Scott Woodward:
In the aftermath of the significant 1837 failure of the church’s banking business in Kirtland, Ohio, and the subsequent fallout with several church leaders, including death threats, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon fled Ohio to be with church members in Far West, Missouri. Shortly thereafter, in April 1838, the Lord commanded the saints to build the Far West temple, but charged them to not go into more debt to do so. Church leaders were then already steeped in debts from Kirtland as it was. So, in response to Joseph’s prayerful plea in July of that year as to how to fund the various needs of the church, the Lord revealed what we now know as the Law of Tithing. In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we discuss several of the fascinating details from this history and grapple with a few fundamental and slightly controversial questions about tithing. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our third episode of this series dealing with consecration and church finance.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward:
Hey, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
How’s it going?

Scott Woodward:
Good, man. What’s the word of the day, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Consecration is the word of the day, but I hope our listeners are gathering that this is a pretty complicated topic and we’re doing the best we can to navigate it, but we also don’t have all the answers when it comes to these things. You and I were arguing right up until the time we turned on the record button, I think, about some of the things and what it could possibly mean. I think today we’re going to introduce maybe even more controversy, but at this point in the podcast, I’m just like, hey, no big deal.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So with that introduction, man, now everyone wants to know what are we going to talk about today?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And I want to emphasize to our listeners, Scott and I don’t argue: We have discussions.

Scott Woodward:
We have discussions.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I remember my parents saying that to me. They were like, we’re not having an argument. We’re having a discussion. We weren’t, like, yelling at each other or anything. We’re just kind of going back and forth. What do you think this means?

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
What’s your evidence for that, and things like that, but it’s all very friendly.

Scott Woodward:
Just showing our wares in the marketplace of ideas.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
This is fun stuff for me. I guess maybe I like to argue. And today we’re just going to point out what we know and what we don’t know and then move forward from there. And also what we’ve come to do in the church with regards to some of these things.

Scott Woodward:
Yep. How we got to where we are today.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s correct. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So let me review what we talked about last time real quick. So last time we ventured into the waters of the United Firm, if I remember right, Casey. We talked about the United Firm, AKA the United Order. We talked about code names for financial protection reasons in Doctrine and Covenants 78, 82, other places, which is super interesting. Code names have been taken out of the Doctrine and Covenants except for one. There’s one code name that continues to persist in the revelations, which is the United Order. And the United Order was the pseudonym for the United Firm. So United Firm is the beginning of the corporate management of the Church’s financial and commercial interests. It was a union between the Kirtland financial institutions and those in Missouri, right? Especially in Independence, Missouri. We’ve got some grocery stores. We have an ashery. We’ve got a printing press. Some other land development-type business ventures. And all of that together, the men who were in charge of that, constituted the United Firm. That was established by section 82, and then it lasted for two whopping years. So that leads to the dissolving of the United Firm. The Lord said it was dissolved because, “Some of my servants have not kept the commandment” that he gave back in section 82, “but have broken the covenant,” he said, “through covetousness with feigned words.” So the dissolving of the United Firm only dissolves the joint stewardship of the men involved, but it importantly did not end the corporate management of the church’s financial and commercial interests, though the organizational structures and methods for doing that evolve over the years, but does not end the corporate management, nor the need for church leaders and members to consecrate of their time and talents and money to advance the cause of Zion. In fact, the United Firm is essentially the seed that flourishes today into very successful business ventures of the church, corporate management of a lot of different things we talked about last time. We have a theme park in Hawaii, you called it a theme park, which was the Polynesian Cultural Center there, which is super cool, run mostly by BYU–Hawaii students. We’ve got almond farms. We’ve got orange orchards. We’ve got cattle farms. We’ve got digital media businesses. We’ve got a lot of real estate interests. And all of these modern business ventures of the church today find their justification in the revelations of Doctrine and Covenants 70, 78, 82, 104. It’s been there basically from the beginning, right? That the Lord needs means and ways to fund the purposes of Zion, the building up of the kingdom of God on earth. That takes money, and we need ways to make that money, and that has been there from the beginning.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, and some of these efforts are top-down. Some of these efforts are bottom-up, grassroots. For instance, the Polynesian Cultural Center, the church’s theme park, originally started because the students at BYU–Hawaii needed a way to pay for school. So they started doing performances to highlight their local culture. When I teach this to my students in Provo, I’ll say, why don’t we set up a Provo Cultural Center and have you guys perform? We could have, like, the Fry Sauce Pavilion.

Scott Woodward:
The Fry Sauce Pavilion.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But I think the general principle is that from the beginning the church was involved in businesses, and it was not by accident. It was by design.

Scott Woodward:
By revelation.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
By revelation. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It was by explicit revelation. Absolutely.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And today we’re going to talk about the most famous or infamous church business venture, real briefly, but probably the most well-known church business venture is the Kirtland Safety Society, which we’ve mentioned a lot in the podcast previously, but we’ve kind of talked about the spiritual fallout from the Kirtland Safety Society. I don’t know if we’ve sat down and said, hey, here’s what it was, and here’s why everything kind of went sideways with the Kirtland Safety Society. So is it okay if we take a few minutes and just dive into that?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s talk about after the dissolving of the United Firm, we’ve made really clear this is not the end of business ventures for the church. So what happens next? What do church leaders try to do to raise money? Take us through that.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
A lot of stuff. And this is a busy period in the history of the church. The Kirtland Temple is under construction. They’re devoting all their efforts towards that. Meanwhile the members of the church in Missouri, which is the larger of the two church centers, are refugees. They’re trying to get their homes back. They’re acting as refugees in Clay County. They’re trying to find a new place to gather if they need to, and there’s a lot happening. Now, they dedicate the Kirtland Temple, which probably, adjusted for inflation, and taking into account the resources they have, is probably the most expensive building the church has ever built. The Kirtland Temple, if you’ve been there, is magnificent. It’s still kind of amazing that they were able to build this, but it takes a huge amount of sacrifice, and it carries a lot of debt with it as well. And so they get the temple built, but in the immediate aftermath, they’re struggling.

