Abide ye in the liberty wherewith ye are made free. - D&C 88:86

It may be only a coincidence that July brings with it two holidays of great importance to members of the Church, particularly in America. If so, it is a providential pairing, one that reaffirms each year our indebtedness to the great principles of freedom that underlie the gospel.The first celebration - Independence Day - takes us back to the commitment made in 1776 that all people inherently have the right to liberty and freedom. The second - Pioneer Day - reminds us that the cost of freedom is often high. Today, it's fair to say that without the sacrifices made by those who endorsed the Declaration of Independence, the gospel itself would not have been restored.

Think, for a moment, of the magnitude of that revolutionary commitment to freedom. The Declaration itself was not simply the expression of a few disgruntled colonists, but was the culmination of the best thinking on man and his relationship to government that the world had seen.

Its straightforward statement that some truths were self-evident, that all men were created equal, that they were given by God certain basic rights, that those rights include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, rang so true it changed the course of history.

It was also a concept the Lord had proclaimed throughout the ages as part of His gospel.

Paul, in his letter to the young church in Corinth, said simply, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (2 Cor. 3:17.) Earlier than that and an ocean away, an angry Captain Moroni tore his coat and wrote upon it his own Title of Liberty as a rallying cry to combat the deceits that threatened his country: "In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children."

With the arrival of the U.S. Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights, the expression of individual liberties captured the imagination of the world. Many of those liberties are interdependent: the right to speak freely, assemble and associate with others without fear of government sanction, and write and to worship became the field where the seeds of the Restoration were sown.

Small wonder, then, that the Church formalized its own commitment to these momentous ideas with a declaration of belief on governments and laws in the 134th section of the Doctrine and Covenants.

The Church called upon its members to obey the laws of the land and to uphold the respective governments in which they reside, and also noted that "We believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life." (D&C 134:2.)

In essence, Captain Moroni's Title of Liberty had taken on a new expression, one which also committed members to the task of safeguarding liberties.

Ironically, the second great celebration of July for the Church commemorates the arrival of Pioneers into the Great Basin, where they had fled their oppressors in order to be able to worship without fear. It was a painful lesson, both for the country and for the Church, that it had to seek a faraway place where, in the lyrics of William Clayton, "none shall come to hurt or make afraid, there the Saints will be blessed." ("Come, Come, Ye Saints," LDS hymn no. 30.)

In making their commitment to the principles of liberty and freedom, members of the Church also found that it comes with a price. It was a price they paid for us with their own heartache, toil and sweat - and because of that is a much dearer legacy.

The values of liberty and freedom still stir men's souls. That became excitingly evident just within the past few years as we watched the growth of freedom in new, previously closed areas of the world. Individual liberty is far from being an outdated concept, although for years it seemed unfashionable to debate these great ideas.

Underlying the allure of freedom is the assumption of a common humanity for all and of mankind's universal good. Despite the diversity of societies and religions in the world, the message of the gospel is that we are all equally children of the same loving Father in Heaven, with obligations to serve and help each other reach our full potential here on earth. That potential can only be realized within the boundaries of freedom.

As President Ezra Taft Benson warned, "For man to exercise fully the agency God has granted to him, his God-given natural rights must be recognized and protected. It has only been recognized within the past 400 years that these rights inherently belong to man." (This Nation Shall Endure, p. 5.)