“When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” — Kenyan proverb
Recent events affecting our friends and neighbors who belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make it clear: The separation of church and state is a really good idea.
Once the government gets involved in defining or approving this or that religion, no end of mischief, discrimination, even violence, is likely to follow.
Last week the Department of Defense (that’s still its legal name) released a new, shorter list of the faith groups it recognizes. It was just an aid, the Pentagon said, to U.S. military chaplains worldwide who need to know the affiliations of the individual service members in their care.
The problem was that in its attempt to streamline the list, the DOD included 20 denominations it labeled Christian — Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, etc., etc. — but did not include the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under that heading.
One need not be a Latter-day Saint to find that puzzling, if not ridiculous or even offensive. The person’s name is the heart of the church’s name, and his image adorns church buildings, publications and websites.
If freedom of religion means anything, it’s that each faith tradition gets to decide for itself what it is called, what it believes, who or what it recognizes as divine, without any government official looking over its shoulder. Members of other religions — or no religion — don’t have to agree with that theology, but that doesn’t remove any church’s right to determine its own identity.
It didn’t take long for the error — if that’s what it was — to be rectified.
The new list, released after such bold-faced Latter-day Saint names as Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. John Curtis and conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck protested, in some cases to President Trump himself, no longer carried a delineation of which faiths are or are not Christian.
Good news. But no reason for our representatives to relax their watch on how the DOD, under “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, will treat Latter-day Saints or the followers of any other faith. Or the way he treats women and members of racial minorities.
Hegseth, as should already be well known, is a follower of something called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. That is a Christian nationalist sect, led by Idaho-based pastor Doug Wilson, which argues the United States should be ruled by Christian precepts, as its leaders define them. That women should submit to their husbands and not be allowed to vote.
And that Mormons aren’t Christians.
The fact that Hegseth had Wilson deliver a sermon at a Pentagon prayer service made it no surprise when the secretary started firing high-ranking Black and female officers, and kicked others off the promotion list, for no discernible reason other than prejudice.
The true victims of such disputes over religious recognition are not the bigwigs who run churches or armies. The victims are the service men and women, including more than 100 Latter-day Saint military chaplains and tens of thousands of Latter-day Saint soldiers and officers, who have been told, if only for a couple of days, that their faith is not respected and their service not appreciated.
That’s no way for a free society to treat those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.