Scott Woodward:
And they go into a lot of debt to build the Kirtland Temple, correct?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, they do. They do. But they feel like it’s important, and they are richly rewarded. The outpouring surrounding the dedication of the Kirtland Temple is huge. It’s not just Joseph and Oliver seeing, you know, spiritual beings. Everybody is seeing something, and it establishes so much that’s important in the church right down to the way we still dedicate temples today. “The Spirit of God” is our anthem. And if you’re in section 110, the Savior appears. So does Moses, Elias, and Elijah. However, section 110, which is kind of the peak of the spiritual experiences in Kirtland, probably shows the biggest sharp left turn in the Doctrine and Covenants, which is if you flip to section 111, the very next section, which is received in August—section 110 takes place in April of 1836, so we’re talking a couple months later, four months after the Kirtland Temple is dedicated. You look in the section heading, and they’re in Salem, Massachusetts. Salem, famous for the witch trials, also the setting of the classic film Hocus Pocus. They’re there. And the reasons why they’re there, as much as anything, illustrate what’s going on in the church. They’ve got the temple dedicated, but it’s come at an immense cost, and they are desperate for some way to alleviate the debts that they’re struggling with.

Scott Woodward:
So they’re deeply in debt, but we would say justified debt, but the reality is it is debt nonetheless.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It is debt, yeah. The context of this is shakier than we want it to be, but there’s two people, both sort of antagonistic towards the church: one is James C. Brewster, and one’s Ebenezer Robinson. Both of them leave the church. Ebenezer Robinson is only a teenager when this happens, but they state that a brother in the church by the name of Burgess, who’d come to Kirtland, stated a large amount of money had been secreted in the cellar of a certain house in Salem, Massachusetts, which belonged to a widow, and he thought was the only person now living who had a knowledge of it or to the location of the house. So basically, they’re on a treasure hunt.

Scott Woodward:
Jonathan Burgess says, I know a place in Salem where there’s some buried treasure, and church leaders are desperate enough to get out of debt, they say, why not give this a shot?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s give it a shot. And you can see from their perspective of maybe this is, you know, an inspired solution to the problem.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. It presented itself at just the right time, I guess.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Brewster and Robinson are both hostile towards the church, so they paint this in the most negative light possible, but it’s a matter of record that they go to Salem. Joseph Smith writes about this in his own history. Actually, this trip is sort of transformative for him because he tours around, visits a lot of the historic sites, and writes some really, really poignant things about religious liberty when he views a Catholic institution that had been destroyed by the local Protestants. Nevertheless, section 111 does kind of contain a gentle rebuke from the Lord. Verse 1, “I, the Lord, am not displeased with your coming on this journey, notwithstanding your follies. I have much treasure for you in this city, for the benefit of Zion, and many people in this city, whom I will gather out in due time for the benefit of Zion through your instrumentality.” So it’s kind of a, hey, maybe this wasn’t the best idea, but it’s okay: good will come out of this. They do eventually result in people being converted in Salem. A pretty healthy branch is established there that eventually moves west, but this whole episode just illustrates they’re struggling financially. And there’s even more about it in section 112 also, where we’re dealing with apostasy among the Quorum of the Twelve. But the bottom line is the church is struggling, and they try to find solutions, and one solution that they come up with is to open a bank. And again, some of this seems like a good idea. Some of this is them intentionally making the decision to go into debt so they can get the temple done. Some of it is not of their own doing. It’s just the fallout from most people joining the church being poor and having a lack of resources. And they see a bank as a way of possibly alleviating some of that. Let’s bring everybody together. Let’s use the bank to pool our resources. It’ll be a win-win. The church will be able to raise funds using the bank, and the members of the church who are emigrating will be able to have funds to build a house, buy a farm, or something like that.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, because many of the converts that were gathering to Kirtland were mostly, according to some records, of the “poorer class.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so they’re coming not bringing resources to contribute, but coming with kind of an open hand, hoping for support by the funds of the church and the generosity of the saints. And so that added to the enormous amount of resources already spent to help the saints that are displaced in Missouri, and on top of the about $13,000 Kirtland Temple debt at that point, is causing severe financial strain for the church. And so, yeah, so let’s get into the banking business, and let’s see if we can make some money that way.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And this impulse to gather is also tempered by the Lord’s commandments to gather but don’t gather too quick. For instance, in section 101, which is given in the wake of the Missouri difficulties, the Lord says—this is verse 68 of section 101, “Nevertheless, as I have said unto you in a former commandment, let not your gathering be in haste, nor by flight, but let all things be prepared before you, and in order that all things be prepared before you, observe the commandment which I have given concerning these things—Which saith, or teacheth, to purchase all the lands with money, which can be purchased for money, in the region round about the land which I have appointed to be the land of Zion.” So the Lord’s kind of saying gather, but gather in a sort of conscientious way and when you have the resources to do so. The gathering to Missouri causes problems because it happens so quickly. That leads the Missourians to become paranoid about the saints. The gathering to Kirtland, which probably happened a little bit faster than the Lord intended, too, causes problems because they don’t have sufficient resources to take care of everybody. So the persecutions that happen in Missouri place severe strain on the church. The gathering to Kirtland places strain on the church, and one solution that they’re looking at is well, what if we open a bank? What—this could maybe help with the situation. Now, there are some controversies linked to the Kirtland Bank. For instance, you have to get a charter from your state legislature to open a bank. They go to the Ohio state legislature, which had been granting a ton of bank charters in the years leading up. However, the year that they go, they send Orson Hyde to get state authorization for the Kirtland Safety Society. The state doesn’t give them a bank charter. And it’s not just them: In that particular year, in the 1836-1837 session of the Ohio state legislature, they don’t approve any bank charters. And so prior to that point, Ohio had granted a lot of bank charters, and they kind of went in assuming, yeah, they’ll let us do this, and they don’t. And so they have to kind of improvise, because they’ve already started the wheels in motion, and they decide to open the bank without a charter, and one of the things they do is call it an anti-bank. So some of the Kirtland Safety Society notes say “The Kirtland Safety Anti-Banking Society.”

