“As a Latter-day Saint, I believe that any reputation Latter-day Saints wish to garner as peacemakers is significantly undermined by our inv
This is certainly a thought-provoking read.
I am reminded that just months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, at the April 1942 General Conference, a statement by the First Presidency against war was read
“The Church is and must be against war. . . . It cannot regard war as a righteous means of settling international disputes; these should and could be settled—the nations agreeing—by peaceful negotiations and adjustments," the statement reads. "The Church itself cannot wage war, unless and until the Lord shall issue new commands. . . . But the Church membership are citizens or subjects of sovereignties over which the Church has no control.”
The piece contains a reminder that President Kimball warning us that being ever ready and prepared for war is idolatry which we should avoid, and that he used his influence to keep nuclear weapons from being based in Utah as it would be “a denial of the very essence of [the] gospel.”
As a church, we claim to follow the Prince of Peace who urges us to be peacekeepers, yet the church invests some of its funds into businesses turning profits from creating weapons used in war around the world, and it seems many members no longer abhor war and consider it a last option but instead cheer for military operations and hunger for more.
