Our political institutions have been structured upon the premise that man is a free agent by divine endowment. Upon this premise the Magna Charta was wrung from King John in 1215. Contending for this principle, the Pilgrim Fathers were harried out of their native land by King James. After taking temporary refuge in Holland, they came to America, where they founded a new state in which they could implement their ideals of freedom. A century and a half later, the colonists wrote the principle of free agency Into the Declaration of Independence. Following the revolution, the Founding Fathers perpetuated it in the Constitution.

Our national strength has always been in our devotion to freedom. When asked, “What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence?” Abraham Lincoln replied: “It is not in our frowning battlements, or bristling seacoasts, our army and navy . . . Our reliance is in the law of liberty which God has planted in us.”

We Latter-day Saints know that the right of men to make their own decisions is God-given, for to Moses the Lord said: “. . . I gave unto . . . [men] their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency”