Scott Woodward:
Hi, this is Scott from Church History Matters. As we near the completion of this series, we want to hear your questions about church finances. In two weeks we will be pleased to have as our special guest to help us respond to your questions Dr. Elizabeth Kuen, the lead historian at the Joseph Smith Papers for the Financial Records series. Her research, among other things, has focused on the financial records of Joseph Smith, including his bankruptcy proceedings, as well as Nauvoo controversies in general. Dr. Kuen is well equipped to handle any question you might have about all things financial in the Joseph Smith era. So please submit your thoughtful questions anytime before February 22, 2024 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org. Let us know your name, where you’re from, and try to keep each question as concise as possible when you email them in. That helps out a lot. Okay, now on to the episode. Zion has been defined as God’s people being of one heart and one mind, dwelling together in righteousness, and having no poor among them. Since Joseph Smith’s day, Latter-day Saints have made continuous efforts toward this Zion ideal, including not only assisting the poor and needy but going even further to help them eliminate poverty from their lives by becoming self-reliant. In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we want to trace the fascinating story of our current church system for helping the poor, beginning at its origins, where it was serendipitously born of necessity in the mind of a stake president amidst the Great Depression, to its current multi-pronged offerings, where, though most of it goes unseen, it quietly blesses countless lives. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our fifth episode of this series dealing with consecration and church finance. Now, let’s get into it. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Hello, Scott. 

Scott Woodward:
Hello, Casey. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Here we are again. 

Scott Woodward:
Here we are. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Talking about church finance and consecration. 

Scott Woodward:
Does it get more exciting than this topic, Casey? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I love this, actually. And it’s weird, Scott, because I’m really not a money guy in regular life. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And yet church finance is super fascinating to me and really interesting. I’ll go out on a limb and say this: it’s one of the major themes of the Doctrine and Covenants. Like, a ton of revelations talk about this. 

Scott Woodward:
That’s true. And so in this series, we’re trying to do the old “follow the money” throughout the history of the church. We’re trying to follow the money and see— 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Show me the money, yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
—see how the financial picture of the church has developed and what the underlying principles are, and the more we dig into this, the more inspiring it is to me, honestly, Casey, like, a very holy, selfless principle undergirds the financial success of this church, and that is consecration, and it’s humbling and inspiring to research, honestly, so I’m glad we’re talking about it. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And for me, it’s the whole—I mean, they weren’t just saying, let’s feed the poor, as kind of, like, a nice thing. They were into the nitty-gritty of how do we feed the poor, and how do we take care of everybody, and how do we make sure that everybody’s got a meal and a roof over their head. And that gets messy, understandably, but the amount of discourse surrounding it really does show how committed they were to this idea of we’re going to eliminate poverty. And that’s what’s inspiring to me. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And that’s one of the cornerstones of Zion as articulated back—what was it? Moses 7:18? The Lord called his people Zion, and one of the reasons was because there was no poor amongst them. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
One heart and one mind. 

Scott Woodward:
And dwelt in righteousness. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And there was no poor among them. That’s what we’re going for. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s the bullseye. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. One heart, one mind. We’ve got to make sure everybody’s taken care of, too. And we’ve been tracing the story from its origins right around the time that that scripture in Moses that we quoted was received, and today we’re going to try and carry it up to the present and talk about what the church is doing to consecrate now. So that’s a big story, and maybe we ought to recap a little bit, in case you’re just joining us, what we’ve already talked about. 

Scott Woodward:
Yes. All right. May I? Shall I? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Fire away. 

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so here is the recap of our series so far. So if we step back and look at the big picture, the overarching big-picture principle of consecration is this, basically: Zion, God’s kingdom on earth, will be built up on the earth in preparation for the Savior’s coming only to the extent that church members and leaders freely give of their time, talents, and money. That’s big picture. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And I’ve got to say that freely giving our time, talents, and money, that’s really at the beating heart of consecration, isn’t it, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Just backing up what you say, it’s holistic. It’s partially about money, but it’s a lot about resources, time, and talents as well. 