Scott Woodward:
Anti-bank. A not-bank.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. To-may-to, to-mah-to, I guess you’d say.

Scott Woodward:
Kind of like a bank, but not a bank.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so sometimes the—I’ve heard it called a private joint stock company. Basically they function like a bank. They can still take deposits, issue loans.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
They function essentially like a bank. They’re just not chartered by the state.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So it’s kind of a unofficial bank. Not illegal, just kind of like—what would you say? Kind of not backed by anything, and so for someone who wants to go and bank at this anti-bank place, in some ways you’re taking on a lot of risk.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And, I mean, in order to understand the difficulties with the bank, too, we might have to pause for a minute and talk about 1830s economics, which I know you didn’t come on this because this is the 1830s American economics podcast, but indulge me for just a second.

Scott Woodward:
Please, teach us about 1830 economics.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So one of the documents that you can find on the Joseph Smith Paper site are Kirtland Safety Society banknotes. And today, you know, we’re getting away from paper money a little bit. I hardly ever have it. But back in the 1830s, the federal government did not issue paper money, and all a dollar bill is essentially is a note from the government that says, yeah, the government backs this up. We’ll reimburse you for the cost of this. In the 1830s, the federal government of the United States minted coins, but they didn’t print money. If you had an item of paper money, it was from your local bank. And so Kirtland Safety Society notes were basically a note that would say, hey, here’s $1. If you go to the Kirtland Safety Society and turn this note in, we’ll give you a dollar in gold. And it allowed them to interact quickly and cleanly, but it also made the bank vulnerable, too. So the items of incorporation for the bank are pulled up in November of 1836, and then the bank officially opens. The Kirtland Safety Society opens on January 2 and immediately runs into trouble for a couple reasons: first and foremost, they were underfunded from the beginning. They didn’t have enough money, probably, to make the bank really successful, but I think they thought, let’s open it in good faith and things will work out.

Scott Woodward:
And there’s, from what I understand, several stockholders who had agreed to make payments on their shares to help the bank maintain its gold and silver reserves were neglecting to make their payments. And so there’s almost, you know, trouble from the beginning.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So that hurts them, but then there’s stuff that’s beyond their control, too. For instance, in the next town over there’s a guy named Grandison Newell, who really does not like the church.

Scott Woodward:
Grandison. What a guy.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Grandison Newell organizes a run on the banknotes, so he gets all of his buddies to purchase the banknotes and then cash them in all at once.

Scott Woodward:
Like, bring them in and demand cash in return, like, right now. Like . . .

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. Give us gold and silver right away.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So it’s kind of that It’s a Wonderful Life situation where everybody tries to take their money out of the bank and Jimmy Stewart has to be like, well, your money’s not here, it’s in Ted’s house, or something like that. Taking all of the material assets out of the bank simultaneously causes the bank to start to struggle. And there’s indications that by February they’re having major, major issues. Joseph Smith goes to Michigan to try and get some assistance to help with the bank. There’s a meeting held in the Kirtland Temple that same month to try and replace Joseph Smith as president of the church. Again, for a lot of people the issue is Joseph Smith had promoted the bank. He’d even said, you know, God will bless us if we open this bank. He’d made promises that sounded prophetic. When the bank starts to fail, that causes a lot of people to doubt his prophetic leadership.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And a little bit more of the kind of local context here, factors out of their control, is we have local newspapers who are starting to write articles that are casting doubt on the bank’s legitimacy. And then you’ve got many workers and businesses in and around Kirtland who start to refuse to accept Safety Society notes.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Add that to Grandison Newell and his buddies hoarding bank notes and doing runs on the bank and stockholders neglecting to make payments on their shares, and I mean, you can see how, I mean, this poor start shakes the faith of some members of the church, and they start to question the prophet’s spiritual leadership that had initially spurred their investment, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So it’s kind of a perfect storm locally. And then what happens next?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah: perfect storm locally and then a perfect storm nationally. So you might remember, if you’re old enough, back in 2008 during the Great Recession, it seemed like a lot of banks were going to fail, and the federal government intervened. There was a system in place to do that, it was called the Bank of the United States, but Andrew Jackson hated the Bank of the United States and basically killed the bank. And, you know, it’s one of those things where it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, that when the bank failed, a lot of people throughout the United States became nervous. This sets off the so-called Panic of 1837, where everybody’s thinking the federal government’s not going to back up any local bank. I’ve got to get my money out of there before something happens.

Scott Woodward:
Got to go get my cash.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, and it leads to a cascade failure where hundreds of banks fail across the United States. So there’s sort of a banking crisis/recession on a national level, and that further deepens the crisis with the Kirtland Bank. So like you said, it’s a perfect storm of local and national economic conditions that leads them to basically not be able to make the bank work. Though they try. They try really, really hard to make the bank work.

Scott Woodward:
I’ve got a stat here from Wikipedia that talks about the Panic of 1837. It says, “Out of 850 banks in the United States, 343 closed entirely, sixty-two failed partially, and the system of state banks received a shock from which it never fully recovered.” Holy cow. That’s, like, 40 percent of all banks in the U. S. closed in 1837.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s wild.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And if that’s on Wikipedia, it must be true.

Scott Woodward:
It must be true.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I’m gonna trust it 100% percent—no, I figured that that’s sourced, but, I mean, it’s a bad time. It’s a bad time nationally. It’s a bad time in Kirtland. And we’ve talked about this extensively, but some of the strongest leaders of the church falter.

Scott Woodward:
Start to question Joseph Smith’s prophetic leadership here.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Parley P. Pratt, who is my personal hero, criticizes Joseph Smith and almost apostatizes. Other people, like Warren Parrish, who works with the bank, turn against Joseph Smith. Most of the saints in Kirtland remain faithful, but a lot dissent from the church. This is when things started to go south with Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmer family and Martin Harris and John Johnson and a lot of these really stalwart members who lost a ton of money. Now, a couple things: If you’re taking this as an angle of, well, Joseph Smith swindled all these people, there’s no indication that that happened.

