Scott Woodward:
In his July 1838 tithing revelation, the Lord both affirmed the law of consecration and modified the ongoing way in which the saints were expected to consecrate of their money and property. Rather than following the 1831 system outlined in D&C 42 of legally deeding all of their property to the bishop and receiving back from him a legal lease of property known as a stewardship, the Lord asked the saints instead to follow a tithing system of paying one tenth of all their interest annually. Only months after this tithing revelation was received, the Saints were violently expelled from Missouri and, just over a year later, found themselves as refugees settling a swampy piece of land in Illinois they would call Nauvoo. In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we begin by diving into what consecration looked like in Nauvoo and then trace the practice into Utah. And rather than seeing a clean, linear break from the D&C 42 financial consecration system of stewardship to the D&C 119 consecration system of tithing, we instead see in the historical record what appears to be various forms of overlap between and hybridization of these two systems. Today we’re talking about United Orders and business cooperatives in Brigham City, Orderville, and elsewhere, and how the federal government broke up these cooperatives, and finally how we as a church came to settle more exclusively on the tithing system. All this and more coming up. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our fourth episode of this series dealing with consecration and church finance. Now, let’s get into it. Hello, Casey. What’s going on, sir?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Not much. What’s going on with you, Scott?

Scott Woodward:
Just happy to be here with you, brother. Happy to be talking church finances.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Oh, yeah. Money, money, money. It does seem like, you know, based on our explorations, that is a phrase that was never said by an early leader of the church: it was consecration, consecration, consecration.

Scott Woodward:
That’s correct.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s make this faithful. And it seems like so far it’s been a pretty up-and-down tale, right? Where some good things have happened—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—but for the most part, financial challenge after financial challenge as to how it worked.

Scott Woodward:
Can we say there have been some narrow straits through which the church has had to pass in order to get to where we’re at today financially?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And I think that that’s part of the story that’s really important, right? Is when the church says stuff like, we always follow the principle of putting away a portion of our income for a possible rainy day, there have been a lot of rainy days in the history of the church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so right now everybody’s going great, and everybody talks about how wealthy the church is, but the institutional traumatic memory of some of the things that they’ve been to may be part of the cause of why they feel like we’ve got to have a reserve and we’ve got to be cautious and we can’t spend more than we bring in.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s a big part of the mindset of the leadership of the church, I would say.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So in this series, we’re talking about church finances. Why are we talking about church finances? Because there’s been a major uptick in interest in this topic, right? The church’s finances have become, in some circles, a major point of controversy. Some people think the church has too much money or that the church isn’t using its money in ways that some would like to see it use its money. It’s all very interesting. Wherever people are at, nobody is denying that the church has amassed a significant financial reserve to ensure the accomplishment of its purposes. And so in this series we’re trying to tell this story. How did we get there? And so we started from the beginning. We wanted to go back and trace that topic from the very beginning all the way back to the original revelations, the foundational revelations and historical moments that have gotten us to our present place of remarkable financial security as a church.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And we could say the whole story of church finances grows out of one word, couldn’t we Casey? That word is consecration.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Consecration. Yep. Uh-huh.

Scott Woodward:
The story of the church’s financial success is the story of consecration. And so let me just kind of review real quick where we’ve been, and then Casey, you’re going to tell us where we’re going today.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Okay.

Scott Woodward:
So far—let me see if I can do this quickly—in episode one we went through the earliest revelations that established the law of consecration of property and stewardship. That’s in D&C 41, 42, and 51. And the purposes of consecration were first articulated here, and those purposes have withstood the test of time, which is amazing. And here are the purposes: Number one, to take care of the poor and eliminate poverty. Number two, to purchase land, build buildings for church purposes—like, think church-houses, temples, universities, administrative buildings, etc., and to build up the New Jerusalem to facilitate the gathering of God’s people. That’s a huge one.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Uh-huh.

Scott Woodward:
And then when we get to D&C 70 and 78, we start to see church employees as well can be compensated through the funds, especially the business ventures of the church. And, again, remarkably unchanged since the 1830s, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Now, we have talked about that the specific systems of consecration and the kind of organizational particulars involved have morphed and changed according to circumstance.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. The historical record indicates that section 42 establishes the principles of consecration, not the practice—that the practice of consecration was very flexible and was continually altered and changed by revelation and by the leaders of the church to fit their needs. So don’t imagine that consecration means living the way section 42 describes, but look at section 42 and say, here’s the principles of consecration.

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
How do we make these work in the situation we’re in?

Scott Woodward:
Perfect. Yeah, the principles and the purposes are articulated really nicely in 42. And it does offer a system as well, doesn’t it? It has a system where it explains deeding property to a bishop, receiving back a stewardship. Like, there was a system that piggybacked on top of the principles immediately.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But that is what has shifted. The first system, maybe we could even call it communal, if we can avoid misunderstanding on that term. This first system was kind of a communal system of consecration, where all of your property is legally deeded to the bishop of the church.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then the bishop, then, in turn, leases that property back to you, often with additional land, in what was called your stewardship. And all of your surplus was periodically also given to the bishop to be used to take care of the poor, purchase land, build buildings, etc., right? So this first kind of communal system was rather short-lived. It ended roughly around 1833, being only practiced to any great extent in Missouri, and jealousy and mobocracy crushed that system. Can we say it like that?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And that was all kind of episode 1, as we talked about that. Episode 2, we discussed the beginning of the church’s consecration-based business ventures. The first one was called the Literary Firm, established in D&C 70 as a for-profit printing business venture of the church, and that was shortly after combined in 1832 with a grocery store in Missouri and another one in Kirtland, together with an ashery, an inn, and a few other money makers to create what was called the United Firm, which was a joint venture established by D&C 78 and 82 and was also codenamed the United Order.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
This is the beginning of the corporate management of the church’s financial and commercial interests. And we talked about how, although this firm was dissolved in 1834, this was not the end of church business ventures. Not by a long shot, actually, right? Those early revelations laid out the revelatory precedents, the revelatory seeds, if you will, that have flourished today into many very successful business ventures of the church. We mentioned farming and real estate and digital media and printing and a theme park in Hawaii and banking, and all kinds of stuff.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep.