Scott Woodward:
So think about it like this: In its simplest terms, anytime we freely give of our time to build up God’s kingdom in any way, we are consecrating. Anytime we voluntarily give of our talents to build up God’s kingdom, we are consecrating. Anytime we freely donate our money to the church to build God’s kingdom in some way, we are consecrating, right? Those are the guiding principles. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
These haven’t changed, but, as we pointed out in previous episodes, the way we’ve been formally invited to practice these principles on a personal level has changed from time to time. This is especially true when it comes to donating our money. So the original approach that was outlined in 1831 in D&C 42 was an invitation for church members to legally deed all of their property to the church and then to receive back in the form of a legal lease all that they and their family needed and wanted as agreed upon by them and the bishop. This was called their stewardship. And as they wisely used their stewardship and produced a surplus, meaning more than meets the needs and wants of their family, they would legally then deed that surplus to the church from time to time to go into what was called the bishop’s storehouse. And the bishop could then use whatever was in the bishop’s storehouse toward lifting the poor out of poverty and purchasing church land and properties, et cetera, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
This was the way. This was the church’s first formal system for financing the cause of Zion right there. That’s early 1831. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
Then the second piece added to that financial system develops that same year of 1831 and then into 1832, and this is the church’s business ventures. These are for-profit moneymaking vehicles designed to further fund the cause of Zion. So they would actually draw from the surplus pool of individually consecrated funds, and then church leaders would purchase things for business, such as a printing press in 1831, to create what they called the literary firm, which, to be clear, was a for-profit printing business, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And then in 1832, by joining the literary firm with Newell K. Whitney’s consecrated businesses in Ohio and Sidney Gilbert’s dry goods store in Missouri, the church’s first joint venture was formed, called the United Firm. We talked all about that. This was the beginning of the corporate management of the church’s financial and commercial interests. But several things, such as mob destruction of church property, as well as disharmony among church members and leaders, got in the way to subvert elements of this approach. And so it was rocky there in the mid-1830s, but in 1838 the approach to individual financial consecration was modified. We talked about this for an episode, right? It was tweaked to a one-time donation of all the surplus property of the saints at that time, followed by an ongoing payment of one-tenth of all their interest annually, meaning 10 percent of what they would earn in interest if they invested their net worth for a year. And this modified approach we call the law of tithing. And we’ve talked a lot, Casey, about how there’s been misunderstandings throughout our church’s history, some of which still persist today, about the relationship between this new 1838 system of tithing and the original 1831 system of legally deeding property and receiving back a lease as a stewardship. Do you want to remind us about some of those? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I’ll do a quick recap. Two of the big questions we’ve been trying to answer are, do we still live the law of consecration? And I think our overwhelming, resounding answer to that is, yeah, we still live the law of consecration. It was never rescinded. A second question has been, did the law of tithing replace the law of consecration? And even though you can find some conflicting statements from church leaders on this, it seems like from the scriptures and just from general practice, the answer to that is no. The law of tithing is a subset of the law of consecration, but it didn’t replace it altogether. And we’ve been negotiating that the entire time we’ve been talking about this. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. The idea persisted for years that tithing was somehow a lesser or, like, an inferior approach to that financial stewardship approach of 1831, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Others say this was meant to be a temporary change until we someday return to the higher law outlined in 1831 in D&C 42. But here’s what’s interesting: As we look in the 1838 revelations, which is D&C 119, where the law of tithing is articulated, the Lord said that this law of tithing, “shall be a standing law unto them forever.” That sounds pretty permanent, Casey. And yet, misunderstandings persisted. And these weren’t just isolated, local misunderstandings in, like, a few geographical pockets of the church. These were perpetuated even by some church leaders, right? I think the misunderstanding has run deep. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And it just seems like in the last few decades that we’ve really been able to kind of parse out, thanks to great scholarship and further thought by church leaders, how all these pieces kind of fit together, right? What was the United Firm/United Order? How does the law of tithing fit in the broader law of consecration and so on? And so there have been misunderstandings about this, and we’ve been trying to kind of tug on those and pull on those as we’ve been going through this. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
Hopefully we’ve helped with clarity rather than confusion as we’ve done so, but time will tell, I guess.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And part of the confusion can sometimes be as simple as the words that we use, right? 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Like, in the Doctrine and Covenants, the United Order were those shared businesses in Kirtland. For some reason, Brigham Young, and sort of the second generation of the Church, took the United Order as their catch-all word for the law of consecration. And so it can be confusing when you read the Doctrine and Covenants and you see the United Order, but it doesn’t quite line up with the way Brigham Young used the term. That’s okay. 

Scott Woodward:
And he seems to have kind of set the linguistic pattern for what followed in the next hundred years. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, into the 20th century until, like you said, Max Parkin published his article where he sort of sorted all this out. Shout out to Max Parkin. 

Scott Woodward:
Until Max Parkin came along it was a little ambiguous, but what a clear thinker and what a great article. We’ve referenced it before. Let’s just link it again to this episode’s show notes. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We’ll link it again. Absolutely. 

Scott Woodward:
But I guess we need to say one more thing as well, that this transition from this financial system of consecration with stewardship to this approach with the consecration of tithing as the way of financing the needs of the church, that transition wasn’t a clear linear transition, you know? We talked at length last time discussing some of the overlap in Nauvoo between these two ideas, and then, Casey, you did a great job talking about how groups of saints in several cities in Utah live some types of hybrids of both of these systems at the same time. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And this was one of the surprising findings, right, was that if you’re saying that tithing replaced consecration, consider a settlement like Orderville— 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—where they live a form of consecration that is completely communal. They all work in the same factory. They eat in shared quarters. And yet they also paid tithing. 

Scott Woodward:
Communally. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
They paid it communally, yeah, they all paid it together.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so one of the major things that we’ve been kind of arguing here is that if you’re expecting consecration to look like it looked in 1831, you may have missed the boat. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Consecration is a set of principles that have been applied in different ways in practice over time. The question that we’ve kind of arrived at today is, all right, you guys are saying we still live the law of consecration. What does it look like in our time? 

Scott Woodward:
What does it look like today? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And I think we’ve pinned down one of them, haven’t we? We’ve said tithing. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Tithing. 

Scott Woodward:
Tithing’s one of the ways it looks like. When you pay tithing, you are helping finance the cause of Zion.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. You’re consecrating. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let me introduce you to a quote by President Henry B. Eyring and how he connects the dots. So this is what he said, and we’ll parse it a little bit as we go. This is from a talk called “Opportunities to Do Good” from General Conference April 2011. President Eyring said, “The Lord has invited his children to consecrate their time, their means, and themselves, to join with him in serving others. His way of helping has at times been called living the law of consecration. In another period, his way was called the United Order.” He’s borrowing Brigham Young’s terminology there. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Then he says this: “In our time it is called the Church Welfare Program. The names and details of the operation are changed to fit the needs and conditions of people, but always the Lord’s way to help those in temporal need requires people who out of love have consecrated themselves and what they have to God and to His work.” So President Eyring would say, at one point, Brigham Young called it the United Order, but today it’s called the Church Welfare Program. And this is what we’re going to spend most of our episode today focusing on, is church welfare, how it developed, and what it looks like today. Because, according to President Eyring, this is the modern iteration of the law of consecration. 

