Here are some great highlights from Dr. Daniel Mark, an Orthodox Jew and religious freedom expert who recently spoke in a standing-room-only lecture at BYU:
"Religious freedom is secure when it is seen as a right, but, nowadays, when it is seen less and less as a right, it can only be secure in a society that respects religious difference. Notice I said respects, not tolerates. So how do we cultivate a family ethic of genuine accommodation rather than exacting strictness? Well, how do we do it in the family? Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think America needs a family home evening. American families need family home evening, but I mean a family night for society. . . . So let us take example from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and from the Jews."
“Our political life can be improved through emulating family life,” Dr. Daniel Mark told a gathering at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, Thursday. Dr. Mark is an expert on religious freedom and political science assistant professor at Villanova University.
“Defending religious freedom, now more than ever, depends on promoting what I’ll call the family ethic in society,” Mark told students and faculty in the Wilkinson Student Center’s crowded Varsity Theater.
Mark is an Orthodox Jew and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. His lecture was titled “What Politics Can Learn from the Family: Jews, Latter-day Saints and the Case for Religious Freedom.”