Scott Woodward:
So, super cool and incredibly successful, but all those trace back to these revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. And that was episode 2. Episode 3, in our last episode, we talked about the church’s earliest failed efforts to get involved in banking in Kirtland, which was partially responsible for the financial and ecclesiastical crisis that led to the collapse of the church in Kirtland in 1836 and ’37. It was a brutal time. We talked about how Joseph and Sidney had to flee for their lives from Kirtland, and that’s when they made their way to Far West, Missouri. It was there, under the shadow of ongoing financial strain from Kirtland, and in the aftermath of the Lord’s command to build a temple in Far West, that the Lord’s articulation of tithing was first received, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Joseph asked, how should we finance all of this, right? How should we finance what you’re asking? Lord, what do you require as a tithe of your people? And that’s where D&C 119 is given. This is the law of tithing, which is a subset of the law of consecration.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
We talked about how tithing is often erroneously described as a lesser law given by the Lord because we were not able to live the higher law of consecration. We’ll talk more today about kind of where that idea comes from, but this ignores, or at least misunderstands, the plain language of D&C 119 itself. Tithing is merely a different sort of system of raising funds for all the original purposes articulated back in D&C 42. It’s no longer communal with the leasing of stewardships, but now it’s a tithe of a percentage of your own personal net worth.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
This was then, and it is now, a better fit for implementing the financial principles of consecration on the personal level. However, before the law of consecration through tithing of personal net worth could be fully implemented in 1838, more rain, right? Persecution in Missouri now forces the Saints to leave Missouri, and they’re going to end up as refugees on the banks of the Mississippi River, and I think that’s where our story picks up today, right, is . . .

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
Nauvoo. Yeah, now we’re transitioning into Nauvoo, and I think we might even make it to Utah today. Is that ambitious?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Ooh. Yeah. We’re going to kick the car into high gear and start moving quickly.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The church is very much kind of rebooted when they leave Missouri. They wind up as refugees on the banks of the Mississippi River. They purchase the cheapest, most God-forsaken plot of land they can find.

Scott Woodward:
Swampy, mosquito-infested . . .

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Commerce, Illinois, which they renamed Nauvoo, meaning beautiful place or situation, just to kind of show where they’re at.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a vote of faith, isn’t it?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That is. That is.

Scott Woodward:
To call it Nauvoo? Because it was not. It was not beautiful at the time.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. My understanding is if you have seen Commerce, Illinois, and then you call it a beautiful situation, you are by definition an optimist. Like, you’re a sunshine-y person.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But it’s—still, this is where the financial dealings of the church continue to evolve. For instance, when the people are really, really struggling, there’s a discourse recorded where Joseph Smith sort of broadens the law of consecration. He says, “For a man to consecrate his property is nothing more nor less than to feed his family, clothe the naked, visit the widow and the fatherless, the sick and the afflicted, and do all he can to administer to their relief and their afflictions, and for him and his house to serve the Lord.” That’s a nice, broad definition that I think you could still take to the average Latter-day Saint and say, this is consecration. Are you doing this? Yeah. Okay.

Scott Woodward:
So feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the widow and fatherless, sick and the afflicted, and for you and your family to serve the Lord.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a beautiful definition of consecration. I love that.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. At the same time, too, there’s also this background of consecration was more intense than that. However, there is another tide of information. An individual named Elias Smith recorded Joseph Smith giving a discourse in 1840, and in Elias’s accounting of the discourse, he recorded, “He,” meaning Joseph Smith, “said that the law of consecration could not be kept here and that it was the will of the Lord we should desist from trying to keep it and that he assumed the whole responsibility of not keeping it until proposed by himself.”

Scott Woodward:
Now what do you suppose he meant by that? That the law of consecration could not be kept here?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I’m guessing this isn’t long term, this is short term.

Scott Woodward:
Because we’ve got all these refugees coming into Nauvoo.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, yeah. It’s 1840. This is where, I mean, everybody gets malaria when they get to Nauvoo. This is where they talk about, like, the sick laying out in the yard of Joseph and Emma Smith, and Joseph goes out and heals people, and it just doesn’t seem like they have the structure right then to try and implement any system of consecration, so Joseph Smith basically took the pressure off by saying, we can’t live it right now.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
However, some people have taken that statement and make it to assume, oh, this is the end of consecration, and then tithing took over.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
However, in Nauvoo there is plenty of documentary evidence that suggests they continued to live, or at least attempt to live, consecration.

Scott Woodward:
To whatever degree they were able, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s how he defines consecration. He’s like, this is consecration: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, do all that you can. But they’re not having the strict kind of “deed all your property to the bishop, receive a stewardship” system that they had earlier. Again, Joseph is emphasizing the principles of consecration and changing the practice. However, for anybody to argue that consecration didn’t exist in Nauvoo, there is a significant amount of documentary evidence that goes against that.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. What’s the evidence?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
For instance, Mitchell Schaeffer and Sherilyn Farnes have found affidavits of consecration from the Nauvoo period. So they have found affidavits similar to the ones earlier where somebody actually lists all their property and deeds it to the church.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Something like that is still going on, and you could argue that this is a continuation of Section 119, which says you deed what you have to the church.

Scott Woodward:
He calls that the first tithing, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The first tithing is bring your surplus and put it into the hands of the bishop of the church.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
In June 1842, Joseph Smith meets with the Twelve. He commanded the Twelve to organize the church more according to the law of God. We take this to mean he was trying to organize some form of consecration there, too, and I think the final, like, evidence that we would find is in Nauvoo is where the temple endowment is first administered, like, the full temple endowment, as we understand it. And one of the covenants of the temple endowment is the law of consecration.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So you can make a pretty good case that consecration still went on in Nauvoo. It looked different, and tithing, as a subset of consecration, kind of is altered in Nauvoo as well.

