Consecration, stewardship, and the drift toward redistribution.
In December 1830, a revelation directed members of the fledgling Church of Christ to gather from New York to Kirtland, Ohio, promising that “there I will give unto you my law.” Joseph Smith relocated to Kirtland in early February 1831. Within days of his arrival, on February 4, a further revelation promised that “by the prayer of your faith ye shall receive my law that ye may know how to govern my Church.” Less than a week later, on February 9, twelve elders “called together, and united in mighty prayer,” and Joseph Smith dictated the revelation that came to be known simply as “the Law.”
Historical Setting
John Whitmer, the Church’s first appointed historian, titled the manuscript “The Laws of the Church of Christ.” Verses were added on February 23, and the whole was later canonized as Section 42 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
The earliest manuscript evidence indicates that “the Law” was not delivered as a single continuous utterance but as a compilation of several distinct revelatory answers, each responding to a specific question posed by the assembled elders. Later copyists collated these answers into one document, a fact that the standard verse numbering now obscures.
Sidney Rigdon’s Prior Communalism
The man most responsible for delivering the Ohio membership into the new church was Sidney Rigdon, a Campbellite preacher in Mentor, Ohio, whose congregations numbered in the hundreds and whose followers were known locally as “Rigdonites.” Before his conversion, Rigdon had broken from Alexander Campbell’s Disciples of Christ and, in 1830, established a communal “family” on the farm of Isaac Morley near Kirtland — a group living under a “common stock” arrangement modeled on the New Testament ideal that believers “had all things common.” Rigdon’s own interest in communal living appears to have been shaped in part by his exposure to Robert Owen’s utopian socialism: after attending an 1829 debate between Owen and Campbell, Rigdon was reportedly taken with Owen’s vision of “family commonwealths” and attempted to implement a similar order within his own congregation.
When missionaries baptized Rigdon and much of the Morley farm “family” in November 1830, they brought into the new church a body of converts already organized around common ownership rather than individual title. Rigdon himself traveled to New York within weeks to meet Joseph Smith and was almost immediately called to be the Church’s spokesman — a mark of the influence he carried from the very outset of the two men’s association, well before the Ohio Saints had begun to work out how consecration would function in practice.
The Text of the Law
The core economic provisions of the Law are found in verses 30 through 36.
& Behold thou shalt conscrate all thy property properties that which thou hast unto me with a covena[n]t and Deed which cannot be broken & they Shall be laid before the Bishop of my church & two of the Elders such as he shall appoint & set apart for that purpose & it shall come to pass that the Bishop of my church after that he has received the properties of my church that it cannot be taken from him you he shall appoint every man a Steward over his own property or that which he hath received in as much as shall be sufficient for him self and family & the residue shall be kept to administer to him that hath not that every man may receive according as he stands in need
The table below sets the original manuscript language side by side with the wording later printed in the 1835 and current editions of the Doctrine and Covenants.
| Verse & Note | Original — 9 Feb. 1831 | 1835 / Current D&C 42 |
|---|---|---|
| v. 30 — Consecration reframed from the Lord/community as recipient to the poor as recipient. | Behold thou shalt conscrate all thy property properties that which thou hast unto me with a covena[n]t and Deed which cannot be broken & they Shall be laid before the Bishop of my church | And behold, thou wilt remember the poor, and consecrate of thy properties for their support that which thou hast to impart unto them, with a covenant and a deed which cannot be broken. |
| v. 31 — Administrative process folds poor-relief language into what was originally a straightforward consecration procedure. | & two of the Elders such as he shall appoint & set apart for that purpose | And inasmuch as ye impart of your substance unto the poor, ye will do it unto me; and they shall be laid before the bishop of my church and his counselors, two of the elders, or high priests, such as he shall appoint or has appointed and set apart for that purpose. |
| v. 32 — The guarantee is redirected: the original protects the participant’s claim (“it cannot be taken from you”); the revision protects the church’s claim instead (“cannot be taken from the church”). | & it shall come to pass that the Bishop of my church after that he has received the properties of my church that it cannot be taken from you he shall appoint every man a Steward in as much as shall be sufficient for him self and family | And it shall come to pass, that after they are laid before the bishop of my church, and after that he has received these testimonies concerning the consecration of the properties of my church, that they cannot be taken from the church, agreeable to my commandments, every man shall be made accountable unto me, a steward over his own property, or that which he has received by consecration, as much as is sufficient for himself and family. |
| v. 33 — Unchanged in substance: residue is kept for those in need. | & the residue shall be kept to administer to him that hath not that every man may receive according as he stands in need | And again, if there shall be properties in the hands of the church, or any individuals of it, more than is necessary for their support after this first consecration, which is a residue to be consecrated unto the bishop, it shall be kept to administer to those who have not, from time to time, that every man who has need may be amply supplied and receive according to his wants. |
| v. 34 — Unchanged in substance: the storehouse is administered by the bishop, now explicitly with the high council. | & the residue shall be kept in my store house to administer to the poor and needy as shall be appointed by the Elders of the church & the Bishop | Therefore, the residue shall be kept in my storehouse, to administer to the poor and the needy, as shall be appointed by the high council of the church, and the bishop and his council; |
| v. 35 — Unchanged in substance: residue also funds land purchase and construction toward the New Jerusalem. | & for the purpose of purchaseing Land & building up of the New Jerusalem which is here after to be revealed | And for the purpose of purchasing lands for the public benefit of the church, and building houses of worship, and building up of the New Jerusalem which is hereafter to be revealed. |
| v. 36 — Unchanged in substance: the purpose of the Law is the gathering of a covenant people to the Lord’s temple. | that my covenant people may be gathered in one in the day that I shall come to my temple & this I do for the salvation of my people | That my covenant people may be gathered in one in that day when I shall come to my temple. And this I do for the salvation of my people. |
Source: manuscript text as transcribed in the Joseph Smith Papers, Revelation, 9 [and 23] February 1831; current text from the 2013 printing of the Doctrine and Covenants.
