Paper · by Don Bradley · 1830–1834 · D&C 20, 38, 41, 42, 51, 70, 72, 82, 84, 94–95, 104
In a meeting with twelve elders of the Kirtland, Ohio, branch of the Church of Christ on February 9, 1831, Joseph Smith revealed “the Law”: an economic rule of life “regulating the Church in her present situation till the time of her gathering.” An economic and social constitution for the church, the Law served as a companion piece to its ecclesiastical constitution — the Articles and Covenants of the Church — revealed the year before. Designed to unite long-time restorationist converts in New York with fresh restorationist converts in Ohio, the Law sought to reconcile their disparate visions of how to restore ancient Christianity and to build up a sacred society.
Most of the Kirtland, Ohio, converts had belonged to a Christian commune known as the “Big Family” prior to accepting Latter-day Saint baptism in late 1830 and early 1831. The Big Family had borrowed organizational principles from socialist reformer Robert Owen in a quest to restore the New Testament church’s “community of goods.” The New York church, meanwhile, had been half charismatic missionary movement and half startup publishing company, with revelations promising “blessings” of “temporal” wealth. The Law integrated the aims of Kirtland communalism with the New York church’s entrepreneurialism. It embraced the Big Family’s ambition to create a more equal and cooperative economic order, but it curbed the collectivist impulse.
A February 4, 1831 revelation required the Kirtland converts to agree upon the Law as a precondition to receiving it. The use of this precommitment device to defuse objections evinced an awareness that the Kirtland converts might find reason to object — that the Law departed from their communalist expectations. The Law created a de jure community of goods, wherein community members consecrated all of their property to the church. However, the bishop returned to the donor whatever the donor needed to support himself and family; and only the “residue” went into the church storehouse. Property returned to the donor was a “stewardship,” formally owned by the Lord and his church, but this was a kind of legal fiction. In practice, the Law treated stewardships as de facto private property and gently but firmly forbade theft and upheld the commercial marketplace. It envisioned supporting the poor and needy from the community storehouse, but it established a work requirement for food assistance. And finally, it issued strict injunctions to practice the classic capitalist virtues of thrift and industry.
Far from a comprehensive legal framework, the Law revealed in February 1831 contained ambiguities that complicated its implementation. In particular, textual variants in the earliest manuscripts clouded the meaning of passages of the Law that addressed the question of whether apostates forfeited their stewardships in leaving the church. The Law also declined to define “need,” which left open questions as to how much property the bishop should return to donors as stewardships and how much he should disburse from the storehouse “that every man may receive according as he stands in need.”
Subsequent revelations and communications sought to clarify these issues. Early texts made apostates forfeit their stewardships, but Joseph Smith and subsequent revelation reversed this policy in 1833. Thereafter, the bishop secured a donor’s stewardship as his non-revocable “inheritance” by returning it to him by a written deed. Similarly, early texts took an expansive view of “needs” as also encompassing “wants,” whereas later clarifications sought to narrow the scope of needs and wants to those that “are just.” Overall, implementation of the Law from 1831 to 1834 trended away from collectivism and redistribution.
Divine communications received from 1831 to 1834 also revealed a larger social and economic vision of which the original Law revelation was just a part. Revelations in 1831 and 1832 unveiled a more expansive vision of stewardships as not just property, but rather as full-fledged cooperative business enterprises to be managed by the stewards. The revelations made the bishop responsible for reviewing accounts and distributing investment capital for a business conglomerate known as the United Firm, whose stewards they tasked with both advancing the church’s mission and generating revenue. Revelations in 1832 and 1833 also linked the Law to an urban plan known as “the pattern,” which envisioned erecting dozens of huge multi-purpose “houses of the Lord” for secular education and office space as well as religious worship.
These developments highlight an important but often overlooked feature of the Law: that it imposed mutual obligations on both congregants and leaders. More than just a revenue plan, it imposed rules for prudent management of community resources, with the promise of “an hundred fold” returns in community prosperity if leaders managed well. Among other things, the Law forbade stewards to contract debts outside the community and required bishops to audit stewards’ accounts. In part because church leaders declined to follow these rules, the United Firm failed and the Kirtland church abandoned the Law in 1834.