Scott Woodward:
No swindling, no shenanigans.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
When we look at the bank records, Joseph lost more money than anybody did. And he seems to have been investing in this as much as anybody. He wasn’t asking other people to do something that he wasn’t doing himself. But by the end of the year, I mean, the Kirtland Bank closes, and people are openly threatening Joseph Smith’s life. In fact, there’s an unpublished revelation that you can find in the Joseph Smith Papers but not in the Doctrine and Covenants. It was not canonized. I’ll read it right here. This revelation was given on the 12th of January 1838, so about a year after the Kirtland Bank opens. “Thus saith the Lord: Let the presidency of my church take their families as soon as it is practicable, and a door is opened for them to move on to the West as fast as the way is made plain before their faces. Let their hearts be comforted, for I will be with them. Verily I say unto you, the time has come that your labors are finished in this place for a season.” So the Lord is telling them, leave Kirtland. “Therefore, arise and get yourselves unto a land which I shall show unto you, even a land flowing with milk and honey. You are clean from the blood of this people, and woe unto those who have become your enemies, who have professed my name, saith the Lord, for their judgment lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. Let all your faithful friends arise with their families also, and get out of this place, and gather themselves together unto Zion, or Missouri, and be at peace among yourselves, O ye inhabitants of Zion, for there is no safety for you.”

Scott Woodward:
Time to get out of Kirtland. Things are getting dangerous for Joseph to stay there.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Things get so bad that, yeah, they’ve got to leave Kirtland. And, again, the revelation is to the First Presidency, who at this time is just Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. Frederick G. Williams, the second counselor in the First Presidency, is caught up in a lot of this stuff, and he is removed from the First Presidency.

Scott Woodward:
And replaced by Hyrum at this point, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. But the presidency is commanded to leave, and in the revelation, basically everybody that’s faithful to the Church is commanded to leave. That sets up the Kirtland camp that travels to Missouri. It’s kind of an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” thing when they get to Missouri because they face serious persecutions there, but this is where Kirtland ceases to function as a meaningful church center. Unfortunately, the first temple the church has built in Kirtland is abandoned. We still deal with fallout from this today because we don’t own the Kirtland Temple. It went out of our hands at this particular point in time.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so to recap here, we were in debt.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Good debt, because it’s a temple that leads to the restoration of priesthood keys that are going to be essential for the salvation of the human family to help fulfill the purpose of the earth’s creation. This is good debt, but their plan to get out of debt in the aftermath of the Kirtland Temple dedication failed, and failed miserably. Two failures, really, with the Salem, Massachusetts effort and then the colossal failure of the Kirtland Anti-bank, the Safety Society.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Which really turned a lot of people against Joseph, disillusioned them as to his prophetic gifts. Many called him a fallen prophet during this time, and then there were some that got so angry that they actually wanted to physically harm Joseph and Sidney. There were death threats, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I think Brigham Young also has death threats at this time, and he leaves. I remember Heber C. Kimball saying that a man found his life in jeopardy just to speak up in favor of the prophet Joseph in some circles during this time. And so it’s pretty brutal. Yeah. And so that revelation that tells him to get out of there is followed up by a little journal entry here in Joseph’s history. Let me just add this: You can kind of get the vibe of the time. He said, “A new year dawned upon the church in Kirtland 1838 in all the bitterness of the spirit of apostate mobocracy, which continued to rage and grow hotter and hotter until Rigdon and myself were obliged to flee from its deadly influence, as did the apostles and prophets of old.” He said, “On the evening of January 12, about 10 o’clock” that same day that that revelation was received that you just read, “on horseback to escape mob violence,” he says explicitly here, “which was about to burst upon us under the color of legal process, cover the hellish designs of our enemies, and to save themselves from the just judgment of the law,” they left. They escaped. So, wow. Crazy.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So then they make it up to Far West, and that’s where the story picks up from here.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, and just one quick point I want to emphasize, too. They didn’t leave town in order to escape their debts. They’re leaving town to escape their persecution.

Scott Woodward:
To save their lives.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
To save their lives. When they get to Far West, another revelation is received. This is section 117 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and this revelation actually instructs a couple of people, like, Newel K. Whitney, that they need to leave Kirtland, too, but it also appoints a man named Oliver Granger to stay behind and to settle their debts. So they are conscious of the fact that they still have these debts to take care of. They’re not leaving town to get away from them. In fact, section 117, verse 13—well, let’s go to verse 12: “I remember my servant Oliver Granger. Behold, verily I say unto him, His name shall be had in sacred remembrance from generation to generation forever and ever, saith the Lord. Therefore, let him contend earnestly for the redemption of the First Presidency of my church, saith the Lord. And when he falls, he shall rise again, for his sacrifice shall be more sacred unto me than his increase.” Those are beautiful words, and the story of Oliver Granger is kind of beautiful, too, where this guy stays behind. He does everything he can to try and settle the debts of the First Presidency and the church to make sure that everybody gets a square deal, and he eventually dies in Kirtland. In fact, if you go to Kirtland today, there’s a cemetery right next to the Kirtland Temple, and you can find Oliver Granger’s grave. People make fun of his grave, because whoever made the headstone didn’t measure out the letters, and so—

Scott Woodward:
Their spacing was a little off.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Their spacing was off. We’ll try and put a picture of this up on the website, and it says “Oliver Grange,” and then there’s a little, tiny R.

Scott Woodward:
Grange r.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Where the stonemason had to just barely put it in there. But, I mean, this is a guy who stays behind and fights the good fight on behalf of the First Presidency to settle their debts, and dies there. And I should mention parenthetically, his daughter, Sarah Granger Kimball, eventually goes to Nauvoo and becomes a key figure in the creation of the Relief Society. So, again, this isn’t a dine and dash. This isn’t a, oh, we crashed the bank so we’ve got to get out of town. They’re leaving town because their lives are threatened, but they’re conscious of their debts, and they are commanded by the Lord to leave church agents behind to settle their debts, which they do.

