What the First Presidency Said without Saying It

 

A letter from the First Presidency dated June 1, 2023, was sent out to Church leaders in the United States. This letter was to be read in sacrament meetings across the country. Among other things, this letter admonished Church members “to spend the time to become informed about the issues and candidates[;] . . . study candidates carefully and vote for those who have demonstrated integrity, compassion, and service to others, regardless of party affiliation”; and understand that “merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards (see Doctrine and Covenants 98:10).”

D&C 98:10 says, “Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.”

Now, because Church leaders want to preserve the organization’s tax-exempt status, they are unable to advise members to vote for a particular candidate or party or, more relevant to today’s circumstances, to not vote for a particular candidate or party. Nevertheless, for those who have ears to hear, this letter is about as blunt as anything you’ll ever see from the First Presidency about how to vote in coming elections.

So, let me translate the message of this letter for those who may not have been paying attention during the past six years. If you are to vote for a candidate for president of the United States who has demonstrated integrity, compassion, and service to others; if you are to vote for honest men and wise men; if you are to vote for someone who is not a threat to democracy, then YOU CANNOT VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP. They couldn’t come right out and say this, of course. But in their pointed admonition, they defined Donald Trump completely out of the voting picture. Of course, died-in-the-wool Republicans will argue that all politicians are dishonest and corrupt. Well, to one degree or another, we all are. But Donald Trump and his followers, including Utah’s senior senator, Mike Lee, are in a league of their own. There is no real comparison. Voices from the left and the right have decried Trump’s absolute lack of any shred of morality and have warned about the danger he poses to our Constitution and our democratic republic.

The warning about voting straight ticket or according to “tradition” was aimed at the majority of Latter-day Saints, who are Republicans, many of whom are woefully uninformed about politics and government and vote “R” because Republicans are the anti-abortion party and they assume that no other issues are important. Or maybe just because they’ve always voted “R” and they assume GOP stands for God’s Only Party. The First Presidency just popped that balloon.

Well, LDS voters now have no excuse for being ignorant and uninformed. I fear, however, that there are still too many Mormons who are like the sister of a friend of ours. She is a died-in-the-wool Republican, but when asked what she thought about the January 6 insurrection, she said she had never heard of it. These kinds of voters are indeed “a threat to democracy.” They keep people in power who support a man who yearns for authoritarian rule, who has never seen a law or rule he felt applied to him, who cannot tell the truth about anything.

This letter is serious. I’ve never seen anything like this from the First Presidency. I know they are concerned. I suspect they wish they could come right out and tell the members to stop supporting Donald Trump and his enablers. But their hands are tied by other commitments. If the 2024 election were a normal election between, say Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the First Presidency would not (and did not) see any reason to issue a statement like the June 1 declaration. If it were an election between congressional candidates from traditional conservative and liberal parties, the First Presidency would remain silent. But because it is an election between a traditional Democratic party and a Republican party that has been almost completely corrupted by an evil, incompetent, and power-hungry man, this is not a normal election. Consequently, what we get instead of silence is a letter that tries to tell members that they need to change how they vote and whom they vote for without giving any specifics. But their intent is clear to anyone who has ears to hear.