A Tale of Two Restoration Movements
The 1831 Law grew out of a meeting of two Christian restoration movements: the “Church of Christ” of Western New York and the “Big Family” commune of Kirtland, Ohio. While both movements aimed at restoring the ancient Christian church of the Bible, particularly as portrayed in the opening chapters of the Book of Acts, they emphasized different themes.
Established April 6, 1830, the Church of Christ grew out of the Book of Mormon, a text written on golden plates by ancient Hebrews and buried in the earth until discovered and retranslated by Joseph Smith. The book, and subsequent revelations received by Smith, enjoined modern Christians to restore the ancient forms of church governance and sacramental worship (Moroni 2–6; D&C 20). It also anticipated the restoration of spiritual gifts — including prophecy, healing, and speaking in other tongues — and of a “New Jerusalem” to which the church and the remnant of Israel would be gathered in preparation for an impending apocalypse (2 Ne. 31:13–14; 3 Ne. 20:14–22, 21:22–27; Ether 13:5–6; Moroni 10:7–30). One distinctive feature of Joseph Smith’s restorationism was its proclivity for “Hebraic” themes.
Communalism ran in Smith’s family, and the Book of Mormon exhibited communal sympathies. Smith’s uncle, Jason Mack, established a Christian commune in New Brunswick, Canada, where he “gathered together some 30 families, on a tract of land which he had purchased for the purpose of assisting the poor persons to the means of sustaining themselves.” Mack directed the community’s labor and exported their products to Liverpool on his own personal schooner. In some ways, this fusion of communalism and mercantilism anticipated the 1831 Law. While the Book of Mormon never commanded communalism, it denounced inequality and approvingly described utopian periods when its ancient authors redistributed lands to the poor or “had all things in common among them” in parallel to the New Testament church (Alma 16:16, 35:9; 3 Ne. 26:19; 4 Ne. 1:3; cf. Acts 2:44–45, 4:34–35).
These were not major themes in the early revelations that founded the Church of Christ. Whereas the Book of Mormon had expressed a suspicion of paid ministers, the early revelations urged the church to financially support its leaders (D&C 24:3; 25:9). They also represented partners and investors in the Lord’s work as entitled to monetary rewards from publishing and distributing his messages. For instance, the so-called Canadian Copyright Revelation authorized a select group of saints to go to the city of Kingston in Upper Canada and sell the Canadian publishing rights to the Book of Mormon so that they might reap the “temperal Blessing as well as the Spirit[u]al.” According to one participant in this mission, they expected to sell for $8000 — $3000 to cover US printing costs, and $5000 to retain as profit for the Smith family’s support.
In northern Ohio, meanwhile, a Reformed Baptist preacher named Sidney Rigdon championed a similar movement aimed at “the restoration of the ancient gospel and discipline, or order of things.” Following the lead of Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott, and Barton Stone, Rigdon preached a “Bible Christianity” that sought to restore the practices and polity of the New Testament church, including baptism by immersion, foot-washing, and ordination of bishops and deacons. Like the Church of Christ in New York, this movement eschewed denominational labels; the Reformed Baptists renamed themselves Disciples of Christ in August 1830.
Rigdon’s followers exhibited a more radical inclination than other branches of the Disciples. For instance, some Rigdon followers strongly objected to the view expressed by the Disciples’ most prominent leader, Alexander Campbell, that miracles and charismatic spiritual gifts had “ceased” and were “no longer necessary” after the age of the apostles. More importantly, Rigdon followers also experimented with utopian economic systems.
In 1825, Scottish reformer Robert Dale Owen founded a socialist community in New Harmony, Indiana. The New Harmony community sought to abolish private property, cooperatively raise and educate children, and centrally coordinate labor. Urging the dissolution of the individual into the collective, Owen compared the community to a beehive: “he is the most moral bee which creates the most honey and consumes the least of it.” New Harmony inspired satellite communities, including one in the village of Kendal in Portage County, Ohio. Although himself an atheist, Owen used religious metaphors to entice Christians to join his experiment, promising that it would help to usher in a “millennium.” Members of a congregation Rigdon pastored in Portage County, Ohio, answered this call and joined the Kendal community in 1826.
