Mormons Stress Duty to God and Country in Times of Warfare : Latter-day saints: While many churches favored sanctions, they followed the U.S.-led course in the Gulf.

Back in the 1840s, when Mormons were being persecuted in the Midwest, a battalion of about 500 of them volunteered for a long, overland march to serve in the war with Mexico.

Some died on the way, and by the time they reached their assigned post in San Diego, the war was ending. But their readiness to serve, despite persecution, exemplified a hallmark of their church--duty to country.

“Our church has always taught members to obey the nation,” says Thomas S. Monson, one of the three-man first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and likely eventually to become its president and prophet.

“In time of war or stress, we have no hesitancy in following the flag,” he added.

While the leadership of Roman Catholic and most mainline Protestant churches supported sanctions instead of arms to oust Iraq from invaded Kuwait, Mormon leaders backed the U.S.-led course.

“Once the United Nations took its action and President Bush took his stand, we were behind our leader,” Monson said, noting that Congress also ratified the U.N. action. “That’s all that was needed.

“Interestingly in our church, it is assumed and understood that when the leadership of our nation lines up behind a particular policy in a crisis, we support and sustain it,” he said.

The emphasis on allegiance to country is a characteristic trait of Mormons, linked to their U.S. origins, perhaps to countering their early vilified history, also to church teachings and regular disciplines, putting service ahead of self-interest.

Monson discussed that dutiful quality on a visit here from church headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Made a member of the church’s Council of 12 Apostles in 1963, he became part of the church’s three-man First Presidency in 1985 as one of two counselors to President Ezra Taft Benson, now 91, with Gordon B. Hinckley, 80.

Council President Howard W. Hunter, 83, and Hinckley have seniority to succeed Benson. But Monson, at 63, appears destined ultimately for the top office.

“We’re not just sheep that are going to roll over,” he said. “Each individual makes decisions for himself.” But an article of the church’s faith is being subject to governing rulers and honoring the law.

“When the nation needs us, we respond,” he said, noting that about 35,000 Mormons are in the U.S. armed forces, 5,400 of them in Saudi Arabia. “They don the uniform and fight for freedom and our American heritage.”

That disposition has typified Mormons throughout the U.S. wars of this century, including the Korean and Vietnam wars, which were widely opposed in many churches, but not by Mormons.

During those sometimes controversial wars, when many young men found refuge from the military by entering seminaries, Mormons cut mission service for young men so they could answer the draft.

Begun in 1830, the conversion-seeking church has grown to 4 million in this country, 7.6 million worldwide. It suffered harsh persecutions at the outset, often for its distinctive beliefs and early practice of polygamy. Its people went westward, eventually planting its center in Utah.