Scott Woodward:
In fact, there’s—very recently the Joseph Smith Papers has released the Nauvoo tithing records, which is in a book called the Book of the Law of the Lord, and it’s super cool. Sometimes it refers to people’s tithing as their consecrations.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
People brought their consecrations in paying tithing. And so you do see them understanding tithing as a way of living the law of consecration right there in Nauvoo. So I think that just strengthens your point.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
For further reading go to the Joseph Smith Papers website, look up the Book of the Law of the Lord, and read the introduction, because this is so new that, you know, we’re still processing a little bit. But the introduction gives you kind of a good feel for the relationship of tithing and consecration in Nauvoo. For instance, tithing in Nauvoo appears to be the origins of where we started using that whole “10 percent of your income” paradigm that we have today.

Scott Woodward:
Rather than the way D&C 119 articulates it as one tenth of all your interest annually, as we talked about last time.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And there’s a progression from the word interest, which section 119 uses, to increase, which is common play in Nauvoo, to income, which is kind of the standard that we use today.

Scott Woodward:
Well, if you go to the Joseph Smith Papers website and you just type in the search bar on the homepage, “tithing,” the very first entry is actually a glossary. If you click on “Glossary,” the tithing title there, it takes you to the glossary, and it talks about kind of the history of tithing really briefly in church history, but then later, down at the bottom, it says, “Later in Nauvoo tithing was defined as one tenth of a person’s possessions at the time temple construction began,” talking about the Nauvoo temple here, and “one tenth part of all his increase from that time until the completion of the same. And that quote comes from Brigham Young. He gave a sermon, it is footnoted there, in 1841, called “Baptism for the Dead,” Times and Seasons, 15th of December, 1841. And there Brigham Young is using that term you just said, Casey. Instead of interest, he’s now tweaking it to increase, and so, at least for the time period of the building of the Nauvoo Temple, the tithing that was expected of Latter-day Saints was one tenth of all of your possessions. And people brought all kinds of stuff: grain, produce, livestock, even just donated labor.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Their other goods and property. So we don’t know exactly the moment where it kind of shifted from one tenth of all your interest annually, meaning one tenth of the interest you would make on your net worth if you invested it at 6%—see last episode for a deeper discussion on that—to one tenth of your income. But it seems to be right here, circa the Nauvoo Temple building, that’s when that idea really sinks in, and it seems like the practice will continue in that way going forward.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And another thing that appears in Nauvoo that is still in common practice today is the idea that tithing is linked to temple worthiness. For instance, people who paid tithing in Nauvoo were considered faithful saints. They were promised access to the temple. And, I mean, the temple’s being constructed while they’re in Nauvoo. So first this means access to the baptismal font, where you can do baptisms for the dead, and then access to the temple so that you can receive your endowments. Tithing was a measurement of faithfulness. If you were paying tithing you could go to the temple. At the same time, too, I want to note a couple things—and this is the introduction to the Book of the Law of the Lord on the Joseph Smith Papers site: it says, “Many saints were impoverished and struggling to provide for their families, but their small contributions of tithing and their faithfulness in making an offering were also recorded in the Book of the Law of the Lord.” It even says, “Entries in the Book of the Law of the Lord were sometimes called consecrations,” like you mentioned earlier, and they show that these individuals or families making a donation to the temple, sometimes having their donation recorded, but then returned to them. So the Book of the Law of the Lord indicates that some people would pay their tithing, but they were so poor that their tithing was immediately returned to them. It was kind of like, all right, you guys . . .

Scott Woodward:
Like a fast offering.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. Like, the thought counts, right? But we don’t want your family to starve to death, so we’re going to record your donation, and then we’re going to give it right back to you.

Scott Woodward:
And that seems to track with, you know, some of the early records with—the first system of consecration and stewardship is when they would legally deed their property to the bishop, and then he would just deed it right back to them as a stewardship.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
It’s interesting to see that practice continues, specifically with the poor.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. Because this is the next thing they note: the JSP says, “Such entries were common for widows, poor laborers on the temple, or women who were unable to offer much in tithing because their husbands were away. In some instances consecration was recorded as the last tithing paid by an individual who had recently died but desired to contribute to the temple or have his or her last name recorded in the Book of the Law of the Lord. Again, I want to emphasize consecration is part of the temple ceremonies. So we can’t say that consecration went away just because Joseph Smith at one time said we’re not going to live it right now, because he puts it into the temple ceremony, and that’s where it’s at when he passes away. When Joseph Smith is killed, he’s given instructions that everybody that’s worthy should receive the endowment, and the endowment asks people to enter into the law of consecration. Tithing gets you into the temple, but once you’re in there, you commit to live the law of consecration, and that’s consistent down to today in the current church.

Scott Woodward:
So maybe we should just pause and make sure we’re kind of defining the difference now between the law of consecration broadly and how tithing fits into that. It sounds like what Joseph Smith is articulating in Nauvoo is that the law of consecration is kind of holistic. It’s about using all of your resources, whether that’s your talents, gifts, and money to building up God’s kingdom, and that tithing would be kind of that subset of the financial aspect, or a financial aspect, of the law of consecration, right? So tithing doesn’t replace the law of consecration.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
Tithing is now the avenue by which we are asked to consecrate money. It’s one of the ways. There’s other ways, like fast offerings and mission funds and all those things, and in Nauvoo, it was the temple itself needed to be built. So it was very clear what they were tithing for, but that’s a subset. I like how you’re saying that. The law of consecration itself is holistic, and tithing is a financial arm of that law.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Well put. The only thing I would add is that tithing was also a little bit more holistic in Nauvoo, too. For instance, you could tithe your labor. You could tithe your time. Most people worked out of the temple one day out of ten.

Scott Woodward:
One day out of ten. Yeah, that’s right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And if they didn’t have money, you could pay your tithing in labor, and that would qualify you to go to the temple. So anybody that basically had the means and a sincere desire was allowed to go to the temple. And in the temple the idea of consecration as a holistic law is just further perpetuated. But the language in the temple, which we won’t get into here, suggests that it has more to do with than just the money that you have. Has to do with everything that you’ve been given by God.

Scott Woodward:
Like Joseph Smith said, like, it’s consecrating you and your family to, like, helping build up God’s kingdom, and that’s beautiful.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And I think that’s still a guiding principle we should stick to in the church today.

