A Community Address for 2026
My friends, my neighbors, my family, and my fellow Americans:
I speak today as an American.
I speak as a child of God.
I speak as a Latter-Day Saint trying to be like Jesus Christ, an Child of God who believes that Jesus Christ, my eternal Brother lived, died, rose again, and continues to teach humanity something extraordinarily difficult:
How to possess power without becoming consumed by power.
How to know truth without forcing another person to accept it.
How to correct someone without believing we own them.
How to lead without becoming a master over another person’s conscience.
How to disagree and still love.
How to forgive while remaining accountable.
How to be independent while understanding that none of us lives entirely alone.
And how to recognize that being free does not mean being free from responsibility.
My family’s American story reaches back generations, into the 1600s, before there was a United States of America.
But that does not make this country more mine than yours.
That is precisely the point I want to make.
Heritage can tell me where I came from.
It cannot make me more important than somebody who arrived yesterday.
Faith can tell me what I believe.
It cannot give me ownership of another person’s conscience.
Citizenship gives me rights.
It also places responsibilities upon me.
And Christianity teaches me that having the ability to exercise power over another human being does not necessarily give me the moral authority to do so.
That distinction may be one of the most important things America needs to remember in 2026.
We Began With an Extraordinary Idea
Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans declared something revolutionary.
They did not merely declare independence from Britain.
They made a claim about the origin of human rights.
The Declaration of Independence says human beings are created equal and possess rights endowed by their Creator—including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It then makes another crucial assertion: governments exist to secure those rights and derive their legitimate power from the consent of the governed.
Think about what that means.
The government does not create my humanity.
The president does not create my humanity.
Congress does not create my humanity.
A governor does not create my humanity.
A church does not create my humanity.
My neighbor does not create my humanity.
My parents did not create the eternal worth of my soul.
And I certainly did not create yours.
Government can recognize rights.
Government can protect rights.
Government can violate rights.
Government can establish procedures for resolving conflicts between our rights.
But according to the philosophy expressed in the Declaration, government is not the original source of those rights.
The National Archives describes the founding principle similarly: natural rights such as life and liberty do not originate with presidents, kings or governmental charters.
For a Christian, that should produce humility rather than arrogance.
Because if rights ultimately come from something higher than human authority, then no human being gets to declare:
I am the highest authority over your soul.
That is where America’s political experiment and my understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ intersect.
Not because America is God.
It isn’t.
Not because every American government has followed God.
It hasn’t.
Not because every American leader was righteous.
They weren’t.
Not because America has always lived its own principles.
We plainly haven’t.
The connection is much simpler:
Human beings possess moral agency, and earthly power must have limits.
God Is God, and I Am Not
Perhaps the most dangerous temptation human beings face is not disbelief in God.
It is trying to take God’s place.
We do it whenever we decide another person’s conscience belongs to us.
We do it when we believe our intelligence makes us entitled to control somebody else.
We do it when parents forget that children eventually become independent adults.
We do it when religious leaders confuse spiritual guidance with ownership.
We do it when governments treat citizens as property.
We do it when employers treat employees as disposable machinery.
We do it when husbands dominate wives or wives dominate husbands.
We do it when neighbors believe property lines, personal boundaries or individual dignity matter only when those boundaries belong to themselves.
We even do it when our desire to help becomes a desire to control.
There is an enormous difference between:
“May I help you?”
and
“I know what is best for you, therefore I will decide for you.”
Jesus Christ invited people to follow Him.
He taught.
He warned.
He corrected.
He commanded.
He testified.
He served.
He loved.
But moral agency remained meaningful.
The Book of Mormon makes that principle unmistakable.
Second Nephi teaches that humanity is free to choose liberty and eternal life or captivity and death.
That is not freedom from consequences.
It is freedom accompanied by consequences.
And that distinction matters enormously.
Agency does not mean:
I may do whatever I want and nobody may respond.
Agency means:
I am responsible for my choices because they actually belong to me.
