Fundamental to Democracy and Capitalism is a Religious Life

A couple of quotes from Jeffrey R. Holland from his interview with Hugh Hewitt.

nothing could combine us better, nothing calls for our service more, nothing, there’s almost nothing on which we could stand shoulder to shoulder given circumstances of today than this matter of religious freedom and the chance for every man or woman of whatever religious conviction to have the freedom to say what they want to say and believe what they want to believe.

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fundamental to democracy, and fundamental to capitalism is a religious sense, is a religious life. And out of that grew this idea that what we have to enforce the unenforceable. You have to voluntarily choose to be honest. You have to voluntarily honor a contract. You have to voluntarily care about what the course of your community is, or the integrity of your leaders. We can’t hire enough policemen to do that. You can’t get a government oppressive enough or large enough to manage all of that. That has to be something from the human heart. That has to be something from the soul. And that’s what a morally honest and a religiously oriented people do for democracy. 

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Elder Holland also referred to a saying Michael Novak said,

the family is the fundamental unit of society. It is certainly the fundamental unit of a church. I guess, probably, it’s the fundamental unit of everything. And our friend, Michael Novak, said once this law obtains that when things go well with the family, life goes well. And when things do not go well win the family, life is, can be really miserable. Let’s start there. Let’s work better at home. Let’s work better with parents and children. And if we can master some principles in that little circle, maybe we can extend them to the state and the nation and the world. But better to start closer to home, and I believe God will bless us in every way to succeed in that most fundamental mission we all have, and that is to save and bless the next generation.

Here is the quote, "if things go well with the family, life is worth living; when the family falters, life falls apart." ("The Myth of Romantic Love and Other Essays", quoted at michaelnovakonlinearchive.blogspot.com)

(Also quoted in "Faith, Family, Religious Freedom" an address given by Jeffrey R. Holland at a fireside during the annual J. Reuben Clark Law Society Conference in Washington D.C. Feb, 15, 2015)