Scott Woodward:
A hundred percent.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So Joseph Smith dies, and the Saints are forced to leave from Nauvoo. I said we were going to go a little fast today. The stories you hear about the exodus from Nauvoo are that their primary aim, other than getting out of town, was to get everybody through the temple, get them endowed and sealed. So what are they doing with everybody that goes through the temple? They’re committing them to live the law of consecration. That’s one of the covenants of the temple.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Then, if you go to section 136 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which is, again, the kind of—it’s the revelation received during the Exodus at Winter Quarters, organizes the saints so that they can make it from Winter Quarters, which is on the edge of Nebraska, all the way to where they’re going to go, their prospective home in the West. Look at the language in the Revelation, verse 4: “This shall be our covenant. We will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord.” What is this hearkening back to? Remember the promises you made in the temple in Nauvoo before you left.

Scott Woodward:
And here ordinances can be defined as laws, right? “We . . . walk in . . . the [law] of the Lord.” The laws we’ve covenanted to obey.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The laws that you committed to live.

Scott Woodward:
Perfect.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Then look at verse 8: “Let each company bear an equal proportion according to the dividend of their property in taking the poor, the widows, the fatherless, and the families of those who’ve gone into the army,” that’s a reference to the Mormon battalion, “that the cries of the widow and the fatherless come not up unto the ears of the Lord against his people.” So equal proportions, widows and fatherless, all this stuff that is tied back to consecration. The Lord, through this revelation, which is given to Brigham Young, is saying this is going to be the key to the exodus. You’ve got to look at it through consecrated eyes and bear an equal proportion. And then, verse 10, “Let every man use all his influence and property to remove this people to the place where the Lord shall locate a stake of Zion. That’s consecrated language, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
All your influence, all your property, we’re all in this together. We’re going to make this happen with our shared, pooled resources, our consecrated resources, you could say.

Scott Woodward:
Nice. So this is what consecration looks like in Winter Quarters.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And, I mean, in practice, that’s really what it looks like. The stories about the exodus are legendary where, you know, other travelers would see a Latter-day Saint wagon train come through, plant wheat, and then head on down the trail, and the other travelers would be like, these weirdos, why are they not harvesting their wheat? Well, the wheat’s for the next group that’s coming along. When you get to a river, you don’t just ford the river as fast as possible, you build a ferry, you get everybody across, then you leave a family behind to charge the Gentiles so you can make a little money using the ferry to pay for other people. And so the exodus is based around consecration, and when they actually start to get to the west the historical record just shows that again and again and again, they’re living, or they’re attempting to live, consecration. But rather than kind of being that strict, here’s the exact system everybody has to follow, it seems like what happened in the West is that Brigham Young would present ideals of consecration and say, all right, here’s the principles: I want each settlement to sort of figure out how you do it. And it comes in waves, like there’s a wave of consecration that happens in the 1850s where Brigham Young urges every community to build a cooperative. You could argue that this is, like, a bishop’s storehouse, right? And sometimes, though, it actually was a business where the whole community would kind of unite together to have some kind of business where they’d pool their goods, they’d have a store, and they’d use the surplus from the store to take care of the needy members of the community. So the most famous example of this is Brigham City, which is in Northern Utah, has a co-op that lasts for almost thirty years.

Scott Woodward:
So what exactly is a co-op? Can you define that term?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And it’s a little challenging to define, but the word co-op comes from cooperative, just meaning we’re going to pool our resources, we’re going to bring things together, and we’re going to make something out of it. In Brigham City it basically meant that everybody pooled their resources to create shared business ventures. The shared business ventures would then raise money that would allow the community to provide for the poor and the needy. So Brigham City, for instance, was led by a very fiery, energetic apostle named Lorenzo Snow. He’s still buried in Brigham City. He’s one of the only presidents of the church that’s not buried in Salt Lake City, but he is running this cooperative, and the way he talks about it is he says, we’re using elements and principles of the United Order. And we need to clarify here, too: In our episodes, we defined how the United Order is in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, but they’re using that term a little differently here, aren’t they?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. In the West, for whatever reason, the terms United Order becomes their word for the law of consecration and stewardship, for an implementation of the law of consecration and stewardship.

Scott Woodward:
So they’re kind of going back a little bit to the D&C 42 system.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
In some ways. But not exactly.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
They’re not following it exactly.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And they’re recognizing what we’re doing is a little bit different. For instance, this is a letter Lorenzo Snow writes in 1875: he says, “I do not for a moment consider we are worthy to be called the people of the United Order, but we are slowly progressing toward them. So he sees the cooperative as a stepping stone to the United Order, but the United Order is being something more down the road, which is something they’re looking at.

Scott Woodward:
They’re trying to build up to being able to live that system as articulated in D&C 42, maybe?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So this is drawing from an amazing book that everybody needs to read: it’s called Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons by Leonard Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May. And this is the most comprehensive treatment of consecration throughout the history of the church I’ve ever read.

Scott Woodward:
The most comprehensive work you’ve ever read on consecration? Wow.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Oh, it is, like, I mean, really, really detailed, and it was because this guy named Feramorz Fox, who was the president of LDS Business College . . .

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
. . . in the early 20th century, just really had—well, he’s president of business college, so he’s interested in finance, and he did a ton of research on every community in the West and probably writes the most detailed write-up. Like, just individual chapters from this are amazing. Like, from the chapter on Brigham City, it says this: “By 1874 virtually the entire economic life of this community of 400 families was owned and directed by the Cooperative Association. There were 15 departments, later to be expanded to 40, that produced the goods and services needed by the community, and each household obtained its food, clothing, furniture, and other necessities from these departments. So the cooperative could have a furniture department. I’ve actually seen a pie safe—a pie safe is where you put your pies to cool, and it’s called a pie safe because you literally, like, lock it up so people didn’t steal your pie—that was built by the Brigham City co-op. Then they’d have a department of the co-op where you could go and get clothes, a department where you could go and get, like, leather, textile products. Again, the cooperative was this huge sort of home industry that was the heart of the community that almost everybody relied on to have their needs met.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He also notes that the cooperative exported products to other settlements in Utah, so they would give to other settlements, and by 1874 the paid-up capital of the Brigham City co-op amounted to $120,000.

