INTRODUCTION
I host classical liberal speakers on BYU’s campus—economists, legal scholars, policy analysts—who make the case for limited government and free markets. Several have told me, with genuine surprise, that our students are unusually receptive to ideas that typically meet resistance elsewhere. One recent visitor asked me directly: “Why are Latter-day Saints so comfortable with libertarian arguments?”
It’s a fair question. And the answer is more interesting than you might think.
Before going further, an important caveat: only 45% of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints live in the United States. Our members live all around the world and hold a wide variety of political beliefs. But when speakers visit BYU, they’re encountering a specific subset—American Latter-day Saints—and within that population, some distinctive patterns emerge.
The numbers tell part of the story. According to Pew Research’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, 70% of American Latter-day Saints identify as Republican, compared to 30% of Americans generally. If we apply research showing that roughly 36% of Republicans identify as “liberty-leaning” or classically liberal (per Cato Institute surveys), that suggests approximately 25-28% of American Latter-day Saints hold views sympathetic to classical liberalism—roughly twice the national rate. So while a minority even within the faith, it appears that Latter-day Saints are twice as likely to lean libertarian than the broader American public.
On my campus, the pattern is even more striking. Our graduate programs host one of the largest Federalist Society chapters and one of the largest Adam Smith Society chapters in the country. That’s remarkable for relatively small programs. Our Adam Smith Society—an explicitly free-market organization—represents over 58% of the entire MBA program, the highest membership rate of any business school I’m aware of.
So, something is happening here. American Latter-day Saints aren’t uniformly libertarian—most aren’t. But they’re disproportionately open to classical liberal ideas. Why?
My thesis: A distinctive combination of Latter-day Saint theology, collective historical memory, and institutional leadership creates unusual receptivity to arguments about individual liberty, limited government, and voluntary cooperation. Three factors work together: first, core doctrines that align with Enlightenment assumptions about reason and natural law; second, a theology that makes freedom cosmically necessary rather than merely politically preferable; and third, a historical experience of persecution and radical self-governance that makes limited government feel like survival wisdom rather than abstract theory.
None of this means Latter-day Saints should be libertarian. It just helps explain why many American Latter-day Saints find these arguments intuitively compelling.
A BRIEF NOTE ON TERMS
Before diving in, some quick definitions for readers less familiar with political philosophy:
Classical liberalism is the political tradition emphasizing individual rights, limited government, free markets, and rule of law. It traces to Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith. Think “liberal” in the 18th-century sense—concerned with liberty—not the modern American usage meaning left-leaning.
Libertarianism is the modern version of this tradition, ranging from moderate classical liberals who want smaller government to anarcho-capitalists who want no government at all. The common thread: maximizing individual freedom and minimizing state coercion.
The Enlightenment was the 17th-18th century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, empiricism, natural rights, and human progress. It gave us both modern science and liberal democracy—the ideas that the universe operates by discoverable laws and that people should govern themselves.
Now, to the argument.
PART ONE: THE ENLIGHTENMENT FIT
Why a 19th-century American church loves 18th-century philosophy
Most people assume a religious movement founded by a teenage farm boy claiming angelic visitations would be instinctively hostile to Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism.
The reality is far more interesting.
Several distinctive Latter-day Saint teachings create natural alignment with core Enlightenment assumptions—the very assumptions that underpin classical liberalism. Here’s how.
The universe runs on law, not whim
Latter-day Saints believe the universe was organized from preexisting matter rather than created from nothing—a concept theologians call creatio ex materia (creation from matter) versus creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing).
Why does this matter? Because if reality consists of eternal matter organized according to discoverable principles rather than conjured by arbitrary divine will, then the universe is fundamentally orderly and law-governed. Scientific investigation isn’t a challenge to God—it’s a way of understanding the laws God works with.
This puts Latter-day Saint cosmology in conversation with the Enlightenment conviction that nature operates predictably and can be studied systematically. A theology where God organizes matter according to eternal law opens space for both scientific inquiry and mystical experience—the careful observation of natural law and the direct encounter with divine love operating through that law.
Human reason is reliable, not broken
Latter-day Saint theology holds that human beings possess eternal “intelligence”—a term meaning something like personhood, consciousness, or rational capacity—that exists independent of creation. This intelligence is inherent, not granted, and it survives death.
Paired with this is the doctrine of agency: humans are genuinely free moral agents, not puppets or broken remnants after a fall. We’re capable of reason, judgment, and meaningful choice.