Scott Woodward:
So when President Eyring says in our time it is called the Church Welfare Program, he seems, especially in the context of this talk, to be talking about how we take care of the poor, correct? That cornerstone of Zion, that Moses 7:18, there’s no poor among them, like, how are we doing that today? How are we fulfilling our commission to take care of the poor? And he’s saying, today we call that Church Welfare Program. Is that a fair read on what he’s saying here? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I think that’s a fair read, but everything overlaps, right? It’s all a huge Venn diagram. And we’d probably do well not to try too hard to separate everything into its component parts. 

Scott Woodward:
It is, collectively, the cause of Zion. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. It’s the cause of Zion, right? And welfare is a big part of it, because part of Zion is working to eliminate poverty from among you. 

Scott Woodward:
Okay. So let’s talk about welfare, then. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So let’s pick up the story. When last we left the saints, they were engaged in a conflict with the United States government that almost bankrupted them. And we talked about this last time, but they had to sort of reemphasize tithing at the beginning of the 20th century just to get the church back on firm financial footing.

Scott Woodward:
And that governmental pressure was the Edmunds–Tucker Act during the time period of the ending of plural marriage in the church, correct? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. The battle over plural marriage was not just a battle over plural marriage. If you look at the legislation the United States passed, it was a battle over the temporal control that the government felt the Church had. So the government was out to eliminate plural marriage, but also to eliminate the forms of consecration that the saints were trying to introduce in the 19th century. And it worked. We stopped practicing plural marriage, and for the most part, all of the cooperatives and the communal organizations that were sponsored by the church were pretty much wrapped up, with a couple exceptions, by the beginning of the 20th century. 

Scott Woodward:
And church members at that time felt hesitant to donate money to the church if it was just going to be confiscated by the government, right? And so there was almost a pulling back of the saints from actually consecrating money to the cause of Zion for fear of what might happen to that consecrated money. So to your point, you’re saying that there had to be a re-emphasis after the dust settled from all the cessation of plural marriage, Official Declaration 1, all of that, now the prophets begin to re-emphasize tithing. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And the church has also kind of moved closer to the mainstream of American society—the societies where the church existed anywhere. We spent so long removing ourselves from the world. Once the Manifesto was issued, we kind of have to integrate into the world a little bit. But also, we’re still wrestling with these questions of how do we take care of the poor? And that’s not to say that consecration completely disappeared in the early 20th century. There was still consecration on the local level, where your bishop would hold a fast and take the money and use it to help people in the ward, or well-meaning church members would sponsor projects where they’d go out and they’d help people harvest their crops or do service or just be good, Christian people, basically. But what actually sort of sparks the development of the church welfare program as we know it today is the worst economic disaster in history, and everybody knows what we’re talking about: the Great Depression. Just to contextualize things, the Great Depression sometimes is depicted as springing wholly upon everybody. There was Black Tuesday, and then the economy crashed, and everybody’s in bad straits, but actually, in the Intermountain West, which is where the church was primarily located during this time, we already were having a hard time. You know, the Roaring Twenties were not roaring for people that lived in the West. We were already struggling for a number of reasons, and when the Great Depression hit, it just sort of made things worse. So some stats indicate that during this time, you know, up to a quarter of Latter-day Saints were out of work, and they were struggling, and church leaders were supportive of FDR and the New Deal and all this stuff they were trying to do to get people back on their feet, but they also felt like, what can we do? And church welfare is one of those great examples of a program that didn’t necessarily come from the top down, but from the bottom up. 

Scott Woodward:
From an innovative stake president, correct? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. We had some stake presidents that were sharp, in particular a guy you may have heard of named Harold B. Lee, who was the president of the Pioneer Stake in Salt Lake City. And he starts to launch a whole bunch of programs to get everybody back to work. And part of his emphasis, too, was, hey, even if we don’t make money, it makes a person feel better to work. 

Scott Woodward:
It helps them maintain their dignity. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, the whole Deseret, the whole beehive thing, the whole “Let’s get to work,” “Work will win when wishy-washy wishing won’t” sort of attitude. So President Lee, for instance, sets up a storehouse. Again, this is Consecration 101: pool your resources, put everything in a storehouse where if you’re really needy, you can come in and get food and commodities. President Lee and his counselors purchased warehouses. They purchased a farm. They purchased a bunch of enterprises, and they sort of launched this program to help the people in the Pioneer Stake do this. The Pioneer Stake is downtown Salt Lake. You can still even see some of the structures that President Lee built under this program. But the leaders of the church see what this energetic young stake president is doing, and they think, we like the cut of this guy’s jib. Let’s take some of his good ideas and spread them around. And so one of the things they did was they invited President Lee to actually publish an article where he explained what they were doing. And President Lee, even though he’s a great innovator, is careful to say, I’m not really innovating: I’m going back to basics here. This is what he says, and I’ll quote it: he said, “The church security plan is not something new to the church, neither does it contemplate a new organization in the church to carry out its purposes, but rather it is an expression of a philosophy that is as old as the church itself, incorporated into a program of stimulation and cooperation to meet the demands of church members in the solution of present-day economic problems.” So he’s basically saying, this isn’t new: this is old. At its origins, this is a modern application of the law of consecration, which is what we’ve kind of been arguing here, right? 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Gathering together the surplus of church members’ food and commodities into a storehouse to take care of those who didn’t have enough. That sounds pretty Doctrine-and-Covenants-y. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s pretty good, right? It doesn’t hurt that Harold B. Lee is one of the great students of the scriptures in the church, that he’s very, very familiar with the revelations, especially the Doctrine and Covenants. If you look at his talks, this guy likes the Doctrine and Covenants. Well, while he is working from the ground up, church leaders notice and decide, let’s figure out a way to do this from the top down. So there’s a brand new counselor called into the First Presidency named J. Reuben Clark, who is incredibly gifted—worked in the State Department of the United States for a long time, also was a U. S. Ambassador to Mexico—who’s called as a member of the First Presidency. And we don’t always acknowledge this, but you can just leapfrog the entire Quorum of the Twelve and go straight into the First Presidency, which is what he does. 

