A Constitution for All
Adapted from Divine Law, by Justin Collings, available for purchase at Amazon and Deseret Book.
The notion that divine inspiration informs the U.S. Constitution is a distinctive teaching of the restored Church and a striking declaration, thrice repeated, of the Doctrine and Covenants. The revelations declare that the Constitution incorporates a “principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges” that “belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before” God (98:5); that God “suffered [it] to be established” and that it “should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles,” in order that “every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to . . . moral agency” (101:77-78); and that its “principles,” which were “honorably and nobly defended” by previous generations, should “be established forever” (109:54).
Those declarations might give some twenty-first-century readers pause. Some might wonder why, in a global church, special attention should be paid to the political arrangements of any particular country. Others might wonder how an imperfect document that accommodated slavery could possibly merit divine approval. These are important questions, and the revelations provide powerful responses to both concerns.
In the first case, everything the revelations say about the U.S. Constitution points beyond the borders of the United States. The Lord declares that the Constitution “belongs to all mankind,” and that its core principles “should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh” (98:5; 101:77; emphasis added). President Oaks underscored these truths, noting that the U.S. Constitution “is of special concern for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the world” and adding that “[w]hether or how its principles should be applied in other nations . . . is for them to decide.”[1]
As a scholar of comparative constitutional law, I have been blessed to spend many years studying the constitutions and constitutional traditions of other nations. I have examined closely how constitutional principles have been adopted or adapted outside the United States. I believe that the Lord has inspired wise women and men to advance the cause of freedom and moral agency in other countries, just as He has in the United States. To take just two early examples, the Danish constitution of 1848 and the Mexican constitution of 1857 both guaranteed religious freedom and played vital roles in the Church’s establishment in those two countries. I believe that this early trend has accelerated, at least in part, in response to the prayer offered by President George Albert Smith at the dedication of the Idaho Falls Temple in 1945. “We pray,” President Smith petitioned,
"that kings and rulers and the people of all nations under heaven may be persuaded of the blessings enjoyed by the people of [the United States] and be constrained to adopt similar governmental systems, thus to fulfill the ancient prophecy of Isaiah and Micah that “out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”[2]
In the eighty years since President Smith offered that prophetic prayer, key constitutional principles—fundamental individual rights, separation of governmental powers, constitutional judicial review, and more—have fairly swept the globe. Clearly, the Lord who loves all His children perfectly rejoices in their freedom wherever they might live. The civic prayer of all the prophets is the prayer of President Henry B. Eyring, offered at the dedication of the Cedar City, Utah temple. “Bless those who govern in this nation,” President Eyring prayed, “that they may be inspired to do that which will ensure peace and freedom. Bless leaders in all nations,” he added, “where[ver] Thy children dwell.”[3]
In addition to highlighting how constitutional principles should bless God’s children in all nations, the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants unequivocally condemn human slavery.
Sections 98 and 101 were both received in 1833 against the backdrop of bitter persecution in Missouri. (Those experiences surely shaped Joseph Smith’s later lament that the U.S. Constitution didn’t do enough to protect unpopular minorities from oppressive state governments.) In these two revelations, the Lord extolled the Constitution precisely when the Saints might have felt it was letting them down. During a season of wrenching conflict, the Lord commanded the Church to petition peacefully for redress “[a]ccording to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered [i.e. permitted] to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles” (101:77). The revelation went on to clarify that the Lord champions constitutional liberty because He desires “[t]hat every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment” (101:78). Here the Lord proclaimed what His prophets have consistently echoed: the purpose of constitutions and constitutional principles is to promote human agency—the sovereign right of all the children of God to forge their own future, shape their own destiny, and answer for their own misdeeds.
The Savior’s devotion to human liberty predates the earth’s creation. We know from modern revelation that in the premortal realm, He championed our Father’s plan and the freedom it presupposed (see Moses 4:1-4). Because of that unflinching eternal commitment, the Savior condemns the various forms of unfreedom that humans have historically imposed on one another. In the Missouri of the 1830s, the most brutal and egregious instantiation of unfreedom was slavery, which the Lord in the revelations explicitly condemned. “Therefore,” He proclaimed, referring to agency as the heart of constitutional governance, “it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another” (101:79). The Lord then explained that destroying slavery was part of His purpose in spurring the Constitution’s creation: “And for this purpose”—i.e., that no “man should be in bondage one to another”—“have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood” (101:80).[4]
This is a remarkable passage, not least because it seems, at least in part, to describe a Constitution that didn’t yet exist. The Prophet Joseph Smith wrote glowingly, almost rhapsodically, about the original Constitution, calling it “a glorious standard” and “a heavenly banner.”[5] The Prophet even bore testimony that the Constitution was “true.”[6] He regarded the Constitution as a great bulwark of human freedom, and freedom was central to the theology that Joseph was commissioned to reveal.