According to historian Mark Staker, “this community established a series of articles governing social life that allowed members the right to leave ‘at pleasure’ and take their property with them.” Staker attributes the Kendal community’s failure in 1829 partly to this policy. When Robert Owen defended his atheism in a public debate with Alexander Campbell in 1829, it was easy for religious members of the Kendal community to take their property and leave, triggering the community’s collapse.
The Christian dissidents from the Kendal community remained interested in the utopian project, however, and seem to have persuaded Sidney Rigdon to endorse — and Isaac Morley to establish — an explicitly Christian commune in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1829. Borrowing from the Owenite model, eleven families moved onto Isaac Morley’s farm in February 1830 and organized “a Communistic Society” called the “Big Family.” Other Kirtland residents affiliated with the group but did not live on the farm. The commune members worked cooperatively to build log houses for shelter and to farm several hundred acres of land. The commune took its warrant from the second and fourth chapters of the Book of Acts, which described the community of property practiced by the ancient apostolic church:
And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. … Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
Acts 2:44–45, 4:34–35
With this scriptural mandate, the Family practiced community of goods more thoroughly than the Owenites had ever managed to. For instance, a young African-American community member named Pete reportedly donned a suit and watch that had belonged to Newel K. Whitney, a wealthy businessman who had joined the commune. According to a neighbor, “he believed in having all things in common, and it caused much fun at Whitney’s expense.”
In summary, the restoration movements of Western New York and northern Ohio shared a great deal in common, including a concern for economic justice, a mission to restore the polity of the apostolic church, and a fascination with spiritual gifts. Both movements looked to restore the church described in Chapter 2 of the Book of Acts. However, they subtly differed in their emphases. The Church of Christ more fully developed the themes of miracles and charismatic gifts, while the Big Family explored recreating the apostolic community of goods. The similarities would lead members of the two movements to recognize each other as kindred spirits and to seek to join forces. However, the differences would require reconciliation, and for this the believers would turn to Joseph Smith.
The 1831 Law of the Church
The New York Church of Christ and the Kirtland Big Family first encountered each other as a result of a missionary journey undertaken by Parley P. Pratt in 1830. Converted to the Disciples of Christ the year before under the preaching of Sidney Rigdon in Lorain County, Ohio, Pratt set out across New York in obedience to a biblical commandment to forsake family and possessions to preach the gospel (Matt. 9:29). During this journey he encountered and read the Book of Mormon and accepted baptism from Oliver Cowdery. A few months later, in September 1830, he met with Joseph Smith. Joseph responded to this meeting by dispatching Pratt and three others as missionaries to Indian Territory in the far west, with instructions to stop along the way to preach to Rigdon’s disciples in northern Ohio. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, and Ziba Peterson arrived in the Kirtland area on October 29, and over the next three weeks they baptized 127 converts, most of them associated with the Big Family.
The Big Family enthusiastically embraced the Church of Christ’s message, especially in relation to spiritual gifts. Before leaving the area on November 21, the missionaries ordained the Family’s recognized leaders, including Sidney Rigdon, Isaac Morley, and Lyman Wight, as elders to lead the Ohio converts. Nevertheless, the missionaries’ departure left something of an information and leadership vacuum, which younger Family members stepped up to fill. Young preachers, including Heman Bassett, Lucy Stanton, and the aforementioned Pete, carried the message to surrounding communities and led the Family in the exercise of ecstatic spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues.
The new converts included Sidney Rigdon, who served the Big Family as its pastor but was not himself a member. When the four Church of Christ missionaries departed Kirtland for the West, Rigdon went east to meet Joseph Smith. He took with him a merchant named Edward Partridge, who was still unconvinced and wanted to investigate the Church of Christ’s founder before accepting baptism. The two men arrived at the Smith home near Waterloo, New York on December 10. Joseph Smith baptized Partridge on December 11, and Sidney Rigdon ordained him an elder on December 15. Partridge would become a key administrator of the economic system Joseph Smith would impose.