Scott Woodward:
So he was not an Apostle originally, right? He gets called right into the First Presidency, and then he’s ordained an Apostle.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, technically he was the Sunday School teacher in his ward, and then he got made a member of the First Presidency, and then he got made an Apostle, which isn’t how we usually do it, but that’s totally fine. 

Scott Woodward:
Atypical. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Atypical. So he is eventually ordained an Apostle, but he’s brought in, and basically the First Presidency meets with Harold B. Lee. In fact, we have a record here, April 18th, 1936, First Presidency met with Harold B. Lee, who later wrote, “President Heber J. Grant said he wanted to take a leaf out of the Pioneer Stake’s book in caring for the people of the Church. He said nothing was more important for the Church to do than to take care of its needy people, and that so far as he was concerned, everything else must be sacrificed so that proper relief could be extended to our people.” So J. Reuben Clark is asked basically to work with Harold B. Lee, and they work with the stake presidents in turn to create a church-wide welfare plan. So it’s going great in this stake; let’s see if we can carry it out throughout the entire church. Let’s take these good ideas and spread it around. And they come up with what basically is the Church Welfare Program, which is launched the following fall. So in October General Conference, almost the whole conference, if you go back and look, is about church welfare. 

Scott Woodward:
Of what year did you say? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So they meet together in April 1936, and then it’s October 1936 where you can find this, let’s do this, let’s get it done. First Presidency even makes a splash by basically saying, “The real long-term objective of the welfare plan is the building of character in the members of the church, givers and receivers, rescuing all that is finest down deep inside of them to bring to flower and fruitage the latent richness of the Spirit, which, after all, is the mission and purpose and reason for the being of this church.” So they’re saying, hey, even if you’re not in dire straits financially, this is something that’s going to bless a giver and a receiver: that if you can do this, and if we can work to solve this problem of poverty—it just kind of shows that this golden thread of church leaders saying, we’re serious about eliminating poverty, was not forgotten once we became a little bit more integrated into the societies that we exist around us.

Scott Woodward:
And something about giving and receiving can strengthen that sinew in the soul, the celestial sinew to help you become the kind of person that would be a fit citizen in Zion, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And there’s something about the giving and receiving spirit that this develops which is powerful. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. But the other thing that they’re conscious of and that they’re sort of careful of is this is also the early 20th century when you have a lot of interesting ideas circulating throughout the world: communism, fascism, totalitarianism. And so the other interesting thing here is they go out of their way to say, this is not the United Order. And they’re using Brigham Young’s terminology here. So they’re like, hey, this is not the United Order, this is what we’re doing to help them. Just as a quote, J. Reuben Clark says, “We’ve all said the welfare plan is not the United Order, and it’s not intended to be.” But then he added, “However, I would like to suggest to you that perhaps after all when the welfare plan gets thoroughly into operation—it’s not so yet—we shall not be so very far from carrying out the great fundamentals of the United Order.” So he’s like, hey, it’s not the United Order, but if we do it right, it’ll actually do what the United Order is supposed to do, but it’s not the United Order. Like, he’s really kind of trying to cover his bases so the saints aren’t accused of launching a communist regime or something like that. 

Scott Woodward:
And this is clearly a reference to the 1831 stewardship system of financial consecration when he says United Order. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
Not the 1832 joint business venture between businesses in Ohio and Missouri.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
The original United Order. Like, this just goes to show that that United Order, that original one, is basically forgotten at this point in the church, but the term United Order is now used to explain D&C 42’s system of stewardship. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, very, really interesting. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, and here’s the thing is J. Reuben Clark’s papers are at BYU, and a lot of this comes from a paper that I wrote a couple years ago, and when I researched it, I went into J. Reuben Clark’s papers, and what I found mostly were notes from the Doctrine and Covenants. Like, this guy was really serious about what the Doctrine and Covenants had to say, and he was also a brilliant legal mind, and so he was very concerned with the words in particular and what they meant. In fact, he gives a presentation to the Quorum of the Twelve, and he actually says, “I took it upon myself to make a study of the financial operations of the Church from the beginning down through and until the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith.” So this is also a very back-to-basics, what are the principles? But he’s emphasizing again and again the principles. Like, on another occasion he says, “The Lord has always been mindful of the poor and the unfortunate. He’s always charged his church and its members to see to it that none of their brethren and their sisters suffer.” So on a broad level, but also on a more specific level, he’s saying it’s all here in the Doctrine and Covenants. We’ve got the principles. We just have to figure out what 1831 consecration looks like in 1936 or so on and so forth. 

Scott Woodward:
So pulling, extracting the principles from the Doctrine and Covenants, and then implementing them on top of this innovative stake president named Harold B. Lee’s Church Security Program, as he called it, kind of morphs into what we now call the Church Welfare Program.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And this becomes a major function of church practice and church teachings. For instance, during this time, it became pretty common during General Conference to also have a welfare session where you just get together and you talk about, like, welfare, and they teach principles surrounding welfare, and they’d give church leaders a ton of training on, hey, here’s what you do to try and help and assist the local members. Here’s what are the principles of good welfare. Here’s the do’s and don’ts, and so on and so forth. 

