According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles . . . And for this purpose I have established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed by the land by the shedding of blood. (D&C 101:77, 80)
have mercy, O Lord, upon all the nations of the earth; have mercy upon the rulers of our land; may those principles, which were no honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever. (D&C 109:54)
Latter-day Saints have, both historically and in modern times, a high view of the Constitution of the United States of America. However, notwithstanding the view that it was brought about by God’s providence, it is not inspired as scripture and statements ratified by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve (cf. 107:27); I was once asked by a Reformed Protestant if I viewed the US Constitution as being “divine scripture”—my answer (which I still stand by) is that it is inspired in a secondary sense in compared to other sources.
Today, I read the following volume:
Just and Holy Principles: Latter-day Saint Readings on America and the Constitution, ed. Ralph C. Hancock (Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 1998).
In his introduction, Hancock writes:
Latter-day Saints believe that the Lord established the Constitution, not by communicating specific measures, but by raising up and inspiring wise men to this purpose . . . If the divine inspiration of the Constitution is mediated through the human wisdom of the founders and the founding generation, then it is natural to suppose that new needs and new circumstances might require the continued exercise of inspired human wisdom by statesmen and citizens alike. LDS leaders have indeed taught the Constitution is not to be considered perfect and complete in every detail (as evidenced most clearly by its accommodation with slavery, contrary to modern scripture; e.g., D&C 101:79) but as subject to development and adaptation. It was part of the wisdom of the founders to forbear attempting too much; they therefore provided constitutional means for constitutional amendment. President Brigham Young thus affirmed that the Constitution “I a progressive—a gradual work”; the founders “laid the foundation, and it was for after generations to rear the superstructure upon it” (Journal of Discourses 7:13-15). (p. x)
The following are some representative examples of Latter-day Saint leaders approaching the “inspiration” of the Constitution in this limited sense:
Joseph Smith (October 15, 1843)
The only fault I find with the Constitution is, it is not broad enough to cover the whole ground.
Although it provides that all men shall enjoy religious freedom, yet it does not provide the manner by which the freedom can be preserved, not for the punishment of Government officers who refuse to protect the people in their religious rights, or punish those mobs, states, or communities who interfere with the rights of the people on account of their religion. Its sentiments are good, but it provides no mean of enforcing them. (p. 5)
Charles Nibley, General Conference, April 1925, condemning slavery that was endorsed by the original text of the Constitution
The revelations found in Doctrine and Covenants, sections 98 and 101, which I have quoted, and in which the Lord has said that no man should be in bondage to another, were given at a time when millions of Negroes were in bondage in the southern part of the United States. At that time there existed a great question as to whether or not slavery should be perpetuated, and seemed that the decision might be in favor of continuing to hold this black-skinned race under bondage to the while men who owned them. This question was settled a few years later, when the Supreme Court rendered its decision in the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a Negro who escaped from serfdom and went into one of the eastern states. His owner followed him and replevined him, claiming he was after his own property, just as he would go for a mule or an ox or a cow. Under the law the slave was his property. Chief Justice Taney, then at the head of the Supreme Court, delivered the decision that this was the law, the constitutional law. This decision was the law of the land; but in the justice and mercy of Almighty God, even a law which become a constitutional law, had to be overthrown, and the Lord raised up Abraham Lincoln and others to see that the law laid down by Him—that one man should not be in bondage to another—was set right and true freedom established in this land.
From that day on, millions more of slaves have been freed in Russia and other lands. In these latter-days, thrones have tottered and fallen, and in place of these has come a representative form of government, a government of the people, a government which gives the people their moral agency, spoken of in the revelations I have read, and which the Lord says is pertinent to all mankind. (pp. 72-73)
Albert B. Bowen, “The Constitution Charter of Our Liberties” (July 4, 1937)
The Latter-day Saints have always believed, and the Church has ever taught that God rules in the affairs of men and that the Revolutionary Fathers, the framers of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States were inspired by the wisdom of the Omnipotent. That the Constitution wholly suited none of them, and resulted from compromise of divergent views does not in the least disparage the claim. The compromises related to incidentals. The deep-seated basic underlying principles were not affected. The instrument was the product of the experiences of 180 years in the practice of the art of self-government and of the experience of centuries in the struggle of man for freedom. To hold that the founders were heaven-guided does not signify, neither do I believe, that the Constitution was written by the finger of God, nor that it sprang from full grown either from the forehead of Jove or Jehovah. That is not my understanding of the way in which God works with me. It is the eternal law of life that human beings can progress only by their own effort, but under guidance.
It is no of peoples and of nations. Working through imperfect man, He does not reach down with His omnipotent power and set up a completed perfected order from which there may be no change. He respects the great eternal law of human liberty upon which alone men or nations may ameliorate their conditions and ultimately reach the goal of an ordered tranquility. (pp. 86-87)
Dallin H. Oaks, Freedom Festival, Provost (July 5, 1987)
INSPIRATION
It was a miracle that the Constitution could be drafted and ratified. But what is there in the text of the Constitution that is divinely inspired?
Reverence for the United States Constitution is so great that sometimes individuals speak as if its every word and phrase had the same standing as scripture. Personally, I have never considered it necessary to defend every line of the Constitution as scriptural. For example, I find nothing scriptural in the compromise on slavery or the minimum age or years of citizenship for congressmen, senators, or the president. (p. 142)