Scott Woodward:
Wow.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Which was pretty big. It was owned by 372 shareholders, so 372 lining up with 400 families, meaning every family probably had someone who was a shareholder in the co-op, and they all kind of worked together as this little cooperative that shared goods and made sure everybody was taken care of. So that’s kind of the first wave. And I should say Brigham City was the most successful. Arrington, Fox, and May say that it was successful because Lorenzo Snow was such a driver. In fact, one source, a guy wrote, I left Brigham City because the Snow was too fierce, and he wasn’t talking about the atmosphere, but Lorenzo Snow just worked himself to death and got this to work, and it turned into something that lasted for decades.

Scott Woodward:
Wow. That’s very cool.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s an iteration of the law of consecration. However, co-ops worked to varying degrees in different communities. So there were other places where the co-ops flared out completely and where they didn’t work. Brigham City’s the best example.

Scott Woodward:
Here’s a fun fact.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
ZCMI.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
ZCMI stands for—do you know what it stands for, Casey? You probably do.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institute.

Scott Woodward:
Bam! Casey Griffiths. Good job. There’s that word, co-op, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep.

Scott Woodward:
Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution, founded in 1868 by Brigham Young, and for many years it used the slogan “America’s first department store.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But there’s that principle right there: Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution. It’s not used like that anymore. Now it’s just a nice department store chain, but very interesting.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I don’t think it exists anymore. It existed until about 2000 or so.

Scott Woodward:
Is there no more ZCMIs? Are they all gone now?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, I think so. I think so. Because there used to be a huge ZCMI in Orem. Remember it was, like, a whole wing of the University Mall, and they closed down. The reason why I remember the date is because I was a newlywed, and it was kind of, like, a, “we’re going out of business” sale, and I went and bought a bunch of stuff for my wife from ZCMI before it closed, because it was super—it was, like, super classy.

Scott Woodward:
Oh. Yeah. Okay. I just looked this up. Here it is: “In October 1999, as a result of losses for two consecutive years, along with mounting economic and social pressures, ZCMI was sold to May Department Stores, company of St. Louis,” and “ZCMI operated under its original name as part of May’s Portland-based Meier & Frank division until 2001, when stores adopted the Meier & Frank name.” And then, later on, that was sold to Federated Department Stores, which is now Macy’s, in 2005. So in 2006 all Meier & Frank stores were converted to Macy’s. There you go. If you’ve ever shopped in Macy’s, that is the . . .

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Former ZCMI. Depending on where you’re at. In Orem, at least.

Scott Woodward:
There you go.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And you gotta admit that 1868 to—what, 1999? That’s a pretty good run.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a pretty good run.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s not bad.

Scott Woodward:
Not too shabby. Anyway, sorry. Continue.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
No, so that’s the first wave. We’ll set up these cooperatives, right?

Scott Woodward:
Now what’s the kind of time period in this wave one? From about when to when?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
About 1850 to about 1870.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And you have to remember, this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Like, a lot of the cooperatives were completely discombobulated by the terror surrounding the Utah War. We don’t always talk about this, but in 1857 the United States sent an army to Utah, and whole places were uprooted. All of Salt Lake moves to Utah Valley. A lot of stuff surrounding that puts things on hold.

Scott Woodward:
That is economically disruptive.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And then there’s the American Civil War, and then there’s the coming of the railroad. That takes up the 1860s, where there’s so much uncertainty that a full cooperative movement can’t get going because, to be honest with you, a lot of the members of the church thought the Civil War was going to be the end of the United States, and then we’d go back to Missouri and build Zion. So there’s a little tentativeness there. Then in the 1870s, and this corresponds with the end of Brigham Young’s life, Brigham Young is nearing the end of his life, and he wants one last big push to live the law of consecration.

Scott Woodward:
To live the law of consecration as defined in D&C 42?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, at least to kick it up a level, right? To where they’re going to have shared property, they’re going to consecrate what they have . . .

Scott Woodward:
So some communal elements to it, that communal kind of aspect of consecration. Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Sometimes this system was referred to as the United Order. Sometimes they used the word Order of Enoch. But basically they wanted everybody to really kick it up a notch and live the law of consecration. But there’s not a uniform system to it. Like, Brigham Young doesn’t come out and say, this is exactly what you should do.

Scott Woodward:
So what does he do?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He basically puts out what we would call a system called an Articles of Agreement.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And says, here’s the basic principles, but you can kind of figure out how you want this to work.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, so each individual place could kind of figure it out.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So consecration’s going to look really different in Richfield than it’s going to look in Orderville. And Orderville becomes really, really famous. But the Articles of Agreement basically outline, you know, we’re going to live the gospel. We’re going to follow the principles of consecration without being too prescriptive about how you do it. Does that make sense?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And Orderville, that sounds like it was named after the United Order. Is that accurate?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. So a whole city kind of created around this concept of kind of the communal living of law of consecration.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And actually, when we look at how these orders developed, one of the surprising things was that the United Order was more successful in a place like Orderville, where they had fewer resources, than a place like Richfield, where they had more resources, where they were doing okay. So basically in Orderville—Orderville’s in the southern part of Utah. It’s down by where Kanab is now. It’s on the other side of Zion’s National Park. Beautiful, beautiful country there. But the settlers there were relatively new when the United Order was implemented by Brigham Young, and they’re sort of starting from scratch. In Richfield, which is in the Sevier Valley, the settlements have been around for twenty-plus years. A lot of people have amassed private property, are doing really well, and it’s actually harder for them to shift to living the United Order than it is in a place like Orderville, where they’re starting from scratch.