Scott Woodward:
So General Conference used to be, like, three days long, right? Because one of those sessions was a welfare session. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And it was—I mean, it—General Conference also wasn’t quite the way we imagine it now, where it’s a big broadcast and it’s meant for the entire church. General Conference consisted of a lot of leadership training, too, which we still do, we just don’t really broadcast as much. And this was in large measure centered around welfare. Like, let’s get people back on their feet. They can’t really give their all spiritually until temporally they’re taken care of. And J. Reuben Clark becomes an important mentor for several people who carry on the work. Like, one of the most important ones is Marion G. Romney, who is member of the Quorum of the Twelve, president of the Quorum of the Twelve, member of the First Presidency into the 1980s. He sort of picks up the banner, and one of his protégés is Gordon B. Hinckley, who continues to carry the banner into the 20th century. 

Scott Woodward:
And Marion G. Romney gave some stellar talks about church welfare and service, and he’s still quoted today because he’s so good at succinctly articulating these powerful principles. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So let’s say you’re attending General Conference and you’re in a welfare session. This is from the 1966 welfare session. President Romney got up and exhorted the men of the priesthood to, “Live strictly by the principles of the United Order, insofar as they are embodied in the present church practices, such as the fast offering, tithing, and welfare activities.

Scott Woodward:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. We should stop right there. That’s a little glimpse into his lexicon. He’s using United Order to mean the fast offering, tithing, and welfare activities. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep. 

Scott Woodward:
And that’s helpful. Continue. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Okay. Then he says, “Through these practices, we could, as individuals, if we were of a mind to do so, implement in our own lives all the basic principles of the United Order.” So by this point it’s progressed to the point to where they’re not saying it’s not the United Order anymore; they’re saying these are the principles of the United Order, and everybody can implement them in their life. But they’re also admitting that the United Order, as in 1831 consecration, is going to look different in our time, and the principles are what matter. For instance, in 1975, Elder Romney says, “The procedural method for teaching church welfare has now changed, but the objectives of the program remain the same. Its principles are eternal. It is the gospel and its perfection, the united order toward which we move.” So yeah, that is honestly how it kind of evolves. By the time you get to the 1990s and Gordon B. Hinckley, who is another J. Reuben Clark mentee . . . 

Scott Woodward:
Can I share that great quote from President Hinckley? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
Where he said, “The law of sacrifice and the law of consecration were not done away with and are still in effect.” That’s a great, unambiguous, clear statement that this is a law we are still to live.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So in their headspace, they’re clearly thinking of church welfare as one of the ways that we live the law of consecration. And that would cause me to basically say, you know, there’s nothing past tense about the law of consecration. It’s still a huge part of what we do in the church, but it is not that noticed, and there’s a reason why church members might say, well, we don’t live the law of consecration anymore. It’s because they don’t always see what goes on behind the scenes. 

Scott Woodward:
Principles haven’t gone anywhere, although the systems have shifted and changed, as we’ve noted. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, and I’ll say this: I remember as a kid participating in church welfare, you know? Where we’d go out and, like, work on the church farm that was near Delta, Utah, where I grew up. Or I remember working at the Bishop’s Storehouse as a youth activity, putting beans in cans and sealing the cans. 

Scott Woodward:
Number 10 cans. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And I got in trouble for writing jokes about, you know, the intestinal effects that beans would have on you on the cans. In fact, I remember my dad, who was in the bishopric, got mad at me because there were more than a few fart jokes made, and some of them may have been written on the cans as they went out to people.

Scott Woodward:
The risks of involving youth in Church Welfare Program. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep. Yep. We were free workers, and they got what they paid for, essentially. But that is one part of the story that church members miss. And can I just say this: Part of the reason that we miss it is intentional. It’s not something that church leaders broadcast as much.

Scott Woodward:
And when you say miss it, you mean miss the modern-day operations of taking care of the poor? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. In a ward, to be honest, unless you are the bishop or the Relief Society president, you’re probably not aware of all the welfare stuff that’s happening in your ward right now. And that is by design. Now, they have expanded a little bit in the last couple years to where the ward council sometimes will take on a welfare project, and there’s the odd instance every now and then where, you know, in my ward we had an older lady who lived by herself who had, like, eight cats, and we sent the young men and the young women in to try and help clean up her house, and I think that’s church welfare, right? But on a fundamental level, and I hesitate to say this, but I did serve as a bishop.

Scott Woodward:
Why do you hesitate to say that? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because it’s kind of like saying I was assistant to the president on my mission. Like, I’m not . . . 

Scott Woodward:
No, it’s not. You said yes to a calling, and you were happy to serve. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s right. I’m just not using it as, like, a source of my authority, but the first Sunday that I served as bishop, immediately after I dealt with all the welfare stuff, I remember thinking to myself, “We totally live consecration. Like, look at all the things we’re doing.” Because there were people in my ward who were struggling, and we were helping them with bills. We were helping them get food. We were helping them sometimes hang on to their house, right? Sometimes we were helping them find a new house that they could actually afford, and it took up a significant amount of my time, and outside of maybe the youth, it was the thing that I spent the most time on. Now, maybe my ward was just really poor or something like that, but once every three months, at least in my stake, they’d have Bishop’s Welfare Council, which actually was just, like, a huge therapy session for all the bishops. 