That is why Article of Faith 2 matters so much to me:
We answer for our own sins.
That is personal accountability.
Article of Faith 11 then takes that principle into the realm of conscience.
We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to our own conscience, and we allow everyone else that same privilege.
Read that carefully.
It doesn’t merely demand freedom for us.
It requires us to recognize freedom for them.
The person who believes differently.
The person who worships differently.
The person who interprets scripture differently.
The person who belongs to another church.
The Jewish neighbor.
The Muslim neighbor.
The Catholic neighbor.
The Protestant neighbor.
The Latter-day Saint neighbor.
The Buddhist neighbor.
The agnostic neighbor.
The atheist neighbor.
The neighbor who says, “I don’t know.”
The principle still works.
That is religious liberty.
George Washington expressed something strikingly similar in 1790 when addressing the Jewish congregation at Newport. His response rejected the idea that religious minorities merely receive “toleration” as a favor from a dominant group. He described liberty of conscience as an inherent right of citizens.
That is bigger than tolerance.
Tolerance says:
I have power over you, but I’ll permit you to exist.
Liberty says:
Your conscience was never mine to grant you in the first place.
That difference is everything.
America Has Spent 250 Years Learning Its Own Sentence
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
America wrote those words before America was prepared to live them.
That may be one of the strangest truths of our history.
The country announced equality while permitting slavery.
It announced liberty while denying women political participation.
It spoke of Creator-endowed rights while governments and settlers displaced Native peoples and repeatedly violated agreements with them.
It proclaimed religious liberty while religious minorities still experienced persecution.
It celebrated individual independence while entire populations were legally prevented from exercising it.
So I do not believe patriotism requires pretending our history was perfect.
Quite the opposite.
If I love America, I should care enough about America to tell the truth about America.
A family doesn’t become stronger because everybody agrees never to mention what went wrong.
A family becomes stronger when it can say:
This happened.
This hurt somebody.
This was wrong.
This was good.
This person showed courage.
This person failed.
We learned something.
Now what are we going to do differently?
That is repentance.
And nations, while they are not individual souls, can still participate in something resembling collective correction.
We amend constitutions.
We repeal laws.
We overturn bad practices.
We establish better protections.
We apologize.
We compensate where possible.
We preserve records.
We teach our children.
We try again.
Slavery Was the Great Contradiction
Imagine declaring that liberty comes from the Creator while legally permitting one human being to own another.
There may be no clearer example of humans attempting to become gods over other humans.
The enslaved person’s work belonged to someone else.
Movement could be controlled.
Marriage and family could be disrupted.
Children could be sold.
Education could be forbidden.
The person’s body itself became subject to another person’s economic authority.
Whatever religious justification people attempted to place around that system, the fundamental problem remained:
One human being had claimed dominion over another human being’s agency.
Frederick Douglass exposed the contradiction brilliantly.
He did not need America to invent a new principle.
America had already written the principle.
He demanded that America apply it.
That pattern appears repeatedly throughout our history.
The people excluded from America’s promises have often been the people who understood those promises most clearly.
They read the Declaration and essentially said:
Did you mean it?
Abraham Lincoln and the Terrible Price of Correction
The country eventually broke apart over a conflict in which slavery was central.
Hundreds of thousands died during the Civil War.
Emancipation came through war, presidential action, constitutional amendment and generations of struggle by enslaved and free Black Americans themselves.
But even abolition didn’t instantly create equality.
That is another lesson worth remembering.
Changing a law can happen in a day.
Changing a culture may take generations.
After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship and constitutional protections for due process and equal protection.
Look at those concepts:
Person.
Liberty.
Due process.
Equal protection.
They represent limits upon power.
Government cannot simply say:
Because we have authority, whatever we choose to do is therefore right.
No.
Authority itself must answer to law.
That is one of America’s greatest ideas.
Nobody gets to be God simply because they possess an office.
Women Asked the Same Question
Women eventually looked at America’s principles and asked:
Does my agency count too?