Joseph Smith reacted decisively to news of the mass conversions in Kirtland, Ohio. On December 30, Smith delivered a revelation commanding the New York saints to relocate en masse to Kirtland (D&C 37:3). For these restorationist saints, who saw themselves recapitulating the Bible, this divinely commanded exodus would have evoked the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to Mt. Sinai (where God revealed the Ten Commandments and the Jewish Law) and thence to the “promised land.” A few days after this revelation, at a church conference, Joseph Smith uttered another revelation that “there [in Ohio] I will give unto you my law” (D&C 38:32), making Kirtland the new Sinai en route to the promised land of Zion (far to the west in Missouri).
The promise to give the Law in Ohio was accompanied by another promise — “there you shall be endowed with power from on high” — echoing Jesus’ promise, fulfilled at Pentecost in Acts 2, that the disciples would “be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). The revelation’s promises thus joined the Old Testament giving of the Law with the New Testament giving of the Spirit. The revelation also promised the saints both spiritual and temporal wealth: “if ye seek the riches which is the will of the Father to give unto you ye shall be the richest of all People for ye shall have the riches of eternity & it must needs be that the riches of the Earth is mine to give” (D&C 38:39).
The Moses of this exodus, Joseph Smith, arrived in Kirtland in early February 1831. Immediately after his arrival, on February 4, he received a revelation commanding the elders of the Kirtland church to “assemble yourselves together to agree upon my word” and “receive my law.” This requirement to “agree upon” the Law as a precondition to receiving it seems rooted in an expectation that the Law would violate the Family’s preconceptions in ways that might lead them to resist it. The revelation also designated merchant Edward Partridge as the church’s first bishop, commanding him to “leave his merchandise” and devote himself to administering “my laws.” Partridge was selected “because his heart is pure” (D&C 41:2–3, 9–11).
On February 9, twelve elders obediently assembled and “united in mighty prayer” with a pre-commitment to agree upon the Law. The elders posed five questions to Joseph Smith, and Smith answered each question by revelation. Their second question asked for “the Law regulating the Church in her present situation till the time of her gathering,” and early manuscripts suggest that Smith’s first audience considered the Law to encompass only his response to this second question (D&C 42:11–69). Published versions, however, would concatenate the five answers given on February 9 and a subsequent revelation given on February 23 into a single text, the whole of which would come to be known as the Law.
Both the elders’ questions and Smith’s prophetic answers aimed partly at uniting the New York and Ohio saints under a single rule of life. The Ohio commune’s conversion had created a problem of integration. Where the New York saints had come together under Joseph Smith’s leadership to restore the nation of Israel and the apostolic church with an emphasis on spiritual gifts, the Big Family commune had existed for several years under its own leadership and pursued a restoration of the apostolic church with an emphasis on community of goods. Building on an organizational plan from a secular socialist reformer, the Kirtland Christians had sought to recreate the idyllic scene that followed the day of Pentecost, according to Acts 2:44, when early Christians “had all things common” and owned no private property. They had turned to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon partly for clarity on how to achieve this goal. Even before reckoning with this problem, Smith ordered a mass emigration of his New York followers to Kirtland, a move that brought many additional challenges. Somehow, Smith had to bring the two communities together and make them one.
In formally founding the New York church on April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had revealed a kind of church constitution called the Articles and Covenants of the Church of Christ. Early manuscripts of the Law bound it together with Articles and Covenants as a companion piece. Where the Articles and Covenants would supply the integrated church’s ecclesiastical constitution, the Law would supply its economic and social constitution.
Under the Law, the saints were not just to build a church but a new society. The twelve elders who met with Smith on February 9 posed not only the theological questions of what law the church was to follow with respect to property and whether believers should do business with outsiders, but also the practical questions of whether to gather or disperse, how to support one’s family while engaged in mission work, and what to do with the imminent influx of immigrants from the New York church. The answers, like any constitution, comprised not so much a complete legal code as the scaffolding for one — a mix, on the one hand, of timeless, universal principles, with, on the other hand, historically contingent directives aimed at solving specific problems.