Scott Woodward:
For all the bishops. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Like, we’d get together and be like, “Oh my gosh, how are you dealing with this?” And “What’s the best way to help these people?” And it was completely, like, cathartic to be in the room with the six other bishops in my stake, and— 

Scott Woodward:
Those who are in the trenches with you. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And then the other person who I commiserated with a lot was the Relief Society president. So what church members see is on fast Sunday, you fast, and you miss two meals, and you pay a fast offering, and the deacons go around and they collect the fast offering and that’s pretty much what you see. 

Scott Woodward:
Well, they used to. Now they don’t even do that. Now you just pay online. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So that money from your fast offerings goes into the ward Welfare Fund. And it could also come from other places. Like, my stake president just flat out told me that my ward was poor. Compared to the other wards in our stake, we had the most welfare opportunities. He was a great guy, so he would say “welfare opportunities,” and that’s really how he saw it. Like, what can we do to help you guys out? So my ward was sometimes borrowing from other wards to make sure that everybody had their needs met. And it could be something like a family where the primary wage earner was having serious medical issues, and they were coming in, and they were asking for help. I mean, sometimes it was like, family moved into our ward, mom was going through a divorce, six kids, the Relief Society president and I went over to see them, and the furniture they had was literally a mattress and an Xbox. Like, they didn’t have a TV to plug their Xbox into. And so what typically happens is the Bishop and the Relief Society president will assess, like, what are their needs here? And the Relief Society President can also delegate to counselors, and the Bishop can delegate to his counselors, too, but once they’ve assessed the needs, depending on what resources the church has in the area, a person that has needs can get a form. It used to be paper. Poor Relief Society president would fill it out and then bring it to my house, and I’d sign it. Now it’s all electronic. They take the form, they go to the bishop’s storehouse, they get food. They make sure that the family’s not going to starve to death. So in the case of this divorced mother, who was a wonderful lady, great, great lady, she got a requisition form, she went to the bishop’s storehouse, she got food. Next thing we did, we got a requisition form, we sent her to the DI, so Deseret Industries. This is part of the reason why it exists as well. We got beds for all the kids. We got a couch. We got a kitchen table. It wasn’t a super nice kitchen table, you know? It’s the DI. But the family had a place for everybody to sleep and a table to have meals around, and a couch to sit on. We didn’t get things like a TV to hook the Xbox up to, but all the basics were kind of provided for. And again, this work largely goes unnoticed in the church because the church doesn’t want to deter anybody who might feel embarrassed about seeking help. Now, the families that received welfare assistance met with me on a regular basis and met with the Relief Society president, and probably I had more contact with them than any other families in the ward, but I’m happy to say that even though this was some of the most stressful work that I had to do, it was also the most rewarding. Like, it was where you felt like, wow, this is why the church is really vital and helps people. And, I mean, if we had the resources, too, we’d sometimes help non-members. Didn’t get a ton of those requests, but every once in a while, yeah, let’s get you a meal. Let’s get you food. Let’s get you employment. And that’s a big part of it, too, is that church welfare is a whole kind of network of things. You’ve got Welfare Square, which, if you’ve driven through Salt Lake, is fairly obvious. Big cannery, Deseret Industries, Bishop’s Storehouse, Employment Center. The most obvious thing you can see from the freeway are the silos where the wheat grain is stored. 

Scott Woodward:
Deseret Mill, the pasta plant. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep, yep. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But in addition to these, there’s more than a hundred Bishop’s Storehouses around the United States and Canada, and that is part of the challenge is we have more resources to help a person who lives in Utah than we do a person who lives in Thailand or Kiribati. But we still do the best that we can to try and distribute resources and help them. And sometimes these processing plants are also places where if a person’s on church welfare we’ll say, hey, can you go work in the plant for a little while this week, or can we give you job training to try and help you? 

Scott Woodward:
Again, to help maintain that dignity and help them to not just have free handout, right? But to say, hey, let’s help you get your feet under you and help you work and have some type of employment in order to kind of qualify for this, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s not trying to subsidize laziness, but trying to help people get back on their feet and help them to eventually get to the point where they can take care of their own, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. A big part of the principles of church welfare that leaders are instructed in is self-reliance. And so some of the more recent iterations you’ll see is my stake, and I think just about every stake, has launched a huge program of self reliance classes where you can take a class—one’s called Find a Better Job. One is called, Start your Business. One is, like, Learn Basic Finance. 

Scott Woodward:
They’re actually super cool. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Most popular one at my stake is Emotional Resilience, which a lot of times they just teach younger people. Like, we’ve had a young women’s organization in my stake do the Emotional Resilience course, which basically goes through, like, hey, here’s how you handle life, and here’s how you deal with stress and here’s how you can get better. Part of these is in my stake we also have a Spanish language ward, and so there’s extensive “Learn to Speak English” programs so that they can be a little bit more competitive in job markets, that they’re multilingual, and all those things. 

Scott Woodward:
All of this is to help eliminate poverty in people’s lives. That’s—you just have to see that thread throughout all of these, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right. 

Scott Woodward:
Like, even the emotional resilience classes. Like, if you don’t take care of yourself, you don’t take care of your own emotional, mental health, then your ability to provide for your family will diminish. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And so they’re all connected, right? That these—all of these pieces are connected. Learning how to speak English in America, obviously connected to being able to earn money to take care of your own. And so eliminating poverty is the bullseye, and there’s all these different ways, skills, options to help them. There’s the short-term offerings of food on your table tonight, and then there’s the long-term offerings of, let’s help you become more competitive in the job market, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. My wife is a coordinator for these self-reliance classes, and she’s actually, you know, talked to me about how the emotional resilience course has helped a lot of younger people in my stake who were sort of completely derailed by the pandemic say, okay, I’ve got to get out there. I’ve got to start going to school. I’ve got to get an education. I’ve got to get a job. I’ve got to become self-reliant, too. So emotional self-reliance is part of it as well. 