This creates an unusually optimistic anthropology. Human reason isn’t fundamentally corrupted or unreliable. It’s a divine gift and a core feature of identity. That lines up neatly with the Enlightenment belief that people can use reason to understand the world, improve their lives, and govern themselves effectively.
The faith emerged in an Enlightenment-shaped culture
The early Latter-day Saint movement didn’t develop in a vacuum. It emerged in early 19th-century America—a culture deeply shaped by Enlightenment concepts like religious liberty, natural rights, consent of the governed, and constitutional limits on power.
Those themes became embedded in the Church’s structure. Individual conscience is treated as sacred. Members are expected to seek truth “by study and also by faith” (a scriptural phrase emphasizing both intellectual inquiry and spiritual witness). Even church decisions, including acceptance of new scripture, require a form of collective assent.
While not explicitly political, these patterns reflect a broadly liberal understanding of freedom and authority. You can’t spend your formative decades arguing for religious liberty without absorbing the philosophical framework that makes religious liberty coherent.
Truth is progressive, not frozen
Latter-day Saints believe revelation from God continues, expands, and adapts over time. Religious truth isn’t sealed in ancient creeds—it grows as humans gain more knowledge and experience.
This mirrors the Enlightenment and scientific view of knowledge as iterative and progressive, a process of refinement rather than a one-time deposit. Joseph Smith, the founding prophet, famously said: “We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things.”
That’s not the language of static tradition. It’s the language of ongoing discovery.
Even God operates within eternal law
Here’s where Latter-day Saint theology gets genuinely unusual: many Latter-day Saints understand God Himself to operate within eternal laws, not above them. Miracles aren’t violations of natural order—they’re applications of higher principles humans don’t yet understand.
This reinforces a worldview where law, order, and predictability are fundamental. The universe isn’t arbitrary. It’s structured. And that structure can be studied, understood, and relied upon.
If your cosmology says even divine power works through law rather than overriding it, you’re philosophically primed to believe in natural law, stable institutions, and rule-based systems—exactly the foundations of classical liberal political thought.
Human progress is the point—and it’s unbounded
Latter-day Saints hold an unusually optimistic view of human potential. Earth isn’t a fallen realm awaiting destruction. Humanity isn’t hopelessly corrupt. Instead, individuals are expected to learn, improve, innovate, and help build better societies.
But here’s where it gets radical: Latter-day Saints believe in the doctrine of eternal progression —the teaching that human beings can, over infinite time and through divine grace, become as God is. Not metaphorically. Actually.
This isn’t a fringe teaching. It’s doctrinally central. The purpose of existence is unlimited growth, unlimited refinement, unlimited development of capability and divine nature.
If you believe humans possess infinite potential to rise, become, and progress eternally—literally without bound—then political systems that constrain, manage, or limit human aspiration start to feel spiritually suspect.
This is theological fuel for Enlightenment-style optimism about human capability. But it goes further. It creates philosophical space for libertarian ideas about letting people pursue their own visions of flourishing without paternalistic interference.
When your theology says human potential is literally infinite, arguments for giving people maximum freedom to develop that potential become deeply intuitive.
The intellectual tradition embraces scholarship
Latter-day Saint culture has long been comfortable with modern scholarship, scientific inquiry, and professional expertise. This isn’t incidental—it’s woven into institutional history.
James E. Talmage, a geologist and chemist trained at Lehigh and Johns Hopkins, wrote Jesus the Christ while contributing to early American scientific societies. Talmage served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles—the second-highest governing body in the Church—for over two decades.
John A. Widtsoe, a Harvard-trained chemist, authored works on theology and agriculture while serving as a university president. Like Talmage, Widtsoe served as an Apostle, one of the most senior leadership positions in the faith.
The pattern continues in modern leadership.
Henry B. Eyring holds a doctorate from Stanford and taught at MIT. He currently serves in the First Presidency—the three-person body that leads the entire Church.
Dallin H. Oaks was a University of Chicago law professor and Utah Supreme Court justice before entering full-time church service. He also serves in the First Presidency.
Jeffrey R. Holland served as a university president with advanced degrees from Yale. He serves as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Perhaps most striking: the wonderful Russell M. Nelson, who served as President of the Church from 2018 until his passing in 2024, was one of the world’s pioneers in open-heart surgery. Before full-time religious leadership, President Nelson was a globally recognized cardiac surgeon who helped develop the first successful heart-lung machine used in open-heart operations. His career included published research in leading medical journals and thousands of successful surgeries.