Scott Woodward:
That’s the responsible thing to do.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So now the scene shifts from Kirtland to Far West, and this is where the next big development in church finance happens. Scott, walk us through this.

Scott Woodward:
You know, honestly, the very best, like, summary I’ve ever seen on the financial setting at this time was written out on the Joseph Smith Papers website. If our listeners haven’t tried this, I would highly recommend you go to the Joseph Smith Papers website, and you click on underneath “Featured Topics” on the home page there’s a little link that says “View All Featured Topics.” If you click on that and then you scroll down just a little bit there’s a part underneath that says ”Revelations and Translations,” and you click on “Sources Behind the Doctrine and Covenants,” and if you click on that, it takes you to, you know, you can see every section of the Doctrine and Covenants, and click on section 119. This is what I’m about to read from. And it is so good, succinct, insightful, so helpful. So there’s this little dropdown at the very top of that page that then says “Historical Introduction,” all right? So every section of the Doctrine and Covenants has one of these on the Joseph Smith Papers, and they are jam packed with insights and links to original documents. Historical gold.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So good. So let me just quote a little bit from the historical introduction to section 119 as it kind of tees up what we want to talk about in terms of the law of tithing, our next system of financing church needs. So here’s what they say: “The troubled situation of church finances was compounded by the nationwide panic of 1837” and the ensuing economic recession we just talked about. “During this period, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon incurred several thousand dollars of debt. In the latter half of 1837 the bishops in Missouri and Kirtland, Ohio took new steps to address the church’s financial problems. In September of 1837, the church published an appeal from Bishop Newell K. Whitney and his counselors in Kirtland, calling on church members everywhere to ‘bring their tithes into the storehouse’ to relieve church debts and to help establish the community of saints in Missouri. While this general request did not include recommended donation amounts, in December of 1837 a committee composed of Edward Partridge, the bishop of Zion in Missouri; Isaac Morley, his first counselor in the bishopric; and” then a guy named “John Corrill, the appointed keeper of the Lord’s storehouse, they proposed a new plan, which was this: ‘That every head of household be asked to annually donate a certain percentage of net worth, with the percentage based on church needs for the year. So this is kind of interesting, actually. They were proposing—Edward Partridge, bishop of the Church, is proposing a floating percentage that at the beginning of each year would be announced: this year we need X percent of your net worth in order to finance the needs of the church. That particular year, for 1838, the committee proposed a tithing of two percent. This is not two percent of your income, this is two percent of your net worth. In fact, let me jump over to the actual letter that proposes this two-percent plan. It’s really interesting. So Bishop Partridge’s plan says this: “We believe that a voluntary, free-will offering from year to year will not only be pleasing in the sight of the Lord, but will be in some degree fulfilling the law of consecration. Secondly, we believe that a percentage on what a man is worth is a more equal mode of raising funds than the tithing of what a man raises or his income from year to year. Interesting. So it’s a little more equal to give a percentage of your net worth than it is to ask for a tithing of your income. He then says, “It’s expedient that every man renders an inventory to the bishop or his successor in office yearly of what he is worth after deducting his honest debts,” right? This is how you calculate your net worth: You take everything you own, you minus all your debts. Boom. There’s your net worth, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Then the letter continues, saying, “Therefore, we recommend that elders holding meetings among the saints in this region of country read this report” or this kind of newsletter here “to the churches and instruct them about the necessity of forthwith making an estimate of what they are worth and of paying the above-named percentage,” two percent, “as soon as they conveniently can. We have estimated that two cents upon the dollar for what every man shall be worth when he renders his inventory to the bishop will raise a sum sufficient for 1838.” So this is interesting, right? So Bishop Partridge is kind of tasked with coming up with a way to help bring about means to settle the debts and fund church needs, right? And so a two percent tithing of your net worth was the proposal.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so now fast forward to April of 1838. The prophet’s in Far West, and the Lord gives another revelation, section 115, which commands for the building up of Far West and for a new temple to be built. But this time the Lord directs the presidency not to go into debt to build the Far West Temple, as they had when building the Kirtland Temple, right? They’ve already got debts. Let’s not add to the debts you’ve already got. Now, the issue of Joseph and Sidney Rigdon’s debts is raised again in May when the two both asked the high council about potential compensation for their services in the church, they’re trying to find some way, right, to get funds to help pay off their debts. And so their debt is kind of always hanging over Joseph and Sidney for these months, April, May, June. And on July 8th, 1838, the very first payment on a debt totaling over $4,000 was due that day. It was a debt that Joseph owed to attorneys for help in Kirtland, Ohio. And so a $4,000 debt is due on the 8th of July, 1838. This is stressing Joseph out. There’s other needs. There’s command to build a temple. There’s command to build up Far West. How are we supposed to fund the needs of the church and get out of debt? And so that is the setting. That sets up perfectly now the context for Joseph’s question. According to one copy of the revelation here in the handwriting of George W. Robinson, Joseph Smith asked this question: “Lord, show unto thy servants how much thou requirest of the properties of thy people for a tithing.” And the result of that question was Doctrine and Covenants section 119.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Also known as the law of tithing.