The Law proper — Joseph Smith’s response to the elders’ second question — dwelt on four themes. It began — perhaps intending to rein in several young, self-appointed preachers who had agitated the Big Family before Joseph Smith’s arrival — by emphasizing the need for proper ordained authority to preach. Then it gave some brief instructions on social ethics, which basically amounted to a paraphrase of the last five of the biblical Ten Commandments. The Law’s focus on the last five of the Ten Commandments, which were social in character, rather than on the first five, which were theocentric, implied that the Law itself was not aimed at establishing a new way of worship but a new way of life and community building. Then it commanded members to consecrate their properties to the Lord by laying them before the bishop, and it defined a set of rules and mutual obligations to govern this practice. And, finally, it concluded with a declaration that observance of the Law is required for salvation, and that “these Laws which ye have received are sufficient both here & in the New Jerusalem but he that lacketh knowledge let him ask of me & I will give him liberally & upbraid him not.” This final statement suggested that the saints technically needed nothing more than the broad principles given in the Law to figure out what to do, but it also conceded that they might need further guidance on implementation — which, in the event, they surely did (D&C 42:11–69).
As for the elders’ practical questions, Smith’s prophetic answers told them that the gathering would happen sometime in the future, but that the saints should do mission work to prepare the way. Missionaries’ families should be supported out of the church’s storehouse. The bishop should assist New York immigrants in “obtaining places” to settle, with families and pre-existing church congregations settling together. And, finally, the community could have dealings with outsiders by common consent but should contract no debts with them (D&C 42:1–10, 70–72). With dire financial consequences, church leaders would repeatedly run afoul of this last directive to contract no outside debts. At times they would simply ignore the rule, and at other times they would contract debts with insiders who would then leave the church.
The economic portion of the Law began, “Behold thou shalt cons[e]crate all thy 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” (D&C 42:30), calling for community residents to voluntarily contribute or invest their liquid assets. Of this consecrated property, the bishop would return to the donor what was necessary for the donor’s subsistence:
& 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 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 in my store house to administer to the poor and needy … & for the purpose of purchaseing Land & building up of the New Jerusalem.
Revelation, 9 February 1831 [D&C 42]
Returned property would be held not as an owner, but as a “steward,” which suggests that it came with the responsibility to use the property productively. The in-line emendation from “him” to “you” suggests some confusion on the copyist’s part as to whether the passage intended to say that property consecrated to the bishop couldn’t be taken from the bishop, or instead that the property returned by the bishop to the steward couldn’t be taken from the steward. The published version of this revelation in the 1833 Book of Commandments would resolve the ambiguity in favor of the bishop: “that it can not be taken from the church.” The in-line emendation in the earliest known manuscript, however, favored the steward.
How one reads this passage significantly inflects the reading of a subsequent dictate in the revelation, that “he that sinneth & rep[e]nteth not shall be cast out & shall not receive again that which he hath consecrated unto me … for I will consecrate the riches of the Gentiles unto my people which are of the house of Israel.” This might mean that apostates forfeited all consecrated property, including their “stewardships” — the property they managed as “stewards.” Or, instead, it might simply mean that the bishop should resist demands to refund the “residue” retained in the church storehouse, whereas apostates would keep their stewardships. Again, while the militant tone of the passage may favor the former reading, the in-line emendation favors the latter. As discussed below, additional instructions delivered by Joseph over the next three years would initially apply this no-refunds policy to both stewardship and residue, but then would change course and apply it only to the residue.
After this initial consecration, members were also to make an additional consecration whenever they achieved a surplus: “& if thou obtain more than that which would be for thy support thou shalt give it unto my store house.” Thus equality in the community would be maintained over time.
A defining feature of the Law was that it was a covenant between the community and the individual, a pact in which mutual promises were made. Academic literature on the Law has emphasized the individual’s responsibilities while largely ignoring the community’s. The community, for its part, covenanted “that every man may receive according as he stands in need.” In making promises to its participants, the Law was ruthlessly practical. Rather than predict, as the Bible did, that God would miraculously deliver benefits at unspecified times in return for religious offerings (Mal. 3:10–12), the Law promised that the community would provide those benefits. God provided principles of economic organization, but it belonged to the community to implement those principles so as to provide for every covenantally faithful member’s needs.
