Elder Scoresby said the missionaries were not targeting specific religions.
Legal experts said the case demonstrated the difficulties of balancing religious-expression protections against the principle that government cannot endorse specific religions.
It has often been the case in America that specific religions, races and ethnic groups have been singled out for discrimination, demonization, incarceration and worse.
Given the controversy this decision has sparked, we would like to take a moment to reiterate the importance of sensitivity when discussing specific religions or religious beliefs with any Starbucks patron.
Once shrouded in secrecy, the fraternal groups -- which exist in many countries and have origins as old as the Crusades -- shun specific religions and ideologies and say their purpose is to foster brotherhood and search for truth.
In the 1960s sociologist Robert Neelly Bellah proposed that civil religion exists in the United States, which is suffused with various rituals that unite its citizens, employing symbols that are drawn from specific religions but which operate independently of those origins.
