The COVID-19 crisis has presented us with a unique opportunity to reaffirm and shore up religious freedom. We have witnessed the government’s swift, well-intentioned, but often dangerous breaching of the boundaries that protect the free exercise of religion.
Do we hear the buzzer on the alarm clock? This is a wake-up call for all of us. Those fundamental boundaries and protections must be healed, renewed, and fortified.
While believers and their religious organizations must be good citizens in a time of crisis, never again can we allow government officials to treat the exercise of religion as simply non-essential. Never again must the fundamental right to worship God be trivialized below the ability to buy gasoline.
BYU Law School Annual Review of Religious Liberty, Elder David A. Bednar, June 17, 2020 – https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/bednar-covid-19-pandemic-religious-freedom
