Growing up, I was quite accustomed to hearing and using the expression “free agency,” in Church literature, by lay members as well as by Church leaders. But all that is gone now. The term dropped out of favor about 10-15 years ago, almost overnight.
I
recall teaching the High Priests Quorum one Sunday about 12 years ago, and made
the fatal mistake of using the term. Immediately, the Bishop, who was in the
class, seized the moment: “Brother Doddridge, we do not use that term
anymore.” Then I referred him to that week's chapter in the Priesthood
manual for that year. It was a quotation I was reading. Somehow a talk wherein
the term was used had squeaked by the editors. He then said, “Oh, okay.” I
smiled.
In
the January 2015 issue of the Ensign magazine, an address by Elder Russell M
Nelson contains, in the footnotes on page 35, the following: “6. Some people
describe agency as free
agency, but that expression is not scriptural. Scripture speaks only of moral agency (see
D&C 101:78).” (bold added)
Interestingly,
the reason there given for not using the term is that the “expression is not
scriptural." But on the same page is another expression commonly used by
the Church: “noble birthright.” That term is also not a scriptural term, yet it
is quite okay to use that term. Apparently then, the purpose for not using free
agency has a greater yet not articulated reasoning. Maybe because it is also
used in sports. Maybe it was being over-used. I do not know. That footnote is
the latest of several comments by Church leaders encouraging the disuse of
“free agency” over the last decade.
It
appears that the term free agency is a
combination of several Latter-day scriptural terms from the Book of
Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, namely free will, agency and moral agency. None of these are
Biblical terms.
Mosiah
18:28 “And thus they should impart of their substance of their own free will and
good desires before God, …”
D&C
58:27 “… do many things of their own free will, …”
D&C
93:31 “Behold, here is the agency of man,
and here is the condemnation of man; …
Hence we
have: (free will) + (agency, moral agency)* = free agency.
The
expression "free agency" then is actually the result of combining all
three latter-day scriptural terms into one locution.
*
the term moral agency is
used only once in Latter-day Scripture; agency five
times; free will
three times.
Here
are a few samples of the use of “Free Agency” by our General Authorities.
· President Joseph Smith, in 1841, Elder
Christofferson quoting Joseph Smith in the May 2015, Ensign, p.53, "Our organization is
such that we can resist the devil; if we were not organized so, we would not be
free agents.”
· Apostle John A Widtsoe,
President David O McKay,
Successor in trust, Discourses of Brigham Young, Deseret Book Company, 1954, p65, quoting President Brigham
Young, “I have the right to call my family together at certain hours for
prayer, and I believe this course proves that I am a free agent.”
Thus
we have cited a few examples of the “some people” who have described agency as
free agency, without requiring the exact expression to be first found in the
Scriptures before using it.
To
be sure, all of these fine gentlemen have also used the terms agency and moral
agency. In fact, they likely used these two terms much more than they did free
agency, as they liked to quote scriptures containing either of those two terms.