For decades, women organized, wrote, petitioned, marched, spoke publicly, lobbied and sometimes engaged in civil disobedience seeking political equality.
The struggle took generations. The proposed constitutional amendment was introduced repeatedly before finally passing Congress and being ratified in 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment prohibited denial of voting rights on account of sex, although discriminatory laws continued preventing many women—particularly women of color—from fully exercising voting rights afterward.
Again:
America didn’t suddenly discover an entirely new concept.
Americans forced the country to apply an old principle more consistently.
Consent of the governed.
If women are governed, where is their consent?
That is agency translated into citizenship.
Black Americans Asked Again
The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in voting rights for men, but laws and practices continued suppressing Black voting.
Eventually the Twenty-fourth Amendment attacked poll taxes, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 created federal mechanisms for protecting voting rights. The National Archives describes this progression as part of America’s long expansion and enforcement of voting rights.
Once again:
The principle existed.
Human beings resisted applying it.
Other human beings demanded accountability.
America changed.
Not perfectly.
Not instantly.
Not permanently without vigilance.
But it changed.
That Is Why History Matters
History isn’t useful because it gives us a collection of saints and villains.
History is useful because it shows what human beings do with power.
Sometimes good people make terrible decisions.
Sometimes flawed people do courageous things.
Sometimes institutions created for good purposes become protective of themselves.
Sometimes ordinary people recognize injustice before powerful people do.
Sometimes majorities are wrong.
Sometimes minorities are wrong.
Sometimes government protects liberty.
Sometimes government threatens liberty.
Sometimes churches protect conscience.
Sometimes religious people forget their own teachings about conscience.
That is why I do not want a history book that tells my children what to think.
I want history to teach them how to think.
Show them the Declaration.
Show them slavery.
Put them beside each other.
Ask:
Do these agree?
Show them the Constitution.
Show them the amendments.
Ask:
Why did we need amendments?
Show them women’s suffrage.
Ask:
Why did something that seems obvious today require generations of struggle?
Show them religious persecution.
Ask:
How do people who came seeking religious freedom sometimes end up denying religious freedom to somebody else?
Show them Native American history.
Ask:
What happens when one group decides that its progress gives it permission to disregard another group’s rights?
Teach them to ask questions.
That is education.
The Book of Mormon Adds Another Witness for Me
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I read the Bible.
But I also read the Book of Mormon as another testament of Jesus Christ.
Article of Faith 8 matters here.
It affirms the Bible as the word of God insofar as it is translated correctly and affirms the Book of Mormon as the word of God.
That doesn’t require throwing the Bible away.
It means I do not believe God gave humanity one book and then permanently stopped speaking.
Article of Faith 9 goes further.
God has revealed.
God does reveal.
And we believe He will yet reveal many great and important things.
Think about the humility required by that statement.
It means:
I may not know everything yet.
That may be one of the healthiest religious sentences a person can say.
I know what I believe.
I know what I have experienced.
I know what scripture teaches me.
But I am still listening.
I am still learning.
I am still capable of correction.
God is not finished teaching.
Therefore I should not pretend I am finished learning.
Revelation Does Not Make Me Your God
This is where religious people must be especially careful.
Suppose I pray about something and believe I receive an answer.
That experience can create an obligation for me.
It does not automatically establish my authority over you.
I can tell you:
This is what I believe God taught me.
I can testify.
I can explain.
I can invite you to pray.
I can show you scripture.
But your relationship with God remains yours.
Your conscience remains yours.
Your accountability remains yours.
This is precisely why agency is so important.
Otherwise revelation becomes a weapon:
God told me, therefore you must obey me.
Human history contains far too many examples of what happens next.
The better response is:
God taught me something, therefore I had better live according to it.
Notice where the responsibility lands.
On me.
That is accountability.
Jesus Never Asked Me to Become Him
Jesus asked us to follow Him.
There is a difference.
Following Christ means attempting to develop His attributes.