Scott Woodward:
I think that makes sense in light of human nature.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. So in Richfield, Joseph Young, who is Brigham Young’s oldest son, is the main mover and shaker when it comes to consecration.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He really, really, like, pushes everybody to live consecration, tells everybody, hey, this is critical. This is important. I’m going to put everything I have into this. And saw it as a way of alleviating consecration. But the problem is you’re asking everybody that already has a lot of things squared away that they’re going to give everything to the church, and it doesn’t work. The order in Richfield lasts about three years, from about 1874 to 1877. Just to summarize why it ends, one person told Erastus Snow, I am leaving the Order because there is no order in it.

Scott Woodward:
Poorly executed.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
In other words, he just felt like, this is too disorganized. I’m not going to put all my eggs in this basket when it seems like the basket has holes in the bottom. When Joseph Young—because they have to incorporate these orders. Like, they come together and they sign the articles of the order, and then they have to disincorporate them when they dissolve. This one dissolves in 1877. Joseph Young says, the feeling of “mine” is the greatest feeling we have to combat when it comes to the United Order. So he felt like it broke down because everybody already had enough stuff.

Scott Woodward:
Property.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And that it made it really difficult for them to live it, so.

Scott Woodward:
That’s really interesting.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
In places like Richfield, it fails. And again, it’s a mixed record around places. Orderville is usually brought up because it’s called Orderville, because it’s fully implemented there, and it’s probably the most successful of the United Orders that started in 1873.

Scott Woodward:
How long does it last?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Orderville lasts from 1873 to about 1885, but I want to clarify: it didn’t fail. It was ended because of outside intervention.

Scott Woodward:
What was the outside intervention?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well, let me talk a little bit about that, okay?

Scott Woodward:
Oh, okay. Please.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Orderville, like I said, is this relatively newer settlement. They take it really seriously. For instance, when a person entered into the Order, they were actually baptized by immersion again. That’s another facet of 19th century church life that we don’t always remember is that people would get baptized all the time.

Scott Woodward:
In their minds, this was a form of recommitment, right? This was a way to kind of renew your baptismal covenants and to recommit to the kingdom of God on earth.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Today we say that’s accomplished when you take the sacrament, so you don’t need to get rebaptized, because that’s taken care of every week, essentially, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s kind of how we talk about it in the modern narrative.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Eventually they get rid of rebaptism because it was just kind of being seen as a reset button. Anytime you did anything bad, you’d get rebaptized.

Scott Woodward:
Go get rebaptized. Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Eventually leaders of the church say, don’t get rebaptized. Take the sacrament. Repent. Stop looking at this as your way out. But in Orderville they actually had everybody get rebaptized to signify they were starting the Order, and then they had a statement of principles for the United Order of Orderville. I’m going to read an excerpt from that.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The principles behind the Orderville United Order: “That all people are literally the sons and daughters of God. That the earth is His and all it contains, that He created it and its fullness especially for the use and benefit of His children, that all, providing they keep His commandments, are equally entitled to the blessings of the earth, that with proper regulations there is enough and to spare for all, that every person was simply a steward and not an owner of property, that he is under obligations to use it, and his time, strength, and talents, for the good of all. They believe in living as a patriarchal family and in common, according to their circumstances, fair alike. All are required to be diligent in their labors, economical in their habits, and temperate in their lives.” That’s not bad, right? That’s pretty good.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Actually. And so Orderville was actually sort of structured around, like, their industry. So some people have looked, and we have some nice drawings of what Orderville looked like. One person said it bore more resemblance to a Christian military camp than to a regular town that they would see, because it was kind of like they had a huge center hall where everybody would go and eat together, and they produced their clothes, and everybody kind of wore the same clothes. In fact, they have a little whoop to do.

Scott Woodward:
Is that a technical term? A whoop to do?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, a whoop to do.

Scott Woodward:
They had a whoop to do?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because some of the kids from Orderville go to another town, Milford, and notice that everybody has, like, their own pants, and they get embarrassed that they have to wear the Orderville pants and stuff like that. So they have little problems like this, but for the most part it seems like they get along. And there’s some weird iterations. Like, we were talking about this before we started, but did they pay tithing? What do you think, Scott? Did people in Orderville pay tithing?

Scott Woodward:
Right. Well, that brings up kind of a fundamental question for me, is, like, why did Brigham Young feel the need to go back to kind of a more communal way of living the law of consecration in light of the law of tithing that had been given in Far West? That’s a question that’s still on my mind. And so, yeah, so before we started recording, I asked you, did they even pay tithing in Orderville? Were they doing both at the same time? And you looked it up, and tell us what you found.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So what we found out was that in Orderville, they did pay tithing, but—

Scott Woodward:
Kinda sorta.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—they paid 10 percent of the net increase of the order.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So 10 percent of the net increase of the order was paid to the church each year.

Scott Woodward:
10 percent of the net increase of the order. Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
A collective tithe-paying.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Everybody collectively paid tithing because they were earning all their money together collectively and providing for their community collectively, so it seems like tithing still existed alongside even this kind of iteration of consecration because consecration was providing for their community, but tithing was what was going to go to the church because they’re still building temples in Salt Lake and Manti and Logan and St. George. So whatever the order earned was paid in tithing—10 percent, anyway.

