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The Restoration Of Religious Freedom: Joseph Smith’S Evolving Understanding Of The United States Constitution, 1830-1844, Mitch Nelson
The Restoration Of Religious Freedom: Joseph Smith’S Evolving Understanding Of The United States Constitution, 1830-1844, Mitch Nelson
CGU Theses & Dissertations
As the founder of the most persecuted denomination of the nineteenth century in the United States, Joseph Smith desperately yearned for religious freedom. I argue that Joseph Smith understood religious freedom as a theological doctrine given by God to help individuals, communities, and nations discover how to balance order and diversity. Rather than being a product of democratic government, he viewed religious freedom as the necessary foundation for a just government and society. Therefore, maintaining religious freedom would preserve the governing system, not the other way around. For Joseph, religious freedom was incrementally discovered in a process of identity formation …