On the eve of his second inauguration, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox stood at a church pulpit to deliver a sermon on the spiritual foundation of good governance. It was a message familiar to both his friends and opponents in the world of Beehive State politics.
Ahead of the state’s 45-day tornado of a legislative session, and after nearly a year of brutal campaigning, Cox announced to the diverse room of believers, and non-believers, that he had put his finger on Utah’s competitive advantage.
“We might be the only state in the nation that can give hope to the rest of the nation and the world,” Cox said at the Sunday night interfaith fireside.
The state, according to Cox — despite being 13th in size, 30th in population and 45th in seniority — is second to none in its potential to renew American’s faith in the possibility of disagreeing without contempt, the power of caring for one’s neighbors and the persistence of the American Dream.
Making this potential a reality is nothing short of an obligation for the people of Utah, for its leaders in politics and religion, and for himself, Cox said. The alternative is a country without the hope of reconciliation — and that, said Cox and his fellow panelists at Sunday’s interfaith fireside, is as far from the founding spirit of America as one can get.
To kick off a week of inaugural activities ahead of Monday’s official swearing in and Wednesday’s ceremonial address, Cox gathered with other recently elected statewide officials, including Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, Attorney General-elect Derek Brown and State Auditor-elect Tina Cannon, at the First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City for a Sunday evening fireside.
The night featured remarks from church pastor Jamie White and Henderson, an armchair conversation between Cox and former federal Judge Thomas Griffith, a panel moderated by Cox with representatives from different Utah faith communities and two musical numbers performed by Brown and his family.
Utah’s governors have a long tradition of participating in pre-inaugural interfaith services, going back at least two decades. Four years ago, the event took place at the historic St. George Tabernacle in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and just days before the violent climax in the dispute over the 2020 presidential election.
While disease and division may have ticked downward since then, the stakes surrounding religious communities’ responsibility to return hope to American political life have remained equally high, Griffith said.
“This is a time where people with faith are needed, perhaps more than ever, to address this issue,” Griffith said.
The issue is the same one that Griffith focused his comments on during Cox’s first interfaith fireside in 2021. The Constitution of the Unites States is “hanging by a thread,” Griffith said then, but the culprit isn’t a foreign nation or narrowing freedoms, “it is the contemptuous way in which politicians speak about others, and how we speak about other people.”
Much of this year’s fireside was spent in praise and promotion of Cox’s “Disagree Better” initiative as chairman of the National Governors Association from July of 2023 to July of 2024.
The national spotlight afforded Cox the opportunity to mobilize dozens of governors in an effort to model healthy bipartisan dialogue.
Cox’s initiative included an advertising campaign that was part of a study on partisan animosity, a forum at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., trainings from experts on depolarization and visits from actor Matthew McConaughey and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But Cox’s attempt to champion a different kind of politics also became the central attack for his political opponents, who argued that Cox’s initiative was simultaneously an empty talking point for a Republican supermajority and an offensive euphemism for compromising conservative values.
Early on in the 2024 election cycle, Cox’s primary challenger, state Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, and Cox’s general election rival, state Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, even decided to set aside their disagreements to film an ad mocking Cox’s “Disagree Better” approach.
Cox joked that he looks back on 2024 with relief — that it is over. Having introduced his budget recommendations for the upcoming legislative session, Cox is now preparing for a second term focused on fulfilling big promises on affordable housing and energy production.
But Cox acknowledged that the difficult year — which included electoral challenges and a surprising change of heart toward President-elect Donald Trump — was the perfect opportunity to practice what he preached.
If anything, Cox said, the pains he went through to try and find common ground with critics on the left and the right, reaffirmed his belief that the lifeblood of the Constitution is found where many people might not expect: Matthew chapter 5.
“To me, the hardest commandment, the most challenging, the most important commandment, in all of scripture, that Jesus gave, is this idea of loving your enemies,” Cox said. “But it’s not enough just to say that we love them. We actually have to do good to them.”
To follow this teaching is to do more than make the world a nicer place. It is a prerequisite for the country’s survival, Cox said, because without a critical mass of respectful disagreement, the centrifugal force of tribalism will throw the whole American experiment right out the window.
During the final panel discussion moderated by Cox, Jewish rabbi Avremi Zippel and evangelical Christian pastor Corey Hodges both attested to the kind of faith-based pluralism they have discovered while living in Utah.
Sheri Dew, the executive vice president and chief content officer of Deseret News’ parent company, Deseret Management Corporation, said this kind of community is unique to the Beehive State and deserves to be broadcasted to the rest of the country.
Dew, like Griffith, made repeated reference to an April 2023 address delivered by President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, entitled, “Peacemakers Needed.”
Dew said she thought it sent a powerful message that just weeks after Nelson said, “Anger never persuades. Hostility builds no one. Contention never leads to inspired solutions,” Cox was able to represent Utah on the national stage with “Disagree Better.”
“We may not be the biggest state, we may not be the most famous, we may not be the richest, we certainly aren’t the most populous, but we may be the only state that actually could return civility and decency and love of humankind to the country,” Dew said to loud applause.