When your recent prophets and apostles—the most senior leaders in the faith—include a pioneering heart surgeon, a Stanford-MIT economist, and a University of Chicago legal scholar, the message is unmistakable: rigorous intellectual work and deep faith aren’t in tension. They’re complementary.
This creates a religious culture unusually receptive to reasoned argument, empirical evidence, and professional expertise—exactly the traits that align with Enlightenment and classical liberal ways of thinking.
Freedom is at the center
Finally, freedom itself sits at the core of the Latter-day Saint worldview. The entire human experience is framed as a test of agency—the ability to choose, act, and grow without coercion.
Even God, in Latter-day Saint belief, does not force salvation. He invites, teaches, persuades, and pleads, but never compels salvation. That pattern becomes a moral template: if even God respects the boundary of individual choice, why shouldn’t human institutions?
Taken together, these doctrines form a worldview remarkably compatible with Enlightenment ideals. Natural law, human reason, progressive revelation, radical optimism about unbounded human potential, comfort with science, and centrality of freedom—these aren’t peripheral features. They’re doctrinal pillars.
That compatibility doesn’t make the faith “libertarian.” But it does help explain why many American Latter-day Saints feel an intuitive affinity for classical liberal arguments about reason, freedom, and human dignity.
PART TWO: THE WAR IN HEAVEN WAS ABOUT FREEDOM
How cosmology produces libertarian instincts
If there’s one doctrinal pillar that shapes Latter-day Saint instincts toward political liberty more than any other, it’s the belief in agency —the idea that humans must be free to choose between good and evil for those choices to have moral meaning.
In Latter-day Saint theology, the central drama of existence begins before mortal life, in what members call the “War in Heaven.”
The original dispute was about freedom
According to Latter-day Saint belief, God proposed a plan for human existence in which individuals would receive genuine agency—the ability to choose, make mistakes, learn, change, and ultimately progress toward becoming like God.
One figure, identified as Satan, rejected that plan and proposed an alternative: eliminate agency, guarantee universal salvation through compulsion, and claim God’s glory in the process.
The disagreement escalated into conflict. In Latter-day Saint scripture, Satan and those who followed him were cast out. The ones who chose agency—who chose freedom with its attendant risks—became mortal humans.
This matters politically because it means that in Latter-day Saint theology, coercion is not merely misguided policy or poor governance. It is literally Satanic. The negation of agency, forced conformity, compulsory salvation—these align with the devil’s rebellion against God’s plan.
You don’t need to accept the metaphysics to see the cultural outcome: for many Latter-day Saints, any political system that centralizes power, diminishes individual responsibility, or coerces behavior strikes a deep, visceral nerve. It’s not just bad policy. It echoes the original cosmic rebellion.
It is odd semantics how many within the American conservative movement are really striving to conserve the radical liberalism of our founding. Similarly, to many Latter-day Saints, preserving God’s will is centered on maximizing human agency.
A worldview that begins with a heavenly war over whether souls should be free or controlled naturally produces people with strong anti-authoritarian instincts.
Agency as non-negotiable
For Latter-day Saints, agency isn’t simply freedom to choose—it’s freedom to grow. God Himself is believed to respect this boundary. He persuades, teaches, commands, warns, invites. But He never forces conversion.
That pattern becomes a moral template. If even God will not coerce the soul, why should a government? If divine power itself operates by persuasion rather than compulsion, what justification exists for human institutions to do otherwise?
This helps explain why many Latter-day Saints react strongly against political paternalism, expansive bureaucracy, and legislation that substitutes state judgment for personal judgment. Agency is sacred—not metaphorically, but metaphysically.
Eternal progression and unbounded human potential
Layered on top of agency is the doctrine of eternal progression —the distinctively Latter-day Saint teaching I touched on earlier.
Latter-day Saints believe human beings are not static creations with fixed natures. We’re eternal intelligences capable of limitless refinement and development. Growth isn’t merely possible—it’s the purpose of existence.
To reiterate: Latter-day Saints believe that through God’s grace and infinite progression, human beings can become as God is. Not figuratively. Literally. Divine nature, divine capability, divine love—all achievable over eternal time.