Scott Woodward:
So we don’t have any revelations to Brigham Young that command this to happen, correct?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So it seems almost like—I don’t know. Help me work through this. It seems like some of the saints, all the way up to the top leadership, had a hard time sort of letting go of the system of consecration, of property and stewardship as outlined in D&C 42, that that’s going to kind of slowly taper off. There’s not going to be, like, a revelation that, like, ends it, but that as a practice it sort of tapers off circa this time period when Orderville comes to a halt because of government intervention. Is that fair to say? Like, does this seem to you that there was either ambiguity or reluctance, either that we ought to let go of the system of consecration and stewardship as outlined in 42, or at least a reluctance to do so because that was more original, maybe, in some of their minds, or more foundational. Like, why do you think Brigham Young insisted on continuing to set up communities that lived in that way rather than, I guess, the way that we do it today, which is consecration of time and talents, and then the money aspect with tithing and offerings? Like, why create the communal system again? I guess I’m still kind of thinking about that.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
See, and I’ll make an attempt here to spitball a little bit. I’ll take a swing. I could be wrong.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, please.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Number one, I don’t think communities were quite as interconnected back then as they are today. Like, back then, there was a little bit more independence, like, Orderville kind of could act like they were all a big family, and they would go to other communities and sell their wares and goods, but it was possible for them to provide food and clothing and shelter for everybody completely independently, which I don’t think we could do today. Second, I also think that Brigham Young and the early Saints were of the mindset that the Second Coming and the trials leading up to the Second Coming were going to destroy the economic system that everybody depended on. Because a lot of Brigham Young’s discourses from this time, if you look at them, are about the saints being independent and not depending on other people and not being so obsessed with wealth. Like, Brigham Young really did not like the miners that came to Utah because he felt like they were obsessed with material wealth and the law of consecration was antithetical to that. The Law of Consecration was how you become independent from the world that existed. And I would say that that mindset kind of informs everything, that the Civil War happens, and it’s so devastating, and a lot of Brigham Young’s discourses, and every church leader from that time, is, well, look, just like the Lord predicted, the Gentiles are destroying themselves, so we need to be independent because I don’t know how much longer that system is going to be around. They were also really, really anxious to get into the Millennium and the Second Coming, and they saw this as the system we would live during the Millennium. And so their solution was why wait? The other thing, too, I would say, is they’re starting from scratch. They saw the West. I mean, there’s Native Americans living here, but they’re nomadic. They travel around. They saw the West as a blank slate where they could do this. Like, there’s a couple discourses given by Erastus Snow, who’s the presiding elder over Southern Utah, where he talked about this as an experiment. Like, hey, if we’re serious about the principles found in section 42, we’ve got to experiment a little bit and play around with this and see how it works. If that makes sense.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. It seems like there’s also a belief that any time now we’re going to be called to go back to Missouri.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And in Missouri we need to live the D&C 42 version of consecration and stewardship. In fact, I can think of some Lorenzo Snow quotes where he’s saying, you might be able to get away with just living the law of tithing outside of Missouri, but when we go back to Missouri, it’s going to be the full D&C 42 version, right? Like—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Like you’re saying, this preparation for the Second Coming, the Gentiles at the time appear to be destroying themselves, and it’s just a matter of time for the Lord to command us to go back to Missouri and there live this full system that we were unable to live back in the early 1830s, something like that. That was the narrative that they were buying into and teaching, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So the United Order in Orderville has its ups and downs, but for the most part it’s successful. The reason why it ends is because of government intervention. So we talk a lot about, and we have talked about, how the United States government was intent on ending plural marriage.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But some of the legislation, like the Edmunds Law and the Edmunds-Tucker Act, are just as much focused on destroying the financial control that they saw the church having over people’s lives as it was ending plural marriage. And so the Edmunds-Tucker Act—which is passed in 1885, isn’t really enforced until 1889 because the church disputes it. It goes all the way to the Supreme Court—was intended to, in a lot of ways, smash these church industries the United States saw as exerting too much control over people’s lives. And that’s what actually does Orderville in. When the law’s passed, the leaders of the church actually approach Orderville and say, hey, if everything you have is owned by the church, the Edmunds-Tucker law is going to confiscate that. So you’ve got to end the Order and put everything back into private ownership or you’re going to lose everything that you have. And that’s what ends the order in Orderville, effectively.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But was it successful? Here’s a guy named Henry Fowler. Henry Fowler said this: he lived in Orderville. He said, “We were happy in the Order. A spirit of true brotherhood prevailed as long as we obeyed counsel and lived up to our instructions.” Another person from Orderville said, “I’ve lived in Utah, Arizona, California, Idaho, in many different towns, and I was never so much attached to a people. I never experienced greater joy nor had better times than during the period of time I was connected with the United Order in Orderville. The United Order is a grand institution.” In fact, one of the things they note is that a lot of the families that lived in Orderville actually moved to Mexico and set up a United Order in Chihuahua, Mexico that persisted into the 20th century. So they couldn’t legally do it in the United States, so they moved to Mexico, and they just kept the train moving. Like, they just continued doing what they were doing because they really thought it was a great way to live and a higher way of life. Better way to do things.

Scott Woodward:
Incredible. So shout out to Orderville.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So walk us through what happens after the Edmunds-Tucker Act. So that was very punitive, meant to kind of crush the institution of the church as such. I know that was financially exhausting for the church to challenge this all the way up to the Supreme Court. What’s the next sort of phase that happens now, post Edmunds-Tucker Act? Walk us through that, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So the Edmunds-Tucker Act is passed, and it’s intended to end the church’s financial dominance in the West as much as it is to end plural marriage, and we already mentioned because of that Orderville has to shut down. And fighting this, again, financially exhausts the church. Like, if you go and you read the supporting material to Official Declaration 1, the declaration that ends plural marriage, President Woodruff basically says, I was looking at all the temples leaving church control or continuing to practice plural marriage, and we would have been forced to stop practicing plural marriage anyway. So church is going to lose all of its property, and they do end plural marriage, and that allows the pressure to release, but the church is in difficult straits financially. This is another one of those rainy days that we mentioned the first of the episode.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So at the beginning of the 20th century, the church is in big trouble financially. Generous members like Jesse Knight give money to the church to keep it afloat financially. But the solution that’s presented to Lorenzo Snow and other leaders of the church, particularly Joseph F. Smith, is to reemphasize the law of tithing.

Scott Woodward:
And at this time, it seems like that church members become pretty reluctant to actually donate tithes because they’re afraid the government’s just going to confiscate it, right? And so this leads to a major dip in individual consecration of property of any kind, tithing or otherwise, right? Because of the fear of government confiscation.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Completely logical, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Why would you give money to the church if it’s going to be confiscated by the government and not go to the cause you wanted to support? And so the anti-polygamy crusades not only devastate a lot of church-owned businesses, they also devastate the giving factor in the church, where people are reluctant to give.

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I mean, in some cases, church leaders just urged them not to because they didn’t know what was going to happen.

Scott Woodward:
And this is kind of the backstory to the kind of famous Lorenzo Snow re-emphasis of tithing, right? Like . . .

