• Religious Liberty Lecture
  • Elder Quentin L. Cook
  • Notre Dame Sydney School of Law, Sydney, Australia, Wednesday, May 27, 2015

My plea today is that all religions join together to defend faith and religious freedom in a manner that protects people of diverse faith as well as those of no faith. We must not only protect our ability to profess our own religion but also protect the right of each religion to administer its own doctrines and laws. Lord John Acton in 1862 said it this way: “Where ecclesiastical authority is restricted, religious liberty is virtually denied. For religious liberty is not the negative right of being without any particular religion, just as self-government is not anarchy. It is the right of religious communities to the practice of their own duties, the enjoyment of their own constitution, and the protection of the law, which equally secures to all the possession of their own independence.