It doesn’t mean assuming His authority over everybody else’s eternal destiny.
I can become more loving.
More patient.
More courageous.
More truthful.
More forgiving.
More discerning.
More charitable.
More willing to defend someone being mistreated.
More willing to admit when I am wrong.
But I never graduate into becoming everybody else’s God.
That job is already occupied.
Freedom Does Not Mean Boundarylessness
This is important because the word freedom gets abused.
Your agency does not give you ownership of my body.
My agency does not give me ownership of yours.
Your property rights don’t give you ownership of mine.
My religious liberty doesn’t allow me to establish your religion.
Your freedom of speech doesn’t mean everybody must agree with you.
My freedom of speech doesn’t mean you must provide me an audience.
Your right to make a choice doesn’t mean freedom from every natural or legal consequence.
And my disagreement with your choice doesn’t automatically give me authority to prevent you from making it.
A healthy society has boundaries.
A healthy family has boundaries.
Healthy relationships have boundaries.
The question is:
Where does my authority end and yours begin?
That question belongs in homes, churches, businesses, schools, neighborhoods and governments.
Parents Must Eventually Release Their Children
This principle becomes especially difficult inside families.
Parents have genuine responsibility for children.
Children require protection, instruction, discipline and boundaries.
But the purpose of raising a child cannot be permanent control.
The goal is increasing capacity for independent moral agency.
Teach them.
Protect them.
Give them consequences.
Show them how to work.
Show them how to apologize.
Teach them how money works.
Teach them how government works.
Teach them scripture.
Teach them how to cook.
Teach them how to care for property.
Teach them how to recognize danger.
Teach them how to say no.
Teach them how to hear no.
Teach them how to disagree respectfully.
Teach them how to recognize manipulation.
Teach them how to help somebody without controlling them.
Then eventually recognize:
This is another human being.
That is difficult.
But isn’t that what God does with us?
He teaches.
He warns.
He gives commandments.
He allows consequences.
And still:
We choose.
Community Is Not Control
Independence does not mean isolation.
That is another misunderstanding.
I can be independent and still need my neighbor.
In fact, a functioning community depends upon independently responsible people voluntarily cooperating.
Someone knows plumbing.
Someone understands computers.
Someone grows food.
Someone teaches children.
Someone repairs engines.
Someone understands accounting.
Someone knows medicine.
Someone can sew.
Someone understands construction.
Someone understands law.
Someone knows local history.
Someone can comfort a grieving person.
Someone knows how to make a frightened child laugh.
Nobody knows everything.
That isn’t weakness.
That is community.
The mistake happens when interdependence becomes domination.
Helping someone does not purchase them.
Giving someone money doesn’t make their conscience yours.
Teaching somebody doesn’t make their future yours.
Doing somebody a favor doesn’t create lifelong ownership.
Love isn’t a debt contract.
Service isn’t slavery.
Community means:
I bring what I know.
You bring what you know.
We listen.
We cooperate.
We learn.
And perhaps together we discover something neither of us understood alone.
“I Know Everything Because I Know Nothing at All”
There is a strange kind of wisdom in recognizing how much we don’t know.
The dangerous person is often not the person asking questions.
It is the person who believes questions are no longer necessary.
Science advances because someone says:
Maybe our explanation is incomplete.
History advances because someone discovers another document.
Technology advances because someone asks:
Why are we still doing it this way?
Faith deepens because somebody kneels and asks:
Father, what am I missing?
Repentance begins with:
Maybe I was wrong.
Imagine what would happen if our communities rediscovered those four words:
Maybe I was wrong.
Not:
I am worthless.
Not:
Everything I believe is false.
Simply:
I am capable of learning something.
That is humility.
Article of Faith 13 May Be an American Survival Guide
We believe in being honest.
True.
Chaste.
Benevolent.
Virtuous.
And doing good to all people.
And if there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after it.
Notice that last word:
Seek.
Seeking requires movement.
Seeking means I don’t possess everything already.
Seeking requires listening.
