward them.
“They silenced those they did not like,” he continued. “They shamed and demonized them.”
President Uchtdorf admonished listeners to walk a higher path, one taught by Jesus Christ: “I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
The nation now faces complex and even vexing challenges both at home and abroad; in order to advance America, its leaders must exchange political jingoism for justice and bitter bellicosity for bipartisan spirit.
Abraham Lincoln similarly invoked the words of Jesus Christ to warn the country in his now-famous 1858 speech: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” America’s political parties and leaders must not continue on a path of divisiveness and expect to handle the weighty matters before them.
Individual citizens would do well to heed the wise counsel spoken this week at general conference by religious leaders who point to a higher ethic of Christian cooperation, forgiveness and meaningful reconciliation.
This does not mean that civically minded individuals should discard their principles or somehow compromise on what they know to be right. What it does mean, however, is abandoning a blind impulse to infer nefarious motives to one's political rivals before seeking to truly understand and cooperate.