Scott Woodward:
AKA the law of tithing. That’s right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. I would emphasize, too, that the word tithe does show up in the Doctrine and Covenants before section 119. Tithing was generally a sort of “one size fits all” word for any donation made to the church. They weren’t using the word tithe or tithing back then the way we use it today. That’s just something that it helps to understand when you go into this revelation.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So his question, “Lord, show unto thy servants how much thou requirest of the properties of thy people for a tithing,” in context, that word would be more like donation today. How much do you want your servants to donate, or how much do you want your people to donate to satisfy the needs of the church?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Today, because tithing literally does mean tenth, we just take it across that way, but back then, you’re right, the word donation might capture a little bit more what they were going for.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so what does the revelation say? Let’s look. Verse one, “Verily, thus saith the Lord, I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church in Zion,” that would be Edward Partridge, “for the building of mine house,” verse 2, “and for the laying of the foundation of Zion, and for the priesthood, and for the debts of the presidency of my church,” verse 3, “and this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.” So that’s the first part of this revelation. To help fund the “house,” the Far West Temple, “the laying of the foundation of Zion,” that’s the building up of Far West, “and for the priesthood, and for the debts of the presidency of my church,” right? That’s the immediate context here of the debts of the presidency that they incurred in Kirtland and the priesthood, or meaning the leadership of the church there.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And he says that’s the beginning of tithing of my people, all right? It’s all your surplus property. And the way they define surplus property at this time was anything you didn’t have immediate use of, essentially.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay? And now verse four gets interesting. Verse four now talks about a second tithe. “And after that,” meaning after that first tithe of all your surplus, “those who have thus been tithed shall pay one tenth of all their interest annually. And this shall be a standing law unto them forever for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.” Bam. So that’s the second tithe. So tithing number one, surplus property, one-time donation. Tithing number two, ongoing tithing, which is one tenth of all their interest annually. And that’s to be the standing law forever, the Lord says here.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So a few points we want to make on this is, Casey, does this replace the law of consecration? I’ve heard it said like that. I’ve heard people say, well, tithing is a lower law because the saints were unable to live the law of consecration and so the Lord replaced it with the law of tithing. What do you want to say about that, Casey? Is that accurate? Do you want to—do you want to wade into those waters? We talked about at the beginning of this episode today that there was going to be a little controversy, and I think this is—we’re now wading into those waters a little bit. What do you want to say about that?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I mean, okay, you’re throwing the ball to me. I think we’ve made clear in our previous episodes that we don’t think it does.

Scott Woodward:
No.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And by the way, I’m looking at the commentary we published on Doctrine and Covenants Central. We recruited Steve Harper, who is amazing—

Scott Woodward:
He’s the best.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—to write some commentary for us. And he actually says this may be the most misunderstood revelation of Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward:
Because of this point, right? Because of that issue. And can I make a case as to why people think that first, and then we’ll let Steve kind of push back the other way?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The major issue is the section heading.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
If you look in the section heading, let’s go down to the very, like, the last two sentences, it actually says this: this is the italics part. This is not part of the revelation. It says, “Because of failure on the part of many to abide by this covenant, referring to the law of consecration of property outlined in section 42, the Lord withdrew it for a time and gave instead the law of tithing to the whole church.” There you go. I mean, right there in the section heading, it’s kind of suggesting that the Lord withdrew the law of consecration, the law of tithing is replacing it for a time, right? And so I’ve heard people build on that and say, yeah, like, in the millennium, you know, when Jesus comes, then we’ll live the law of consecration again, but in the meantime, law of tithing, you know?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. There’s two major problems with that, as I see it. Number one, it’s suggesting that we don’t live the law of consecration when the law of consecration is still a temple covenant people make today, so clearly the Lord still expects us to live the law of consecration. The second issue in my mind is that it makes tithing sort of the inferior law, that tithing is the lesser law, consecration is the higher law, and the actual text of the revelation doesn’t seem to suggest that. And so we’re not disputing the revelation. We’re disputing the italicized introduction, which is not part of the scriptural canon. We can argue with this part, and I think be okay, but we’re stepping out on a limb here, but I think, you know, it’s a thick limb. I think we’ve got plenty of support to say that we’re okay in saying this, just because consecration is such an important thing, we don’t want people to misinterpret section 119 to say it went away. It’s never gone away. Always been there.

Scott Woodward:
This is worth clarifying. Yes. So, okay. So what does Steve Harper have to say about this?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
This is on Doctrine and Covenants Central, and we endorse this, but we’re going to let Steve make the argument for us, okay? He says, “Though it is clearly worded and consistent with Joseph Smith’s earlier revelations, Section 119 may be his most misunderstood revelation. That’s because everyone reads the scriptures through a figurative pair of glasses. The glasses are made of presuppositions.” We talked about this in our last series, right? “The glasses can’t be seen or felt, but they distort what is seen and understood. The 1981 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, and the 2013 edition also, includes a heading for section 119. The heading represents the glasses through which many saints see section 119. It’s largely accurate but includes two sentences that aren’t. While many similar errors were corrected in 2013, this one wasn’t.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s so interesting, right? Because yeah, we do have section headings that in light of the Joseph Smith Papers project in the 2013 printing, they got corrected, tweaked, modified, right? In light of better information.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But Steve’s right: this one, for some reason, did not get corrected.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So he says, “To see how this works, read the revelation in section 119 without looking at the heading. Forget everything you think you know about tithing and just read the revelation. Note that it begins with a direct restatement of the law of consecration.” That’s the first couple verses that directly draw from section 42, specifically verses 33 and 54. Verse 2 states the reasons for the revelation, and they’re the same reasons for the law of consecration, and related revelations given in sections 51, 70, 72, 78, 82, 104, and 105. “This,” section 119 says, “is the beginning of the tithing of my people.” And so it’s clear that the revelation isn’t saying consecration is going to be repealed, essentially. In fact, it’s emphasizing consecration. It’s repeating.

Scott Woodward:
Reaffirms we’re still doing what section 42 said, just with a little twist.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So he goes on to say, “This is the first of the revelation’s three uses of tithing or tithe. All of them refer to the voluntary offering of surplus property. And after that, ‘Those who have thus been tithed,’ says verse 4, ‘shall pay one tenth of their interest annually.’” So, this is still Steve, “Clearly tithing is not a lesser or lower law to be replaced someday, but a standing law forever.” That’s the wording in section 119.