From Individual Stewardship to Communal Redistribution
As originally dictated, the Law rejected the very communal model Rigdon had practiced at Kirtland. Where the Morley “Family” held goods in undivided common stock administered without individual title, the February 9 revelation required each participant to consecrate his properties “with a covenant and Deed which cannot be broken” — a legal instrument documenting the consecration rather than simply absorbing it into an undifferentiated pool. The bishop was then to return to each man a stewardship “sufficient for himself and family,” with any residue kept and administered to those in need. This preserved a form of individual accountability and title recognizably distinct from the common-stock arrangement the Kirtland converts already knew.
Yet the revelation had to be administered by a leadership in which Rigdon held outsized standing from its first weeks, and that influence did not end with the delivery of the Law — if anything it deepened over the following four years, the very years in which Section 42 underwent its most significant revisions. Rigdon preached, served as scribe for Joseph Smith’s revision of the Bible, presided over the Kirtland Saints when other leaders were away, helped compose the Lectures on Faith taught in the School of the Elders, and — most directly relevant to the textual history of the Law — was one of the four men named to the committee that compiled and edited the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants: Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams. The wording of Section 42 that reached the printed 1835 volume passed, in other words, through the hands of the same man whose pre-existing communal practice the revelation had been sent to correct four years earlier.
It is reasonable to argue that Rigdon’s continuing prominence in Church governance — sustained across the very period the text was being revised — supplied a steady institutional channel by which the redistributive, common-stock instincts he had brought from Mentor and the Morley farm could reassert themselves in how the Law came to be worded and administered.
That drift was reinforced by concrete legal difficulty. In 1831, Leman Copley, a former Shaker convert, offered his farm in Thompson, Ohio for incoming Colesville Saints to settle and consecrate under the new revelation. Within weeks Copley’s confidence wavered; he broke the agreement, evicted the Saints from his land, and turned to the Geauga County court, which upheld his suit and ordered the church to return title to him. The episode demonstrated that consecrated title, framed as a two-way covenant, could be unwound by a single disaffected donor — a concrete pressure toward tightening the church’s claim in the language of later printings.
Changes to Section 42
Reversal of the title guarantee
The revision softened the personal-property protection embedded in “covenant and Deed… which cannot be broken” — a clause originally securing the participant’s claim to what he had consecrated — into a guarantee that consecrated property “cannot be taken from the church,” reversing whose claim the language protects.
Legal pressure: the Copley case
In 1831 Leman Copley offered his farm in Thompson, Ohio for incoming Colesville Saints to occupy and consecrate. Within weeks he repudiated the arrangement and evicted the Saints; when the matter reached the Geauga County court, the suit was decided in Copley’s favor and the church was ordered to return title to him. The episode showed church leaders that consecrated title, framed as a two-way covenant, was vulnerable to being unwound by a single disaffected party — a concrete, documented pressure toward tightening the church’s claim in later printings of the revelation.
Sidney Rigdon’s continuing influence and the 1835 revision committee
Before his 1830 conversion, Rigdon had organized a communal “family” near Kirtland on the farm of Isaac Morley, holding goods in undivided common stock rather than individual title — a practice shaped in part by his exposure to Robert Owen’s communitarian theories. Rigdon’s stature in the new church was immediate and lasting: he was named the Church’s spokesman within weeks of meeting Joseph Smith, presided over the Kirtland Saints in the absence of other leaders, helped compose the Lectures on Faith, and — most directly — sat as one of the four men (with Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Frederick G. Williams) on the committee that compiled and edited the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, the volume in which the revised wording of Section 42 first reached print. The same hand whose pre-existing communal habits the February 1831 revelation had been sent to correct was among those who later revised the text describing that correction.
Conclusion
The Law of February 9, 1831 was, on its own terms, a correction rather than an endorsement of the communal practice already underway among the Ohio converts: it proposed individual consecration under covenant and deed, individual stewardship, and residue-sharing for the poor, in place of the undivided common stock Sidney Rigdon had organized at the Morley farm. But the men entrusted with administering and later revising that text included Rigdon himself, whose stature in the young church was immediate, sustained, and — by 1835 — formalized in his role as one of the four compilers of the printed Doctrine and Covenants.
Reading the record
Read against that institutional fact, the drift of Section 42’s language away from protecting the individual consecrator and toward protecting the church’s claim on consecrated property looks less like a series of ad hoc legal patches and more like the gradual reassertion, through the very committee charged with fixing the text, of the communal instincts the revelation had originally been sent to correct.
Primary sources: Joseph Smith Papers, Revelation, 9–23 February 1831 [D&C 42]; Doctrine and Covenants (Kirtland, OH: F. G. Williams & Co., 1835); Geauga County, Ohio court record concerning Leman Copley, 1831–32, as summarized in period biographical sources. This page links out to primary sources rather than reproducing them at length.