This produces several downstream beliefs:
This naturally dovetails with classical liberal ideas about human dignity, self-direction, and the belief that flourishing emerges from freedom rather than management.
A tradition that sees each individual as an eternal, developing being with literally infinite potential is far more likely to prefer systems that maximize choice and minimize arbitrary authority.
The political reflex: freedom is the default
Put simply, Latter-day Saint theology creates a political instinct: freedom is the default position, coercion is the exception requiring overwhelming justification.
This doesn’t make Latter-day Saints doctrinaire libertarians—plenty aren’t. But it does mean libertarian arguments resonate unusually well because they align with the deepest layers of the worldview.
Specific implications:
To a Latter-day Saint, these aren’t abstract policy preferences. They map directly onto a cosmic narrative about the purpose of existence and the nature of God.
The core idea
When you combine the doctrine of agency with the doctrine of eternal progression, you get a worldview in which:
That produces a moral and political posture closely aligned with libertarianism: human flourishing comes from freedom, growth comes from choice, and coercion is both morally suspect and spiritually dangerous.
It’s difficult to imagine a theological framework more naturally inclined toward defending individual liberty.
PART THREE: WHEN PROPHETS SOUNDED LIKE POLITICAL RADICALS
The surprisingly libertarian history of Latter-day Saint leadership
Doctrinal alignment is only part of the story. Latter-day Saints also inherit a powerful historical and cultural memory that reinforces limited government instincts and skepticism of concentrated power.
Much of this comes from two centuries of church leadership who saw political liberty not as a luxury but as a matter of spiritual survival.
Cold War prophets and the fight against collectivism
During the Cold War, several Presidents of the Church were explicitly, aggressively anti-communist. Their warnings weren’t vague moral concerns—they were frontal assaults on collectivism and state coercion.
David O. McKay, who served as Church President from 1951 to 1970, was unequivocal. In 1966, he told millions of church members:
“Communism is Satan’s counterfeit for the gospel plan.”
Not similar to Satan’s plan. Not reminiscent of it. The counterfeit. The fake version. The adversary’s imitation.
McKay repeatedly emphasized that communism destroys individual agency—which, in Latter-day Saint theology, is destroying the very purpose of existence.
Ezra Taft Benson went even further. Benson, who served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower before becoming Church President in 1985, was arguably the most politically outspoken Latter-day Saint leader of the 20th century.
In 1977, he declared:
“No true Latter-day Saint and no true American can be a socialist or support programs leading in that direction.”
And in 1986, he connected constitutional limits on power directly to divine purposes:
“I have faith that the Constitution will be saved as prophesied. It will be saved by the righteous citizens of this nation who love and cherish freedom.”
For Benson, the Constitution wasn’t just a political document—it was a divinely inspired framework for protecting agency. Latter-day Saint scripture asserts that God Himself influenced the Constitution of the United States. Its separation of powers, enumerated limits, and checks against consolidated authority weren’t merely clever governance. They were spiritual safeguards.
This matters because Benson wasn’t a fringe voice. He was the Prophet—the President of the Church. For decades, Latter-day Saints heard from their highest leaders that communism was spiritually destructive, that collectivism threatened both political and spiritual freedom, and that safeguarding agency required resisting state overreach.
This kind of rhetoric doesn’t fade quickly. It becomes generational instinct.
The martyrdom of Joseph Smith: a frontier shootout
Long before the Cold War, Latter-day Saints developed deep suspicion of concentrated political power because they suffered directly under it.
Joseph Smith—the Church’s founder—was killed in 1844 at Carthage Jail in what can be described as a gunslinging frontier shootout.
A mob of approximately 150 men, faces painted, stormed the jail. Smith and others inside had a small pistol smuggled to them earlier. When the attackers broke through the door, Smith returned fire, reportedly hitting three men before being shot multiple times and falling from a second-story window.
Latter-day Saint narratives surrounding his death emphasize the failure of the state to protect minority rights, the complicity of local officials, and the way extrajudicial violence was tolerated—even encouraged—by political leaders hostile to the faith. Nearly six years prior to the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, the state government of Missouri issued an infamous extermination order stating that Latter-day Saints should be “exterminated or driven from the state.”
Brother Joseph’s was not a quiet martyrdom. It was violent resistance against a mob enabled by state failure.
The trauma didn’t produce passivity. It produced fierce commitment to self-defense, autonomy, and skepticism toward unchecked majoritarian power.