Scott Woodward:
That’s the language of verse four, yeah. A standing law unto them forever.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I mean, he makes a pretty convincing argument that if you read the revelation itself, it’s not repealing consecration, and it’s not saying tithing is a lesser law.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And I like what he says next: He says, “So why do saints tell each other the story that the law of consecration is a higher law and tithing is a lower law? The Doctrine and Covenants doesn’t say that.” He says, “There’s not enough space here to explain this misunderstanding completely, but the heading does play a role in it. There are erroneous sentences in the heading that conflict with the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants.” And then he goes on to explain further, but part of it is the dissolution of the United Firm in section 104, which some people misread as a repealing of the law of consecration itself, right? When the United Firm was dissolved, that basically just broke up the joint partnership between Missouri and Kirtland in terms of their financial interdependence, but it does not get rid of the law of consecration. In fact, he quotes President Hinckley here: he says, “President Gordon B. Hinckley taught that the law of consecration was not rescinded and is still in effect. So how could Section 119 be instead of the Law of Consecration? The revelation doesn’t say tithing is instead of consecration. It simply restates the law and then adds clarification, and perhaps even a level of greater obligation. So it’s best understood as part of, not instead of, the law of consecration.” And so he says, “Reading the revelation through broken glasses causes us to distort it to mean that tithing is a lower law that’s going away someday. But seeing the revelation through the lenses of its original context, shows us how it fits in the law of consecration, a standing law unto them forever, and that obedience to it is a prerequisite to Zion.” Well said, Steve.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well said, Steve. And if you have issues with that, contact Steve Harper and leave us alone. This is what we were arguing about before the podcast started was, like, how do we contradict the section heading? But, I mean, it seems like the revelation is doing the work for us, really, here. Doesn’t support the section heading.

Scott Woodward:
Steve has been commissioned multiple times to write tithing articles. Yeah, he’s got one in Revelations in Context for the church on the church’s website. He’s a great scholar. He’s one of the Joseph Smith Papers scholars early on, and he’s done great work. And so he’s a trusted source, and I think his reasoning on this is backed up in the text itself, and so that’s why we’ve felt comfortable saying, yeah, we think this is right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right. So another misunderstanding that we need to emphasize here is that first, the law of tithing doesn’t replace the law of consecration, and it’s not a lesser law. There are changes to the law of consecration, but I think we’ve been arguing that it was flexible from the beginning.

Scott Woodward:
In the system, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. I guess the law doesn’t change, but the way in which it is administered or the way in which church members are asked to live it is being tweaked and modified according to the circumstances that the saints find themselves in, and the prophet’s earnest inquiry here is leading to that modification, so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And then maybe the next point of controversy we’d have to deal with is the wording in the revelation also.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Should we talk about that? Verse four?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Verse four, “Those who have thus been tithed shall pay one tenth of their interest annually, and this shall be a standing law unto them forever for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.” So one tenth of their interest, and this is still sometimes disputed by people in the church as to what that means. What do you want to say about that, Scott? I’m going to put the ball in your court for that.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, you’re putting this back on me. Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, “Those who have thus been tithed shall pay one tenth of all their interest annually.” What does that mean? Does this mean a penny from every dime and a dime from every dollar, or is this something different? Well, this is interesting because Bishop Partridge, just shortly after this was given—and he was in the room where it happened, Edward Partridge was, and he’s the one in charge of administering this law in Zion, and so he had a vested interest to understand it, so that he could administer it according to the will of the Lord. So he writes a letter, shortly after this was received, to Bishop Newel K. Whitney, who’s still back in Ohio. And he explains in his own words, so he’s going to kind of reword it and then explain what verses 1 through 4 were saying. So this is really interesting in terms of, like, getting at a early kind of original interpretation of the meaning of these verses. So here’s what he says, and this is his letter to Bishop Whitney: “The Saints are required to give all their surplus property into the hands of the Bishop of Zion, and after this first tithing they are to pay annually one tenth of all their interest.” Okay, so that’s a nice summary of verses 1 through 4, and then he says on that last point, “That is, if a man is worth $1,000,” meaning his net worth, “the interest on that would be $60, and one-tenth of the interest will be, of course, $6. Thus you see the plan.” Whoa. Okay, so think about that for a second. So what would a normal, average Latter-day Saint say if you said, “What’s tithing on $1,000?” I think we’d all say $100, right? But what he says is we’re not talking about income here, we’re talking about net worth. If we go back to Bishop Partridge’s December plan of 1837, where he’s asking members of the church to assess their net worth and then do a tithing on two percent of the net worth, right? This is kind of the understanding that he’s coming from here, right? When he says what the Lord means by one tenth of all their interest annually is one tenth of what saints would earn in interest if they invested their net worth for a year at 6 percent interest. So, the way that he calculates this is he says, “If a man is worth a thousand dollars,” okay, net worth, not income here, “then interest on that would be $60.” Okay, how does he come up with that? Well, 6 percent is a common interest rate at that time. So he’s just drawing on the interest rate at the time. If you invested your net worth at 6%, that would be $60. You follow so far?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then he says, “So one tenth of the interest would be, of course, $6.” 10 percent of $60 is $6. And the way he got the number 60 is to say, well, if you invest your net worth at 6 percent annually, you’d get $60. So, he says, “Thus you see the plan.” Whoa. All right, let’s go back to the verse, then, and read this in context. So he says, after tithing number one of giving all your surplus property, which is interpreted as anything you don’t have immediate use of, then, “Those who have thus been tithed shall pay one tenth of all their interest annually. And this shall be a standing law unto them forever.” In other words, let me read Bishop Partridge’s words back into that. Those who have thus been tithed shall pay one tenth of their invested net worth at six percent annually. Whoa. Casey, that’s very different than the “dime from every dollar and a penny from every dime” reading on that, isn’t it?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, and I mean, this is kind of an interesting prognostication, right, on our part of—

Scott Woodward:
Wow.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—what Edward Partridge thought.

Scott Woodward:
Uh-huh.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
On a practical level, it turns into, you know, one penny from every dime and one dime from every dollar.

Scott Woodward:
It does.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And the church actually has a really good little article under Church History Topics about this where they sort of deal with this controversy that we’ve spent a few minutes on.

Scott Woodward:
So this is the article called “Tithing,” right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
If you go to your Gospel Library app, click on Church History Topics, and then—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Click on “Tithing.”

Scott Woodward:
—“Tithing.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And here’s how they deal with it: They just wrote, “Over time the saints’ tithing practices have changed as the economy and circumstances of the saints have shifted. Initially church leaders applied a complex formula to calculate how much tithing the saints owed,” which is what you were just talking about. And I’ve got to be honest with you, Scott, I’m not a finance guy, but you lost me.

