Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe they have an important role to play in preserving the U.S. Constitution. This belief stretches back to the early days of the church. But if modern members are serious about defending America’s founding document, we must reject Donald Trump.
In an 1833 revelation recorded in Kirtland, Ohio, God, as reported by church founder Joseph Smith, notes his involvement in the crafting of the Constitution. He states that he helped to “establish” the Constitution via the “hands of wise men whom [he] raised up unto this very purpose.”
Barely 20 years later, at a Fourth of July celebration in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, Brigham Young told his audience that the Constitution would avoid destruction because “it will be held inviolate by this people.”
Smith’s 1833 revelation, then, asserted that the Constitution was divinely inspired, while Young’s 1854 speech held that the inspired document required protection. More recently, Dallin H. Oaks, a counselor in the governing First Presidency, gave a General Conference address, “Defending our Divinely Inspired Constitution,” that tied these two threads together.
Until recently, I found this emphasis on the sanctity and fragility of the Constitution a bit strange. I felt no need to proclaim its divine origin, and talk of the document “hanging by a thread” struck me as unnecessarily apocalyptic. But now, allusions to the Constitution’s fragility and divine provenance do not seem so silly. Instead, they seem precisely prophetic.
Donald Trump’s seditious behavior in the wake of the 2020 presidential election clearly demonstrates that electing him to a second term would put the Constitution in grave danger.
After his loss to Joe Biden in November 2020, Trump falsely claimed that widespread voter fraud had cost him the election. According to a database of his comments compiled by The Washington Post, Trump made more than 800 inaccurate claims about the election between Election Day and the end of his presidency. Reviews and recounts in battleground states, many of them initiated and overseen by members of the Republican Party, failed to reveal major inaccuracies in the initial tallies.
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