Editor:
I thought the Aug. 27 article “Temple Square Protesters Seek Conversion at Any Cost” was pretty good, except that I really didn’t like the headline and conclusion about us protesting “at any cost.”
Given the quote about our desire to “love people into the kingdom of God and into truth,” it would seem that by definition some boundaries are set for our tactics. I specifically told Devan Hite, the author of the piece, that we aren’t like Muslim terrorists in that we don’t kill people or force them to convert; we don’t scare people into believing like they do.
We agree with the LDS Church’s 11th Article of Faith: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.” We also allow members of the LDS Church to believe whatever they want to, and we exercise our religious freedom on public property by getting our Utah-minority views out there for public consumption.
Simply because a group (e.g., anti-abortionists, PETA, environmentalists, etc.) protests something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they will do it “at any cost”.
Rob Sivulka
Doctoral Student, Philosophy