The Utah exodus: secession in practice
After Brother Joseph’s death, Latter-day Saints did something radical: they left.
They abandoned Illinois, crossed beyond the borders of the United States into Mexican territory (what would become Utah), and established an independent political order under Brigham Young.
This was functional secession—and here’s where the libertarian theory gets interesting.
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), the influential libertarian economist and political philosopher, argued that secession is one of the purest expressions of liberty. In his view, the right to withdraw consent from a political order and establish new governance structures is fundamental. If individuals can’t exit systems they find oppressive, then all talk of voluntary association and consent becomes hollow.
By Rothbard’s measure, the Latter-day Saint exodus is one of the most striking examples of mass secession in American history.
They:
When U.S. troops marched toward Utah during the 1857-58 Utah War, Latter-day Saints didn’t submit quietly. They destroyed federal supply trains, harassed the army, and prepared to burn their own settlements—including the entire city of Salt Lake—rather than accept imposed political control on terms they found unacceptable.
Rothbard emphasized that meaningful secession requires both the will to resist imposed authority and the capacity to establish functional self-governance beyond existing state control. The Utah exodus demonstrates both.
Eventually, Latter-day Saints negotiated reentry into the Union—but on terms, with Brigham Young retaining significant influence in territorial governance for years.
This is not how compliant subjects behave. This is how radicals behave.
The Rothbardian lens captures something essential about the Latter-day Saint pioneer experience: a people who rejected coercive state power, physically removed themselves from its jurisdiction, built self-governing institutions through voluntary cooperation, and resisted federal reimposition through both negotiation and armed resistance.
Utah women’s suffrage: 50 years early
Utah was the second territory in the United States to grant women the right to vote (1870), and the first where women actually cast ballots.
Wait, really? 1870? That’s 50 years before the 19th Amendment.
Yes. The Latter-day Saint-led territorial legislature granted women’s suffrage not because Washington mandated it, but because the community supported expanding individual rights.
When Congress revoked Utah women’s suffrage in 1887 as part of federal anti-polygamy pressure, Utah reinstated it immediately upon achieving statehood in 1896—nine years as a state, still 24 years before national suffrage.
A people coerced by federal power responded by expanding liberty within their own political sphere. That’s a distinctly libertarian impulse.
Joseph Smith’s surprisingly liberal presidential platform
Joseph Smith ran for President of the United States in 1844. His platform looks surprisingly libertarian through a modern lens.
On slavery: He proposed gradual compensated emancipation funded by selling public lands—an approach aligned with anti-coercive, classical liberal abolitionists.
On Native Americans: He argued for political autonomy and restoration of unjustly taken lands—an early articulation of self-determination.
On constitutional governance: He insisted, “I am the greatest advocate of the Constitution of the United States there is on the earth.”
And his advocacy for the Constitution was precisely about limiting federal power to protect individual rights. He proposed:
Smith’s belief in constitutional restraints wasn’t abstract patriotism—it was a concrete commitment to cutting back federal government to protect liberty. Far from being a theocratic centralizer, Smith pushed ideas that strengthened individual rights and constrained state power.
Joseph Smith on liberty
Smith’s love of freedom wasn’t merely political calculation. It was personal conviction.
He famously declared:
“It is one of the first principles of my life, and one that I have cultivated from my childhood, having freedom of thought and liberty and the right of man.”
And his most succinct declaration on governance, later quoted by John Taylor, a contemporary leader:
“I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.”
This line has become a cultural maxim among Latter-day Saints. It’s also a perfect summary of classical liberal governance: establish sound principles, then trust people to apply them without micromanagement.
The historical pattern is clear. Across two centuries, the Latter-day Saint story includes:
Liberty isn’t merely a political preference for Latter-day Saints. It’s woven into both theology and collective memory.
VOLUNTARY CONSERVATISM AND THE WELFARE PARADOX
Here’s where the picture gets more nuanced—and more interesting.
Many Latter-day Saints practice what might be called voluntary conservatism and communitarianism. They believe individuals should freely constrain their behavior around God’s laws to experience maximum joy, and that people should voluntarily coordinate to care for the poor and restore others to self-reliance.
The key word is voluntarily.
The Church operates an extensive welfare system—entirely funded by voluntary donations, no state coercion involved. It emphasizes human dignity, temporary assistance, and rapid restoration to self-reliance. Many members contribute fast offerings (the cost of two meals monthly, at minimum) and participate in welfare production facilities, bishops’ storehouses, and employment services.
