Discourse in the modern American right often understands free speech as protecting the right to say objectionable things but not the ability to criticize people who say objectionable things. While a “one true church” mentality is less problematic than racial slurs or transphobic language (though there’s also some of the latter in Oaks’s full remarks, according to the Church Newsroom release), this excerpt strikes me as embodying a similarly selective view of religious freedom:

Oaks said the “fashionable opinion of this age is that all churches are true. If that is so,” he added, “then all religious messages that identify differences in religious doctrine, like ours, are unimportant. That conclusion can cause us and others a serious loss of religious freedom.”

The idea that religious freedom is threatened by (rather than protects) the idea that there is no “one true church” is just bonkers to me. First of all, my current church is very capable of describing differences in religious doctrine and why they matter without claiming a monopoly on religious truth. Second, Oaks’s take seems to value evangelical exclusivism (which has famously and recently been exercised at Latter-day Saints’ expense) above a more pluralistic approach. And yet, Oaks surrounds the discussion of threats to religious freedom with a claim that Latter-day Saint doctrines remain superior to others. It really, really feels like a “religious freedom for me but not for thee” approach, and it makes me angry.

• Dallin Oaks
• religious freedom
• Community of Christ
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• freedom of speech
• Pete Hegseth
• Mormonism
• exclusivism
• religious exclusivism