Gathering

In the early years of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for spiritual and physical safety and to strengthen the Church, the Saints were commanded to gather with the main body of the Church. This both served to strengthen the individual and the Church as a whole. Gathering started in New York, then moved as the Church moved . . . to Ohio, Missiouri, Illinois, and finally Utah.

The early Saints mostly gathered from Europe, particularly Great Britain and Scandinavia. They gathered from Australia as well and from several places in the United States. Many converts became great leaders in the Church.

After the main body of Saints arrived in Utah, Brigham Young established a perpetual emigration fund. Members donated to the fund to help other Saints gather to Utah. These Saints were expected to repay the amount they received to emigrate back into the fund, when they could, although not everyone was able.

Immigration to Utah didn't necessarily mean immigration to Salt Lake City. Many Saints were called to settle throughout Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and California, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.

Gathering became less of an emphasis from the late 19th century on. The US Government passed laws which made immigration more difficult. Saints were asked to stay in their own lands and build up the Church there. The blessings for them would remain the same.

Today, temples are built all over the world and there are more members outside the United States than inside, although many members do still immigrate to the United States for many different reasons and are welcome to. Gathering, however, no longer serves an active purpose in the Church and staying in one's home country is still encouraged. In an area conference in 1972, Bruce R. McConkie said the place for Saints to gather was in their own countries. This was reaffirmed by presidents Harold B. Lee and Spencer W. Kimball.

The Legal Right to Gather

During the COVID-19 pandemic, gathering together took on deeper significance. Throughout the world, governments required people to isolate within their own homes, and congregations of many faiths around the world canceled worship services and other activities to abide by government restrictions for large group gatherings to slow the spread of the coronavirus. President Russell M. Nelson closed temples worldwide for four months in response to the pandemic. He described the decision as "painful."

At the Religious Freedom Annual Review, hosted by the Brigham Young University Law School—held online due to the pandemic—Elder David A. Bednar said the pandemic has alerted us to the limitations in the food supply chain; our dependence on other nations for essential medical supplies, pharmaceuticals and other products; constraints in inventory and delivery systems for manufacturing plants and retail businesses; deficiencies in our national and local health care systems; the importance of defending the borders between personal liberty, constitutional rights and governmental authority; and attacks on the freedoms of religion, speech and assembly.[1]

He warned there is a danger in limiting a religious organization’s right to gather. “Gathering, in short, is at the core of faith and religion. Indeed, if the faithful are not gathering, sooner or later they will begin to scatter. And because gathering lies at the very heart of religion, the right to gather lies at the very heart of religious freedom.”[2]

“I believe it is vital for us to recognize that the sweeping governmental restrictions that were placed on religious gatherings at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis truly were extraordinary,” Elder Bednar explained. “No other event in our lifetime—and perhaps no other event since the founding of this nation—has caused quite this kind of widespread disruption of religious gatherings and worship.”[3]

In North America, Elder Bednar pointed out, jurisdictions deemed services related to alcohol, animals and marijuana as essential, while the services of religious organizations were classified as nonessential, even when those activities could be safely conducted.

The senior Church leader cited examples in one state where Catholic priests were barred from anointing a parishioner with holy oil in the performance of last rites, even if that person did not have COVID-19. In the same state, Latter-day Saints were not allowed to perform baptisms.

“The power of government must have limits,” asserted Elder Bednar.[4]

“This time of restriction and confinement has confirmed for me that no freedom is more important than religious freedom,” said the senior leader of the global faith. “Protecting a person’s physical health from the coronavirus is, of course, important, but so is a person’s spiritual health.”[5]

Elder Bednar continued, “While believers and their religious organizations must be good citizens in a time of crisis, never again can we allow government officials to treat the exercise of religion as simply nonessential. Never again must the fundamental right to worship God be trivialized below the ability to buy gasoline.”[6]

Elder Bednar said the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates the fragility of religious freedom and the need to shore it up.

“In our understandable desire to combat COVID-19, we, too, as a society may have forgotten something about who we are and what is most precious,” he concluded. “Now is the time for us to heed the wake-up call, to remember and to act.”[7]

See full transcript of Elder Bednar's Religious Freedom address here.

In October 2006, Elder Bednar spoke at a BYU-Idaho devotional on the subject of the spirit and purposes of gathering. He also discussed the places of gathering, including into His restored Church, into holy temples, into stakes of Zion, and into families. The blessings of gathering include edification, preservation, and strength.

Read Elder Bednar's devotional address here.