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Kind of tell us how those go together.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s the context is—you’ve seen the whole, the famous, you know, older than the hills movie the Church made, The Windows of Heaven, where Lorenzo Snow goes to St. George and gets the revelation that the members should pay their tithing.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well, that’s the backdrop here. That story’s true, by the way. I mean, he does go to St. George.

Scott Woodward:
A little embellished in the movie, but . . .

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But most movies are. And the solution is to emphasize the law of tithing. So this is where a lot of church leaders start making that argument that the law of tithing was a lesser law that replaced the law of consecration, and you and I have pushed back against this, and we’re not disrespecting any of these leaders of the church, but let me give you a sampling: Joseph F. Smith, for instance, in April 1900, this is right around the time.

Scott Woodward:
He’s a counselor to Lorenzo Snow at that time.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So he, in General Conference, says, “The Lord revealed to his people in the incipiency [in the beginning] of his work, a law [consecration] which is more perfect than the law of tithing. It comprehended larger things, greater power, and a more speedy accomplishment of the purposes of the Lord. But the people were unprepared to live by it, and the Lord, out of mercy to the people, suspended the more perfect law, the law of consecration, and gave the law of tithing.

Scott Woodward:
Hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So again, there’s that clear argument of we couldn’t live the higher law, so the Lord gave us the law of tithing.

Scott Woodward:
So this is where that sort of begins that way of thinking about it. Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But things like Nauvoo and Orderville show that this might be an error, because in Orderville, they were living the law of consecration alongside the law of tithing, right? One wasn’t considered greater or lesser. And in Nauvoo people are consecrating, and they’re tithing, right? And it seems like with the cooperative movement, with the United Order Movement in the 1870s, that’s always the case. They’re still paying tithing, but they’re also living the law of consecration, and one isn’t seen as replacing the other. Again, like we said it, the law of tithing was a subset of the financial portion of the law of consecration, but not a replacement for the law of consecration. Consecration’s holistic. It’s everything.

Scott Woodward:
And it’s clear that the people weren’t unprepared to live it. It was that the Edmunds-Tucker Act crushed the finances of the church, right? And caused the disruption that it did, and so people became reluctant to donate to the church because they thought that was going to be confiscated.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I guess the history here is a little more nuanced than to say, well, they weren’t able to live it. And I feel like that goes all the way back to, in hindsight, people looking back in 1833, like when the saints are kicked out of Missouri and D&C 101 says it’s because of covetousness and jealousy and those kinds of things, and that kind of becomes this sort of broad brushstroke that’s used to say, see? They couldn’t live it because they were jealous. But the truth is always more complicated, isn’t it, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s always more complicated. I don’t know if a general conference talk where someone got up and said, “The federal government forced us to not live the law of consecration” would have gone over very well in a time when the saints are trying to live and let live with the rest of the United States. They’re a brand new state. They want to be seen as patriotic Americans. And they did have a real need to solve—I mean, this does solve the financial problems of the church and puts them onto more firm footing, but you could see how that idea was misinterpreted.

Scott Woodward:
And it’s clear that in the temple ceremony, they don’t stop saying that we covenant to live the law of consecration.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s not like, well, we used to say in the temple that we covenant to live the law of consecration, but now we say we covenant to live the law of tithing, right? That never changes. And so that’s just another point to push back against that rhetoric.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And, again, it sticks around for a couple decades. 1931, three decades after President Smith makes his statement, Orson F. Whitney in General Conference says, “The Lord withdrew the law of consecration and gave his people a lesser law, one easier to live, but point forward like the other to something grand and glorious in the future.” Again, I love Elder Whitney, I respect him, but I think the historical record speaks otherwise. And I think there’s plenty of reason for a member of the church to say, yeah, I live the law of consecration and the law of tithing. That doesn’t have to be either-or.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. I live the law of tithing as one of the avenues by which I live the law of consecration, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Correct.

Scott Woodward:
It’s the financial arm of how I live the law of consecration more holistically.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
In my callings, in the way that I’m using my time, and this is the avenue by which I consecrate my money.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And, I mean, it’s more powerful, right, to say something like, I take care of my ministering families because I made a covenant of consecration, than to just say, yeah, because I’m a good guy or something like that. When consecration is fully understood, I think it becomes a lot easier for us to help people understand why we have such high expectations, why being a Latter-day Saint isn’t just a one-day-a-week kind of thing, that consecration is holistic. It’s a covenant you live on every day and not just on Sunday. It’s not just a pass the collection plate around. It’s a whole way of life and a way of living.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Like this quote from President Ezra Taft Benson, he defined consecration like this: he said, “The law of consecration is that one’s time, talents, strength, property, and money are given up to the Lord for the express purpose of building up the kingdom of God and establishing Zion on the earth.” Like, that’s very holistic. Money is a part of that. Tithing and offerings are the way that I do that piece, but it’s time, it’s talents, it’s strength, it’s influence to the end of building up God’s kingdom and establishing Zion on the earth. Like, tithing is just one of the ways in which we fulfill that property and money piece, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So, anyway, very interesting history.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So we zoomed. We made it all the way from the 1830s to the 1930s, but when we come back, we’ve got to talk about maybe the most lasting iteration of the law of consecration, which starts in the 1930s and continues into our day, a very, very important but little-understood effort of the church.

Scott Woodward:
Could we call this the introduction of another system to better help us live that portion of the law that requires us to take care of the poor?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s call it that. What the heck?

Scott Woodward:
Why not? I feel like I drew you into my trap.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
You did.

Scott Woodward:
Should we call it that, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s call it that, and you don’t even have a choice, because you read my mind. Get out of my head, Scott. That’s exactly what I was going to say. So next time, the second century of consecration.

Scott Woodward:
So 1930s to the present?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
1930s to the 2020s.

Scott Woodward:
All right. Thanks Casey. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week we delve into the next historical chapter of financial consecration designed exclusively to aid the poor and the needy. Interestingly, this system was serendipitously born of necessity amidst the Great Depression as the idea of then-stake president and future church president Harold B. Lee, and it has blessed millions of lives since. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.