Seeking requires examining.
Seeking requires discernment.
And it gives Christians permission to recognize goodness wherever goodness appears.
If my Catholic neighbor teaches me something beautiful about service, I can receive it.
If my Jewish neighbor teaches me something about preserving family history, I can receive it.
If my Muslim neighbor demonstrates extraordinary devotion, I can respect it.
If my atheist neighbor develops a brilliant method for feeding hungry people, I don’t need to reject the method because we disagree about God.
If a scientist discovers something true about creation, truth doesn’t become less true because it came through a laboratory.
If a child points out something every adult missed, listen to the child.
Seek after good things.
That is an extraordinarily expansive religious principle.
America Needs Listeners
We have plenty of speakers.
We have commentators.
Influencers.
Politicians.
Preachers.
Podcasters.
News networks.
Social media accounts.
Experts.
Algorithms.
Advertisements.
Everyone wants our attention.
Everyone wants to tell us what the other side supposedly thinks.
What we desperately need are listeners.
People willing to sit across from somebody and ask:
What do you actually believe?
Not:
What did somebody on television tell me people like you believe?
Not:
What did an algorithm determine would make me angry enough to keep scrolling?
But:
Tell me yourself.
That doesn’t mean agreement.
Listening and agreeing are different actions.
I can hear you completely and still say:
I disagree.
And you can hear me completely and say the same.
That is not societal failure.
That is freedom of conscience working properly.
We Must Stop Turning Neighbors Into Categories
Republican.
Democrat.
Christian.
Atheist.
Immigrant.
Native-born.
Rich.
Poor.
White.
Black.
Brown.
Gay.
Straight.
Urban.
Rural.
Educated.
Uneducated.
Boomer.
Gen X.
Millennial.
Gen Z.
Every category tells us something.
No category tells us everything.
The moment I believe a category tells me everything I need to know about a human being, I stop encountering the human being.
Jesus encountered individuals.
People had names.
Stories.
Families.
Failures.
Illnesses.
Questions.
Fears.
Possibilities.
Perhaps America needs to rediscover the individual.
Not individualism that says:
I owe nobody anything.
But individuality that says:
Every human being standing before me possesses a conscience and a story that I do not own.
Accountability Must Accompany Agency
There is another side to this.
Respecting agency does not mean refusing to confront wrongdoing.
Jesus confronted wrongdoing.
America has laws because one person’s choices can injure another person.
If someone steals, there should be accountability.
If someone assaults another person, there should be accountability.
If government officials abuse authority, there should be accountability.
If businesses defraud customers, there should be accountability.
If parents abuse children, there should be accountability.
If religious leaders exploit followers, there should be accountability.
If I harm someone, I should be accountable.
Agency without accountability becomes license.
Accountability without agency becomes domination.
We need both.
Repentance Is Not Humiliation
Our culture has become very good at accusation and very bad at repentance.
We expose somebody’s mistake.
Then what?
Are they allowed to learn?
Can they apologize?
Can restitution be made?
Can trust eventually be rebuilt?
Can a person become different?
Christianity requires the possibility of transformation.
Otherwise repentance is meaningless.
Accountability asks:
What did you do?
Justice asks:
What must be made right?
Mercy asks:
What can this person still become?
We need all three questions.
America Is Still Becoming
In 2026, the United States is 250 years removed from the Declaration of Independence.
The National Archives itself is commemorating the Declaration’s 250th anniversary and describes its central promises as ideals that continue both to inspire and challenge Americans.
I like that word:
Challenge.
Because celebrating America shouldn’t mean announcing that our work is finished.
Our history tells us otherwise.
1776 wasn’t the finish.
1787 wasn’t the finish.
The Bill of Rights wasn’t the finish.
Emancipation wasn’t the finish.
The Fourteenth Amendment wasn’t the finish.
Women’s suffrage wasn’t the finish.
The Voting Rights Act wasn’t the finish.
And 2026 isn’t the finish.
Every generation inherits the experiment.