Scott Woodward:
It’s holistic. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s holistic. So all this is part of consecration, right? It’s part of church welfare. 

Scott Woodward:
And the people that are teaching those classes are not getting paid. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep.

Scott Woodward:
There’s an example of offering your talents. Maybe you have some people that are successful in business or mental health counselors that also help volunteer to help teach some of these things. And sometimes it’s just people that don’t really have a lot of experience either way, but they’re just willing to teach those classes, and that’s great, too, but there it is in this kind of symbiotic, beautiful relationship of people giving their time and talents to help others be able to eliminate poverty in their lives. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
It’s a beautiful cycle. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The church has a pretty robust humanitarian services branch. You can go to this huge, huge warehouse on the outskirts of Salt Lake City where they have stuff ready to go. If there’s a disaster anywhere in the world, we can get people in there. 

Scott Woodward:
The Helping Hands people. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, those helping hands. That actually has a weird connection to my mission. I served a mission in Florida, Fort Lauderdale, and the Helping Hands thing actually came from the stake president in Fort Lauderdale, Terrence Berry. Hurricane Andrew wiped out this little town called Independence. The Latter-day Saints were the first people to arrive, and they had to have a way to identify relief workers versus people that might be looters or taking advantage of the situation, so President Berry went to the local t-shirt shop and said, what’s the cheapest color you guys have? And they were like, yellow. And he goes, okay, cool. And they printed “Mormon Helping Hands” on a bright yellow shirt, and then they handed it out to all the relief workers for two or three months. Everybody in the stakes in Southern Florida met at church on Sunday, took the sacrament, went home, got their tools, and went down to Homestead and helped dig their neighbors out. I mean, that’s consecration, right? 

Scott Woodward:
Bam. That’s consecration. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And that is just a little bit of it. We’ve got community projects the church sponsors, things to, like, help new mothers, to provide immunization. The church donated about a billion dollars to COVID relief. And that’s not me exaggerating. Like, literally a billion dollars. Then on top of that, you’ve got things like family services, which help people with counseling. Like, that was, as a bishop, another thing that you did a lot of, is somebody would come in and say, hey, I’m just really struggling with my mental health, and as a bishop, you’re not equipped to deal with that, but you’d refer them to Family Services, and Family Services would meet with them, do a consultation. On another occasion, a couple comes in, they’re having issues. Okay, let’s get you guys into marriage counseling. You call Family Services. 

Scott Woodward:
And if they don’t have the means to be able to pay for that, we still want to help their marriage, and so the bishop can cut a check from the fast offering funds, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That is correct. Like, we felt like, hey, it is so much easier to prevent a divorce than to pay for one. It was seen as a great investment for our ward to help these people, if they couldn’t afford it, to go to counseling. 

Scott Woodward:
Help a husband and wife be one heart, one mind and dwell in righteousness together.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And again, I want to emphasize that sometimes it was just coordinating efforts. Like, the counsel to bishops is if somebody is struggling to make ends meet, first thing to do: Are there government programs that can help? The second rung was they asked if people had family that could help. And then, once you’d exhausted those resources, you’d say, okay, we can help you. So we tried to walk that line between helping the poor, but also assisting people in being self-reliant. 

Scott Woodward:
You want to help them. You don’t want to enable them, right? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
Which reminds me of that verse back, actually, in Doctrine and Covenants 42. In context of all of this, the Lord says, “Thou shalt not be idle, for he that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s right. 

Scott Woodward:
Right? In order to receive from those who have plenty, you need to now engage in some type of work yourself, right? Don’t be idle. This isn’t meant to enable and keep people in poverty so that they continue to have an open hand to receive, receive, receive, receive. Eventually we want to get people on their feet, enable them to become contributors, participants in helping alleviate the poverty of others.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s right. 

Scott Woodward:
Thou shalt not be idle. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
That’s one of the key principles of helping the poor to rise out of their poverty. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And, I mean, you don’t see this side of things. For instance, if you’ve ever been to Deseret Industries, you’ve probably just noticed the fine clothes and books or whatever. 

Scott Woodward:
There’s some really good books for really cheap. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep. Half the building is Family Services. Half the building is Employment Services. Even the employees that work at Deseret Industries are given training so that they can get a different job. In fact, most people that work at Deseret Industries are basically given a three-year window, like, hey, come here, we’re going to give you job training, but we are going to let you go within three years. That puts a little pressure on them to find a job, become independent. 

Scott Woodward:
We’re going to help build your resume. Get you some skills. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
Make you marketable. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Free up a spot so that somebody else can come in. And that’s just a couple examples. There’s self-reliance services. There’s immigrant services. You can look up all this on the church’s website and seek assistance in helping you. So, I mean, very, very much, we keep it confidential, but the law of consecration is alive and well. If you need assistance, I mean, go talk to your bishop or your Relief Society president, and they can start the wheels in motion if that’s the sort of thing that you need.

Scott Woodward:
Wow. Think about this, Casey. All of this grew out of several sections in the Doctrine and Covenants. From the very beginning, from 1831, these principles were there, and this is where we’re at today. It’s fantastic. It reminds me of that story with Martin Harris, after he rejoins the church, comes to Utah, he’s in a little wagon. He’s being driven up above the valley of Salt Lake on the east bench, and he looks out and he sees Salt Lake City bustling, and he says, “Who would have thought the Book of Mormon could have done all of this?” You know, I always smile. I’m like, well, just wait a hundred years and you’ll see what the Book of Mormon can do, Martin Harris. But as I step back and think about everything you just went through with all the different ways we try to help people: immigrant services, self-reliance services, the Deseret Industries, Family Services, humanitarian services, the people in your ward, people around you that can get assistance from the bishop and from your fast offerings, and for you to be able to do that—like, all of that. You put all that together, and you just want to step back and say, who would have thought the Doctrine and Covenants could have done all of this, right? Think about how many people have been blessed because of these revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. 