At the same time, the Prophet highlighted two flaws in the original Constitution. The first, noted earlier, was that it did too little to protect unpopular minorities against oppressive majorities. “I am the greatest advocate of the Constitution of the United States there is on earth,” he said, and yet he thought it was “not broad enough to cover the whole ground.”[7] “Its sentiments are good, but it provides no means of enforcing them.”[8] “Under its provision,” the Prophet reflected, “a man or a people who are able to protect themselves can get along well enough; but those who have the misfortune to be weak or unpopular are left to the merciless rage of popular fury.”[9] The Prophet thus championed stronger central power to protect minority rights.
The second related flaw was the Constitution’s accommodation with slavery. After years of wrestling over how the Church should engage in its missionary and other policies with a society divided over slavery, the Prophet grieved in 1844 that, despite the Declaration of Independence’s promise of equality for all, “some two or three millions of people are held as slaves for life, [merely] because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours . . .”[10] He maintained that the government’s efforts “ought to be directed to ameliorate the condition of all, black or white, bond or free,”[11] and he believed that the Constitution’s promise of liberty, summarized in its Preamble, “without hypocrisy . . . meant just what it said without reference to color or condition.”[12] These convictions informed the Prophet’s 1844 presidential campaign, which included a plan for compensated emancipation.
Both of these flaws in the original Constitution were later corrected by constitutional amendment. The thirteenth amendment banned slavery; the fourteenth applied the Bill of Rights against the states and empowered the federal government to pass laws to protect unpopular minorities; and the fifteenth banned racial discrimination in voting. One can imagine the Prophet applauding these changes from the spirit world. Modern Americans rightly prize these precious amendments—as well as the nineteenth amendment, which empowered women to vote—as much as the Constitution’s original text. In some respects, it is this Constitution—the post-Civil War Constitution, purged of its original compromises with slavery—that seems to be envisaged and described in the revelations. When I read that the Lord “redeemed the land by the shedding of blood,” I think of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass as well as of George Washington and James Madison; of Antietam and Gettysburg as well as Yorktown and Trenton.[13]
The Lord not only delights in freedom, He is the fount of freedom. As Lehi prophesied, “the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever”—“free,” that is, “to choose liberty and eternal life through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil” (2 Ne. 2:26-27). By redeeming us from the effects of the fall, the Savior empowered us to choose for ourselves. The Son of God is eternity’s greatest champion of human freedom.
[1] Dallin H. Oaks, “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution,” Conference Report, April 2021.
[2] In Benson, “Heavenly Banner,” 16, citing Improvement Era, October 1945, 564.
[3] Prayer offered at the dedication of the Cedar City, Utah Temple, December 10, 2017,
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/details/cedar-city-utah-temple/prayer/2017-12-10?lang=eng.
[4] Despite some admirable antislavery sentiments and statements, the early Saints had a complicated relationship with race and slavery. Some church members owned slaves, and some leaders, including Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, at times made statements, probably for reasons of expediency, endorsing slavery. Joseph later ran for president on a platform that included plans for the compensated emancipation of American slaves. See Jessica M. Nelson, “Imagining a Better Future: The Context and Development of Joseph Smith’s Views on Race and Slavery,” in Know Brother Joseph: New Perspectives on Joseph Smith’s Life and Character, eds. R. Eric Smith, Matthew C. Godfrey, and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021).
[5] Joseph Smith to Edward Partridge and the Church, circa 22 March 1839, The Joseph Smith Papers. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-edward-partridge-and-the-church-circa-22-march-1839/8
[6] Ibid, 9.
[7] Discourse, 15 October 1843, as Reported by Willard Richards, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-15-october-1843-as-reported-by-willard-richards/1.
[8] “History, 1838-1856, volume E-1 [1 July 1843-30 April 1844], The Joseph Smith Papers, 1754, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-e-1-1-july-1843-30-april-1844/126.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Joseph Smith, “General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States,” circa 26 January-7 February 1844, The Joseph Smith Papers, 3, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/general-smiths-views-of-the-powers-and-policy-of-the-government-of-the-united-states-circa-26-january-7-february-1844/3 .
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] I am indebted to conversations with Paul Edwards for the ideas described in this paragraph.