Every generation receives both the principles and the unresolved problems.
Every generation must decide whether liberty means:
Freedom for people like me
or
a principle that I am willing to defend even for someone unlike me.
That is the harder test.
What Does God Require of America?
I cannot speak for God.
I can speak about what I understand scripture to require of me.
Love God.
Love my neighbor.
Tell the truth.
Repent.
Forgive.
Serve.
Protect the vulnerable.
Exercise righteous judgment.
Respect agency.
Keep covenants.
Seek revelation.
Do good.
Be honest.
Be benevolent.
Seek what is virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy and true.
And perhaps most importantly:
Remember that I am not God.
If millions of Americans independently attempted those things, I suspect our country would change dramatically without anybody needing to establish a national religion.
Because righteousness forced by government isn’t righteousness.
Faith forced upon another person isn’t faith.
Charity compelled by domination isn’t charity.
A testimony extracted through fear isn’t testimony.
The gospel requires choice.
So Here Is What I Ask of My Community
I am not asking you to become me.
Please don’t.
I am not asking you to inherit my testimony.
Build your own.
I am not asking you to surrender your questions.
Ask better ones.
I am not asking you never to disagree with me.
Please disagree when you believe I am wrong.
But tell me why.
And allow me the same dignity.
I ask that we stop trying to become gods over one another.
I ask parents to teach rather than possess.
I ask children to recognize that independence comes with responsibility.
I ask neighbors to respect boundaries.
I ask governments to remember that their authority originates with the governed.
I ask religious people to defend freedom of conscience even when another person’s conscience leads somewhere different from theirs.
I ask nonreligious people to extend that same freedom to believers.
I ask businesses to remember that employees and customers are human beings.
I ask teachers to teach children how to think rather than merely what to repeat.
I ask students to question responsibly.
I ask citizens to read original documents.
Read the Declaration.
Read the Constitution.
Read the amendments.
Read history from people who disagreed with one another.
Read Frederick Douglass.
Read the people Douglass criticized.
Read women’s arguments for suffrage.
Read their opponents.
Read Native accounts.
Read immigrant accounts.
Read presidents.
Read ordinary people’s letters.
And if you are Christian:
Read the Bible.
I would also invite you to read the Book of Mormon and decide for yourself what you think of its testimony of Jesus Christ.
Not because I can make that decision for you.
Precisely because I cannot.
Ask God.
Think.
Study.
Question.
Listen.
Then exercise your own conscience.
That is what I mean when I talk about agency.
My Heritage Gives Me Responsibility, Not Superiority
My family being here for generations doesn’t give me a larger share of America.
It gives me a longer family record to examine.
There are things in any family’s history worth celebrating.
There may also be things requiring humility.
Heritage isn’t a throne.
It is stewardship.
If my ancestors helped build something good, my responsibility is to preserve and improve it.
If previous generations made mistakes, my responsibility is to learn from them.
I don’t honor ancestors by pretending they were perfect.
I honor them by continuing the work.
And the America I want to pass to my children isn’t one where everybody thinks alike.
That would frighten me.
I want an America where people know how to live beside somebody who thinks differently.
Where disagreement doesn’t automatically become hatred.
Where boundaries don’t automatically become hostility.
Where religion doesn’t become domination.
Where government doesn’t become deity.
Where independence doesn’t become selfishness.
Where community doesn’t become control.
Where accountability doesn’t eliminate mercy.
Where mercy doesn’t eliminate accountability.
Where truth matters more than winning.
We Are Responsible for What We Build Next
Our ancestors cannot solve 2026.
Thomas Jefferson cannot.
Abraham Lincoln cannot.
Frederick Douglass cannot.
Susan B. Anthony cannot.
Harriet Tubman cannot.
Martin Luther King Jr. cannot.
Joseph Smith cannot.
Our grandparents cannot.
Our parents cannot.
They can teach us.
Their writings can warn us.
Their successes can inspire us.
Their failures can educate us.
Scripture can guide us.