Scott Woodward:
And then creative people, thoughtful people like Harold B. Lee, like J. Reuben Clark Jr., were combing through the revelations, gleaning the principles, and then kind of thinking creatively about how can we implement these with the tools that we have today to help bring about the purposes that were originally articulated here. Like, how can we innovate within the boundaries of those original principles? And here we are today benefiting from that personally, both as givers and receivers, and watching a lot of people be blessed, and not seeing, as you said, a lot of people be blessed because it’s so quiet and it just kind of happens behind the scenes, gently, softly, but persistently. It’s pretty amazing. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s a little miracle. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And maybe I can just close with a quick story. I just kind of want to personify this. So this lady has passed away, but in my ward, when I was serving as bishop, there was a lady who lived completely by herself. This was the lady with all the cats that I mentioned earlier. She had no family. Her husband had passed away a few years before, and you know, she had trouble making ends meet, so we helped her with bills. She was also living alone and not in the best health, and she had a very great ministering sister who lived next door who would check on her, take care of her. One day the ministering sister got a bad feeling and went over, and she had a key. That’s how close they were. She had a key to get into her house, went in and found the lady on the floor. She’d just fallen while she was taking a shower, been on the floor for eleven hours. She would have died if the ministering sister hadn’t been in tune and gone and helped her. Well, as time went on, her health was really deteriorating, and so as a ward, we’d go in and do service projects, we’d mow her lawn, we’d clean up her house, we’d try and help her with groceries and bills, but eventually it got to the point to where I just said, I don’t think you’re able to take care of yourself. Can we help you get into a facility where you can get assistance? And she agreed, and the whole ward pretty much showed up to help her clean out her house. And this is a lady who, like I said, wasn’t super able to get around. And so years and years of stuff going back—we put in a storage unit. We took care of—we got her into a home. Now flash forward a couple years, and I was teaching a class when I got a call in the middle of class, and the caller ID said, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. And when you get a call from the hospital, I mean, even if you’re in the middle of a class, you stop. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I came out, and a voice on the phone said, “Is your name Casey Griffiths?” I go, “Yeah.” they said, “There’s a person here,” and they said her name, “and she’s not very well, but she did say your name. Can you come and help us with her?” So I went down to the hospital, and they basically said, “Do you know any of her family?” And I go, “I’ve met one cousin, and I have his contact info, but he lives on the West coast, so nobody can really be here.” And the doctor said, “You know, she’s probably going to go tonight.” And so I went in. She wasn’t really able to talk, but I said, “Would you like a blessing?” She nodded her head. And so I turned to the intern, and this would probably only happen in Utah Valley, but I was like, “Is it okay if we give her a blessing?” Kid closed the door, pulled out his consecrated oil, and was like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” So random orderly helps me give a blessing. I went back and called my wife and said, “Hey, I’m going to teach my class tonight,” because I taught an evening class, “and then I’m going to go to the hospital, and I’m just going to be there so that she’s not all alone when she goes.” So taught my class, went down to the hospital, was expecting to just sit by her bedside, and I turn the corner to her room, and her whole cul-de-sac was there, like, these three or four great families from the ward, and I don’t even know how they found out, but everybody just decided to show up. And by this point, she was comatose, you know? She was nonresponsive, but everybody sat there and held her hand and talked to her, and about 11 p.m., I said, “Hey, if you have young kids, go home. We’ll stay.” And me and the Relief Society president, her husband, and her best friend, we all stayed. And we sat there talking in the room, listening to her breathe. Like we’d pause every few minutes to listen and see if she was still breathing. And finally, at 3 a.m., I said, “You guys have families. My work isn’t very far from here. I’ll just stay. So sent them home. And I fell asleep. I woke up at about 6 a.m., and I didn’t hear any breathing, so I walked out and told the nurse that she’d passed away. Now, this lady had nobody. We got her a little plot. We got her a little headstone. We got in touch with her cousin, and he was able to come up and close out her affairs, but I don’t know if anybody would know this lady existed if it wasn’t for the good people in my ward. And put that all together, and that’s consecration, right? This lady would have been lost to the universe and gone from this world a lot sooner if it hadn’t been for the dedicated, consecrated members of the ward I lived in. You just can’t live through something like that and say that Latter-day Saints don’t live up to their principles. Like, it’s just really incredible. 

Scott Woodward:
Thanks for sharing that, man. That’s pretty touching. What a cherry on top, Casey. Thanks for bringing that. And I think we should just end right there.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s end right there. We’ll mention, we do have one more episode— 

Scott Woodward:
Yes. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—where we’re going to do controversies. So you want to talk about City Creek Mall, the hundred-billion-dollar nest egg and all that stuff, we’ll talk about next time. 

Scott Woodward:
That’s what got us into this whole series to begin with, isn’t it? 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, but it’s been a different journey than I anticipated. A delightful one, but different. 

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So next up, church financial controversies. 

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s right. 

Scott Woodward:
Stay tuned. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week we dive into the heart of a few recent financial controversies of the church, including the City Creek Mall, a purported $100 billion fund, and a multi-million-dollar fine the church paid to the SEC in 2023. It should be interesting. 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.