Elder Oaks and Preserving Religious Freedom

There is considerable discussion out there about Elder Oak's talk given at Chapman University about religious freedom.  It is the sort of message that leaves me torn and restless.  As a deeply religious person I agree completely with the general sentiment expressed in his conclusion:

We must never see the day when the public square is not open to religious ideas and religious persons. The religious community must unite to be sure we are not coerced or deterred into silence by the kinds of intimidation or threatening rhetoric that are being experienced. Whether or not such actions are anti-religious, they are surely anti-democratic and should be condemned by all who are interested in democratic government. There should be room for all good-faith views in the public square, be they secular, religious, or a mixture of the two. When expressed sincerely and without sanctimoniousness, the religious voice adds much to the text and tenor of public debate.

No one should ever feel embarrassed or intimidated for expressing strong religious beliefs in the public square, and I agree that religions have much good to offer public policy on a more abstract level.  But at the same time, I disagree with Elder Oaks that religious expression should be given a special, elevated status in such discussions:

Progressive Taxation

A recent poll showed that over 60 percent of Americans think that the government should tax the rich in an effort to reduce the budget deficit.  Polls also consistently found that a majority of Americans wanted the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy to expire.  Conservatives, inexplicably, won that battle in their larger war against progressive taxation.

So with all the recent talk about taxes, I wanted to try to explain why liberals, and a majority of Americans generally, support a progressive tax scheme.  A progressive tax is one where the tax rate increases with taxable income.  So a person making a smaller salary pays a smaller percentage in taxes than a person making a larger salary.  Currently in the US, we have a progressive federal income tax that ranges from 10% for the lowest income earners to 35% for the highest marginal rates.

Mainstream conservatives typically oppose a progressive tax for moral reasons.  They argue that it is unfair to tax the wealthy at higher rates just because they have a lot of money, that it is a form of class welfare, that the poor are getting off easy, and that it disincentivizes hard work.  These arguments miss the point.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays

Americans love war analogies.  It probably stems from our love of actual war, which I think is an actual collective sin we are committing.  So analogies between war and other non-war things are pretty unsettling and off-putting for me.  In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, there are over 100,000 dead civilians, tens of thousands of dead combat troops, and millions of wounded.  So when we use frequent war allusions in sports and politics and the like I think we're being rather callous and glib.  If we paid more attention to our language and how we use it we might end up making different and better political choices in America.

That was all a slight tangent I started pondering as I considered this most special time of year when we can come together and debate whether or not there is a War on Christmas.  The weapons in this war are not missiles, bombs, drone attacks, and machine guns, but phrases like "Happy Holidays," the removal of nativity scenes from government-owned public places, and "X-mas."  The casualties are not human lives lost or permanent physical or psychological injuries and disfigurement, but . . . what?  I'm not sure.  Hurt pride, I guess.

The Law of Consecration and Stewardship

I am currently reading the excellent book Building the City of God, which is a study of early communitarian efforts by the saints.  Though I'm obviously no historian, I thought it might be interesting to write a few posts about what I'm reading as I go along.  I just finished the section on the Law of Consecration and Stewardship, which was Joseph's early attempts in Kirtland and Missouri to get the saints to live a more perfect economic system.

The basic gist of the plan went something like this:  First, all members deeded their real and personal property to Edward Partridge, the presiding bishop.  In the earliest iterations of the Law the person would completely forfeit all property if they left the church, i.e. the church had full rights to the property.  Later, when civil courts eroded that away, the person could get real property back, but not personal property and not any of the yearly consecrations.  Second, Partridge would lease and loan back those respective properties to the individual, depending on their needs.  Third, the individual, though a steward over the land, would have the control to do with the property whatever he or she desired.  Finally, at the end of the year the individual would consecrate to Partridge any excess gains above what they needed.

Cancer, Healing, and the Meaning (Or Lack Thereof) of This Life

"Cancer" is one of the five worst words in the English language.  It sounds ugly.  It has ugly, death-ish connotations.  It evokes images of some alien life taking over one's body.  It has two c's that make different sounds, which is lame and annoying.  And when you learn that a young, healthy loved one has cancer it is so devastating.  You find yourself doing verbal somersaults to avoid saying the word out loud, as if by saying it you will make it worse.

So I recently had the occasion to give a loved one a priesthood blessing related to a cancer diagnosis, and as I've contemplated mortality and healing I've started having a lot of questions which I've never thought about before.  After that blessing I went and read Elder Oaks' talk from the most recent conference called "Healing the Sick".  The takeaway point, I think, is the following:

From all of this we learn that even the servants of the Lord, exercising His divine power in a circumstance where there is sufficient faith to be healed, cannot give a priesthood blessing that will cause a person to be healed if that healing is not the will of the Lord.