This stands in stark contrast to government welfare systems. Church welfare prioritizes getting people back on their feet quickly. Government programs often create dependency. Church welfare is funded voluntarily. Government welfare is funded through taxation backed by force. Church welfare respects recipient dignity through work opportunities and community connection. Government welfare can bureaucratize need and strip human dignity through impersonal administration.
I’ve heard this sentiment repeatedly from fellow church members: “God only needs 10% of my income to build His kingdom and run a global welfare system. Why does the government need so much more and accomplish so much less?”
That question captures the libertarian intuition perfectly. If voluntary religious organization can provide education, welfare, disaster relief, employment services, and community support through purely voluntary contributions—why do we need massive state bureaucracies funded through coercion doing the same work less effectively?
The Latter-day Saint welfare model demonstrates that robust social support doesn’t require state power. It requires commitment, community, and voluntary cooperation.
This reinforces the broader point: Many Latter-day Saints aren’t opposed to helping the poor, caring for vulnerable populations, or building strong communities. They just believe these goods are better achieved through voluntary association than state compulsion.
That’s a classically liberal—even libertarian—position.
THE NECESSARY CAVEATS
Of course, not all Latter-day Saints share these views.
Some members are quite progressive and favor expanded welfare states, higher taxation, and greater government involvement in economic life.
Others are socially conservative and want to use state power to enforce traditional moral standards—sometimes in ways that conflict with libertarian principles about limiting government reach into private behavior.
The community contains multitudes. Political diversity exists.
But the central observation remains: American Latter-day Saints, on the whole, are measurably more liberty-oriented than the broader public. The reasons I’ve outlined—doctrinal emphasis on agency and eternal progression, historical memory of persecution and secession, institutional leadership championing constitutional limits, and a successful model of voluntary welfare—help explain that pattern.
This isn’t about claiming Latter-day Saints should be libertarian (though I do believe we should be) or that they uniformly are (though I wish we were). It’s about understanding why classical liberal arguments resonate more strongly in this community than in others.
CONCLUSION
Three mutually reinforcing factors explain American Latter-day Saints’ unusual receptivity to classical liberal ideas.
First: Core doctrines about natural law, human reason, and unbounded eternal progression align with Enlightenment assumptions undergirding classical liberalism. A theology where humans can literally become as God is, through infinite progression, creates deep suspicion of any system that constrains human aspiration.
Second: The theology of agency makes freedom not merely desirable but cosmically necessary. When your origin story involves a heavenly war over whether souls should be free or coerced—and when coercion is understood as literally Satanic—libertarian arguments about choice versus compulsion don’t feel abstract. They feel primordial.
Third: A collective historical memory of persecution, violent resistance, mass exodus, and radical self-governance transforms these principles into lived convictions. When your founder died in a frontier shootout against a state-enabled mob, when your ancestors crossed a desert to escape federal authority, when your pioneers prepared to burn their own city rather than submit to imposed control—limited government doesn’t feel like ideology. It feels like survival wisdom.
Add to this a successful model of voluntary welfare that demonstrates robust social support without state coercion, and you have a community culturally predisposed toward liberty-oriented arguments.
None of this makes Latter-day Saints uniformly libertarian. The community includes progressives, socialists, and statist conservatives. Many members support government action in specific domains while opposing it in others.
But the patterns are striking enough to warrant explanation. When classical liberal speakers visit BYU and remark on their unusual reception, they’re observing the downstream effects of two centuries of theological development and historical experience that have made liberty-oriented arguments feel intuitively correct to many American Latter-day Saints—even those who would never identify as libertarian.
The testable implication: We should expect disproportionate Latter-day Saint representation in institutions blending moral traditionalism with economic liberty—places like the Federalist Society, free-market think tanks, classical liberal academic programs, and constitutional advocacy organizations.
The preliminary evidence suggests exactly that.
Whether this pattern persists as the Church becomes increasingly global, and whether younger generations maintain these political instincts as American partisan realignment accelerates, remains to be seen. But my growing Adam Smith Society chapter makes me hopeful.
For now, if you’re wondering why my guests experience such a warm reception at BYU, you have your answer.
It’s in the doctrine. It’s in the history. And it’s in the collective memory of a people who believe their story began by choosing freedom in heaven—and who’ve been defending that choice on earth ever since.