PROVO, Utah — At a conference for religious liberty held at Brigham Young University, Elder Robert M. Daines, a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offered keynote remarks as part of a roster of dozens of speakers that included lawyers, clergy, scholars and other attendants.
Elder Daines, who currently serves in the Church’s United States Northeast Area presidency, spoke on how the strength of religious liberty in the United States depends on the character of religious people, offering counsel to an audience of individuals from different faiths.
The Religious Freedom Annual Review, sponsored by the International Center for Law and Religious Studies at the BYU J. Reuben Clark Law School, was held on June 16, 2026, in Provo, Utah, with the subtitle, “The United States of America at 250: Life, Religious Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
‘We need better disciples’
“Formal legal protection for religious exercise in this country is about as strong as it has been in 50 years and perhaps since the Founding,” said Elder Daines, speaking with expertise as a former practicing lawyer and professor of law at Stanford University.
Instead of focusing on claims of legality, Elder Daines highlighted that believers must live what they believe in order to continue to have religious liberty.
“It is far more important that you are a good Muslim, Jew, Christian or Buddhist —a good peacemaker — than that you are a good litigator,” he said.
“We don’t need better lawyers. We need better disciples.”
Elder Daines continued to ask religious people to “live up to the principles that they ask the law to protect.”
“The legal protection of religious liberty depends, in the long run, on whether religious communities actually live up to the ideals and religious principles they ask the law to protect and whether they have become the kind of people and built the kind of institutions their neighbors want to inhabit or respect,” he said.
Building bridges of faith
At the beginning of his teaching career, Elder Daines had just started to teach at New York University and said he felt “out of place.”
A faculty member who had been an advocate for abortion rights, immigrants’ rights and LGBT rights approached him at a gala.
Fearing a strong discussion, Elder Daines braced himself.
The faculty member, recognizing Elder Daines as a member of the Church, instead complemented then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who the faculty member had worked with at the Supreme Court and said was a man of the “highest capacity and integrity, good will and good humor.”
Then-Elder Oaks had lived his belief and bridged the gap between groups.
Elder Daines addressed the people in the conference room, who come from diverse religious and academic backgrounds, and cited President Oaks’ arguments for religious liberty, which evolved over time from a more secular perspective to referencing scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
President Oaks told people the Resurrection of Jesus Christ should shape the way we see each other and that everyone should see others as “children of God who belong to each other” (See his April 2026 general conference address).
Elder Daines also referenced a friend, Bill Mumma, who had contributed to religious liberty developments as a volunteer for the Becket Fund, a non-profit public interest law firm, and who also worked on Wall Street.
“Bill moved through this world with buoyant, open warmth. He didn’t hide behind a barricade. He wasn’t lecturing anyone.”
Elder Daines said Mumma succeeded by “getting along with and leading a very difficult group of people,” something he recommended for all believers.
The model of the scriptures, Elder Daines said, is to build houses for the Lord and for neighbors.
Belonging to one another
Elder Daines was one of three keynote speakers in the first session of the day. Other opening speakers, Rev. Dr. David G. Latimore from the Princeton Theological Seminary and Colleen Sheehan, a politics professor at Arizona State University, continued with the theme of a historical approach to religious liberty and how religious people benefit society.
Other sessions during the day went over the latest religious freedom legislation and interfaith relationships encouraged by faith groups.
In a session with leaders of grassroots interfaith organizations, Allyson Egbert, founder of the Las Vegas Alliance for Religious Freedom and Human Dignity, spoke about establishing relationships between faith communities.
“You’re there to learn their ways,” she said, who cited an experience of her husband who helped people of another faith pick peaches in an orchard for a service project, leading to deep and lasting relationships.
Elder Daines offered a similar conclusion to his message.
“That is ‘the real work’ of religious liberty – to believe and to behave as children of God who belong to one another.”