Scott Woodward:
What?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I mean, I guess I’m sort of with you. Anyway.

Scott Woodward:
It’s a simple Excel sheet, Casey. Simple Excel sheet can figure this all out for you.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I should mention that Bishop Partridge passes away in 1840, and his position is kind of taken over by Newel K. Whitney, and then they institute a system of wards and bishops in Nauvoo. So the article continues by saying, “By the 1840s, however, this was simplified to requirement to pay one tenth of their increase or income. The methods of paying tithing likewise shifted over time. In the 19th century saints often made in-kind donations, such as animals or produce. Starting in Nauvoo, many saints in Nauvoo donated one day in ten to work on the temple or other church projects. Church offices in Nauvoo and Salt Lake City had a tithing office and a yard that served as places to store donated goods such as grain, vegetables, merchandise, cut stone, lumber shingles, and livestock. In outlying settlements, local bishop’s storehouses were similarly used to pool the community’s resources. In calculating their annual tenth, as outlined in the 1838 revelation, Church members sometimes counted things like land appreciation as increase, since many people were not earning wages. In the 20th century cash earnings and donations became more common. Throughout these changes,” they write, “tithing has remained one of the most conspicuous ways that Latter-day Saints fulfill the commandment to consecrate their lives to God’s work. Today tithing funds are used, among other things, to build temples and meetinghouses, support family history research, share the gospel with others, and provide humanitarian service.” That is how they do it in their article, and I should note that the official church handbook interprets section 119 as follows: It says, “Tithing is the donation of one tenth of one’s income to God’s church.” And then in parentheses, “see Doctrine and Covenants 119, verses three through four, interest is understood to mean income. All members who have income should pay tithing.” So there’s no dispute as to how tithing is interpreted in the church today, but it is a little—it’s like almost all the other topics we’ve talked about. It’s messier.

Scott Woodward:
The history is always a little messier than you think.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And that’s okay. We love to play in that mess, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Let me read a First Presidency letter from 1970. This is a letter that the First Presidency sent out to presidents of stakes and missions and bishops of wards and presidents of branches in answer to this question that they got, which was, “What is a proper tithe?” And church handbooks actually quoted this First Presidency letter for many years, and it was kind of, like, the standing, like, official standard. And so I’ll just quote from that. They say, “For your guidance in this matter, please be advised that we have uniformly replied that the simplest statement we know of is that statement of the Lord Himself, that the members of the church should pay one tenth of all their interest annually, which is understood to mean income.” Right? So they add that piece, “which is understood to mean income,” which I would say, well, Bishop Partridge did not understand it that way. But over time, as you just read, Casey, it does come to be understood that way. And then they continue, “No one is justified in making any other statement than this. We feel that every member of the church should be entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord and to make payment accordingly.” So that’s interesting. That reminds me of the same spirit in which Joseph Smith counseled Edward Partridge early on when Edward said, how do we tell what surplus is? Like how should we assess it? And Joseph Smith said, do not condescend to any particulars in trying to assess surplus. Let church members decide for themselves what surplus means, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I feel that same spirit here when they say every member is entitled to make their own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord and to make payment accordingly. Your bishop’s just going to ask you a simple yes or no question. It’s not going to be an excel sheet. There’s not going to be a complicated breakdown. He’s just going to say, are you a full tithe payer, yes or no? And that’s it. That’s between you and the Lord, essentially, and the bishop is just there to represent the Lord, and we don’t need to condescend to any particulars, to quote Joseph Smith there. That’s it. No one is justified in making any other statement than this, the First Presidency says.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And I’ll say I like the way they’ve handled that, basically. Let’s teach correct principles, and then let’s let them govern themselves.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I’ve been on both sides of the table when it comes to tithing settlement, you know, which happens once a year. Deeply grateful for all the members of the church that make their sacrifice. And even though it may have been a messy road getting here, I’m deeply grateful for this system of finance because it’s very equitable. It requires the same sacrifice of everybody. So I’m just really grateful for this and know the road was messy, but I think this is one of the most inspired principles of the church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. This is the system of consecration, which has persevered, and it has proven to be quite effective.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And I just want to say one more thing about that, that in the aftermath of the Edmunds–Tucker Act, which was when the U. S. government was trying to shut down the church for its continued practice of polygamy and was going to confiscate all of our property and take everything, a lot of church members during that time stop paying tithing because they were worried that their donations would be confiscated by the U. S. government, and after that all kind of settles, the manifesto is received, the dust kind of clears, about a decade later is when Lorenzo Snow says, it’s time to start being really earnest in paying your tithing again.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And starts going on speaking tours around the church, inviting saints to pay tithing and promising the blessings of the Lord for doing so. So when the saints got really serious about paying tithing and felt like the money was going to go toward the purposes that are outlined in the Doctrine and Covenants and not be confiscated by the U. S. government, as President Snow and then President Joseph F. Smith continue to preach and teach about tithing and the blessings that would flow from that, we become solvent as a church, and it’s been an incredible blessing ever since.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s correct.

Scott Woodward:
But, now, Casey, is that the end of the financial turbulence of the church?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
No. It is not, by any means. So what we’re going to talk about next time is consecration after the law of tithing was given. So that’s going to be our topic for next time. And that is pretty fascinating stuff. So I’m looking forward to that.

Scott Woodward:
Is this Brigham Young and Orderville and all that stuff? Is that what we’re talking about?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Brigham Young. Orderville, Brigham City. Fascinating stuff that has a wonderful, wonderful history.

Scott Woodward:
Very cool.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Well, I’m excited. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week, Casey and I discuss how the law of consecration was lived in various forms in Nauvoo and out West in Utah up to and beyond the turn of the century. And, as we’ll see, there wasn’t a clean, linear transition from the financial consecration system of stewardship to the consecration system of tithing. There were actually various forms of overlap between and a hybridizing of these two systems during different periods. Super interesting stuff. 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.