God can guide us.
But we have to choose.
That is agency.
And tomorrow our children will inherit the consequences of today’s choices.
That is accountability.
So when somebody asks me what America means after 250 years, my answer is not simply flags, fireworks, presidents, armies or political parties.
America is an unfinished promise.
It is the radical proposition that ordinary human beings can govern themselves without a king ruling their consciences.
That proposition only works if we learn to govern ourselves.
My anger.
My pride.
My greed.
My fear.
My appetite for control.
My certainty that everybody else is the problem.
My temptation to take another person’s agency because I am convinced I know better.
Self-government begins with the self.
Perhaps that is the connection between discipleship and citizenship that we have overlooked.
A republic requires citizens capable of exercising liberty responsibly.
The gospel requires disciples capable of exercising agency responsibly.
Both collapse when freedom becomes merely:
I get what I want.
True liberty requires something harder:
I possess rights, you possess rights, and neither of us is God over the other.
To My Community
So today I choose something simple.
I choose to listen.
I choose to learn.
I choose to speak when something needs saying.
I choose to respect a boundary when someone gives me one.
I choose to establish boundaries of my own.
I choose to help without assuming ownership.
I choose to teach without demanding obedience to my every opinion.
I choose to question without believing questions make faith impossible.
I choose faith without pretending faith makes questions unnecessary.
I choose accountability.
I choose repentance.
I choose forgiveness.
I choose truth.
I choose service.
I choose liberty of conscience.
I choose to seek whatever is virtuous, lovely, of good report and praiseworthy.
I choose to follow Jesus Christ.
And because I follow Him, I must remember:
You are also a child of God.
Your agency matters.
Your conscience matters.
Your story matters.
Your responsibility matters.
Your choices matter.
And I cannot live your life for you.
Neither can Washington.
Neither can a president.
Neither can Congress.
Neither can a political party.
Neither can a pastor, bishop, priest, teacher, influencer or neighbor.
We can help each other.
We can teach each other.
We can protect each other.
We can correct each other.
We can disagree with each other.
We can hold each other accountable under laws we establish together.
We can mourn together.
Build together.
Celebrate together.
Worship together when our consciences agree.
And peacefully worship differently when they don’t.
That is community without surrendering individuality.
That is independence without isolation.
That is faith without compulsion.
That is authority without pretending to be God.
And perhaps that is one lesson America has spent 250 years struggling to understand.
The Declaration announced that our rights were endowed by a Creator.
Our history immediately demonstrated how difficult it is for human beings to respect one another’s rights.
Generation after generation expanded the circle.
The enslaved demanded freedom.
The formerly enslaved demanded citizenship.
Women demanded political voice.
Religious minorities demanded liberty of conscience.
Black Americans demanded that voting rights mean voting rights.
Again and again Americans returned to the original promises and asked:
Do these words include me?
Our answer today must be:
If liberty is truly a principle, it cannot belong only to me.
And that brings me back to Jesus Christ.
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Repent when you are wrong.
Forgive.
Tell the truth.
Serve.
Choose.
Accept responsibility for your choices.
Allow others their conscience.
Seek what is good.
And never confuse being a child of God with being God over another child of God.
We have inherited 250 years of an unfinished American experiment.
What happens during the next 250 years begins with what we teach our children and how we treat our neighbors today.
May we leave them more truth than fear.
More liberty than control.
More responsibility than entitlement.
More curiosity than certainty.
More service than domination.
More reconciliation than revenge.
More courage than conformity.
More community without sacrificing conscience.
And enough humility to remember that no matter how much any one of us knows—
God is still God.
We are still learning.
We are still choosing.
And we are still responsible for what we choose to build together.
That is the America I believe is worth continuing.
That is the community I want to live in.
And that is the kind of disciple of Jesus Christ I am still striving to become.
God gave us agency.
America gave us a remarkable experiment in protecting it.
History shows what happens when we deny it to one another.
And now it is our turn to decide what we will do with it.
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