Secularism (Worldliness)

LDS Quotes on Secularism & Worldliness

Spencer W. Kimball Portrait

“Your love, like a flower, must be nourished. There will come a great love and interdependence between you, for your love is a divine one. It is deep, inclusive, comprehensive. It is not like that association of the world which is misnamed love, but which is mostly physical attraction. When marriage is based on this only, the parties soon tire of each other. There is a break and a divorce, and a new, fresher physical attraction comes with another marriage which in turn may last only until it, too, becomes stale.”

Spencer W. Kimball  |  Faith Precedes the Miracle, 130–31

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Neal A. Maxwell Headshot

“When something is wrong, increasing its commonality cannot really confer respectability.”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

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“Our sexuality has been animalized, stripped of the intricacy of feeling with which human beings have endowed it, leaving us to contemplate only the act, and to fear our impotence in it. It is this animalization from which the sexual manuals cannot escape, even when they try to do so, because they are reflections of it. They might [as well] be textbooks for veterinarians.”

Henry Fairlie  |  Seven Deadly Sins

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Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church

Call it secularism or modernity or the technological age or existentialism on steroids—whatever you want to call such an approach to life, we do know a thing or two about it. Most important, we know that it cannot answer the yearning questions of the soul, nor is it substantial enough to sustain us in times of moral crises.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  |  Religion: Bound by Loving Ties

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“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”

Mark Twain

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“The [current] American story about marriage, as told in the law and in much popular literature, goes something like this: marriage is a relationship that exists primarily for the fulfillment of the individual spouses. If it ceases to perform this function, no one is to blame and either spouse may terminate it at will”

Elder Dallin H. Oaks  |  Protect the children. Ensign, 42(11), 43–46.

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“Thus does Mormon, the prophet, accurately describe our own society [see Mormon 8:36-37) of elegantly dressed, competitive, fashion-infatuated, status-conscious people. Note that the Lord does not stress the ordinary iniquities of crime and immorality, of atheism and lawlessness. Instead he stresses the intolerance, the uncharitable state of mind, and the vanity that exist in our present world. He warns us of the pride, the envy, the arrogance, and the malice that exist in our day. We do not persecute the poor; we simply tend to ignore them and forget them as the prophet predicted. (See Mormon 8:39.)”

Theodore M. Burton  |  “A Disease Called Pride,” BYU Speeches of the Year, October 13, 1971, p. 4

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“The religious community must unite to be sure we are not coerced or deterred into silence by . . . intimidation or threatening rhetoric. Whether or not such actions are anti-religious, they are surely antidemocratic and should be condemned by all who are interested in democratic government,” he said. “There should be room for all good-faith views in the public square, be they secular, religious, or a mixture of the two. When expressed sincerely and without sanctimoniousness, the religious voice adds much to the text and tenor of public debate.”

Elder Dallin H. Oaks

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Thomas S. Monson

“There is no better time than now, this very Christmas season, for all of us to rededicate ourselves to the principles taught by Jesus the Christ. It is the time to love the Lord, our God, with all our heart — and our neighbors as ourselves. It is well to remember that he who gives money gives much; he who gives time gives more; but he who gives of himself gives all.

“Let us make Christmas real. It isn’t just tinsel and ribbon, unless we have made it so in our lives. Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values. It is peace because we have found peace in the Savior’s teachings. It is the time we realize most deeply that the more love is expended, the more there is of it for others.”

Thomas S. Monson  |  "Christmas is Love"

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Thomas S. Monson

With the decline of religion in our society, many people have come to feel that they are sufficient unto themselves and have no need of a higher power. Wrong. A loss of religious faith implies a loss of faith in anyone greater than oneself. . . .

It can at times be easy to fall into the erroneous thinking that we ourselves are capable of handling anything that comes our way, that we have all the answers, and that there is no need for assistance from a higher power. When we realize, as one person put it, that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience,” we come to understand where our main emphasis should be and on whom we are reliant.

Thomas S. Monson  |  “Be a Light to the World,” BYU Devotional, November 1, 2011

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