Summary of Remarks: “Religious Freedom and Its Impact on Minority Religions”

Elder Ronald A. Rasband is a Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The organizers of the G20 Interfaith Forum invited Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to discuss religious freedom and its impact on minority religions In his remarks in front of global religious leaders he spoke of the beginnings of the Church—itself once a minority. From its humble 19th-century start in New York and its turbulent times in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, the Church is now a worldwide faith of nearly 17 million members.

“When religion is given the freedom to flourish, believers everywhere perform simple and sometimes heroic acts of service,” Elder Rasband said. “We stand shoulder to shoulder in service with many of you.”

Elder Rasband outlined the service the Church has done with others during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 alone, he said, service included contributions to COVAX to provide nearly 1.5 billion COVID-19 vaccines, 26 million meals given to the hungry, and 294 service projects for refugees in 50 countries.

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Remarks on Session Theme: Religious Commitments to Global Sustainable Development Focusing on Child Hunger, Water, and Sanitation

Sharon Eubank is Director, Latter-day Saint Charities; first counselor, General Relief Society Presidency, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I thank our impressive Italian hosts for the organization of this year’s conference and am very pleased to join these distinguished speakers today. I attended the first G-20 Interfaith forum in 2014 and have seen it grown in attention and impact over the last 9 years. My name is Sharon Eubank and I’m the president of Latter-day Saint Charities, the humanitarian arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The 17 Sustainable Development goals were originally determined by a coalition of world leaders to focus the conversation on 17 agreed-upon priorities. 3 of the goals correspond to the topic of today’s session: children, hunger, water/sanitation. However, the topic of sustainable development often gets overshadowed by emergency aid.

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Private Beliefs, Public Platforms and the Rule of Law

Sohail Wahedi is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Erasmus School of Law in the Netherlands and the 2022 Niels Stensen Fellow at the University of Toronto

This post is also a part of an ongoing discussion about Religion and the Rule of Law.

Introduction

In January 2021 Twitter decided to delete the account of one of its fervent users, Donald Trump, who insisted on spreading disinformation about election frauds during the 2020 Presidential elections.  A significant number of people will remember Trump as one of the most surprising political leaders in the history of the U.S. Not only because he was a champion of “fake news,” battled for fewer immigrants,  framed his legal and political opponents as “losers,” “stupid,” or “double-faced,”  but also because he—as “the King Social Media”—got deleted from Twitter.

Although some have supported Trump’s Twitter ban because of his use of social media in a way to target political opponents and to mobilize his supporters, others,  such as German chancellor Angela Merkel, have been very critical of the ban, calling the suspension “problematic” because of the importance of free speech in a real democracy. This free speech dimension and the considerable precedential force of the Trump Twitter ban has urged constitutional law scholars to scrutinize the power public platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter possess to intervene in matters of civil liberties.

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