In a Church That Crosses Cultures

“Becoming a worldwide religion in spirit as well as in organization is much more than building organizations and translating documents and scriptures and sharing them with other peoples in their own language. Now we see that if we Mormons are to experience the universal brotherhood we seek, then all of us must be prepared to make some alterations in our views of one another. This will mean an increased giving and taking—one that is as psychological and material as it is spiritual. We will need to increase our empathy and cross-cultural sensitivity, and progressively discard prejudices incompatible with brotherhood. …

We need to make a clear distinction between our cultural and other preferences and the gospel of Christ. The gospel has flourished and has been blessed and sanctioned by God under numerous kinds of governments and economic and cultural systems. There must be some compatibility, of course, between these preferences and systems and the gospel.

Referring to the political area, one key is freedom. Freedom unfettered by practices that limit the exercise of religious conscience, or that relegate classes of citizens to servitude or bondage or to oppression and exploitation, is freedom compatible with the gospel. Governments that actively foster freedom of conscience and opportunity and protect it for all its citizens are Mormonism’s implicit friends. This is so whether they happen to agree with the foreign policy of the United States or not. Learn, therefore, something about freedom of conscience and opportunity and extend your understanding beyond the parochial interests of any given country or class of people within it. The Church is beyond the nation state because no state is an official representative of God. …

So why is it to our advantage to make a distinction between the gospel we profess and our own political, economic, and cultural preferences? It is simple. If we do not, we cannot become a worldwide church in spirit even though we may do so in organization. A diverse people cannot have brotherhood if one of its segments insists on being always right, all the time, on everything. The gospel is transcendent truth. But man-made political and social institutions are not. So in social, cultural, and political areas we cannot expect that widely divergent peoples should adhere to the same specific perspectives. It is certain that some aspects of culture, ideology, and political practices are more compatible with gospel principles than others, and from that point they are temporarily preferable. But only the principles of the gospel constitute eternal truth.”

LaMond Tullis
Associate professor of political science
Brigham Young University
BYU forum address, April 8, 1975