While members of the Big Family likely saw the Law as a vindication of their socialist project, this was no community of goods. Functionally, at least, the Law stopped short of abolishing private property and left intact the commercial marketplace. Prior to the Law, according to Levi Hancock’s account of a visit to Kirtland in early February, members had so little respect for private property that Heman Bassett took Hancock’s watch out of his pocket, walked off, and sold it, and when confronted “said he thought it was all in the family.” Joseph’s revelation specifically forbade such behavior: “thou shalt not take thy brother’s garment” and “thou shalt pay for that which thou shall receive of thy Brother” (D&C 42:54). The early church leaders were clear in differentiating the Law from “common stock.” W. W. Phelps published an editorial in The Evening and Morning Star in response to a series of newspaper publications claiming the Mormons had all property in common stating that this was simply not the case. Stewardships remained de facto private property, to be respected and bought and sold according to the usual rules of the capitalist marketplace.
Acutely attuned to the economic realities that have foiled most communitarian experiments, the Law included strict injunctions to productivity and frugal living. “Thou Shalt not be Idle for he that is Idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garment of the labourer,” the revelation said — though it excepted the sick person who “hath not faith to be healed,” enjoining the community to “bear their infirmities.” Also, “thou Shalt not be proud in thy heart let all thy garments be plain & their beauty the beauty of the work of thine own hands.” The Law distributed no resources to idlers and tolerated no unearned luxuries.
In May 1833, responding to a lawsuit from a former Missouri church member named Bates who sought to recover an “inheritance” he had been granted only on condition of remaining in the church, Joseph Smith reversed his position on the revocability of stewardships. In a letter to Bishop Partridge, Smith distinguished the property one inherited as a stewardship from the residue the bishop retained to benefit the poor. First, Joseph told Partridge to ensure that whatever was consecrated for the poor was given legally so he could not be forced to refund it in court. As for stewardships, however, Joseph told Partridge that he was “bound by the law of the Lord, to give a deed.” This irrevocable deed gave to the steward his inheritance as his “individual property, his private stewardship.” Even if the steward was cut off from the church, “his inheritance is his still.” Apparently viewing the contrary portion of the May 1831 revelation as erroneous, Smith harmonized that revelation with the new policy by adding a new verse that reversed its meaning:
and if he shall transgress, and is not accounted worthy to belong to the church, he shall not have power to claim that portion which he has consecrated unto the bishop for the poor and the needy of my church: therefore, he shall not retain the gift, but shall only have claim on that portion that is deeded unto him.
Now, the Law’s ambiguity as to the revocability of stewardships was resolved in the opposite direction: in favor of non-revocability. In June 1833, to allay the fears of the saints that their property could be taken from them, the leaders of the Missouri saints issued a statement that each family head had received or would receive “a warranty deed securing to himself and heirs, his inheritance in fee simple forever.”
The May 20, 1831, revelation also went beyond the February 1831 revelation of the Law with its enlarged description of community obligations. The new revelation commanded Partridge to “appoint unto this People their portion every man alike according to their families according to their wants & their needs” (D&C 51:3). No longer responsible just to provide for the members’ needs, Partridge now also had to assign them stewardships sufficient to provide for their “wants.” However, the revelation emphasized fulfilling the most basic of wants first, instructing Partridge to use money left over from the land purchase “to provide food & raiment according to the wants of this people” (D&C 51:8). It also tied want to need, instructing Partridge to reserve for the church storehouse “all things both in money & in meat which is more then is needful for the want of this People.” Some of this he was to use “for his own wants & for the wants of his family as he shall be employed in doing this Business” (D&C 51:13–14).
The fulfillment of wants and needs was to come from stewardships — as, for example, in the case of the Literary Firm. Organized in November 1831, this firm was to print the official church literature — the revelations and commandments. The stewards of the firm, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and Sidney Rigdon, were told that “this is their business in the church of God” (D&C 70:5). The profits from this firm were to support their families, and anything “they receive more than is for their necessities & their wants it shall be given into my storehouse.” However, in the early stages of the venture, before it turned a profit, they were to “have claim for assist[a]nce upon the Bishop” from the church’s storehouse (D&C 72:20–22). It may be that they overused these entitlements, for subsequent revelation to the managers in 1832 qualified that one’s wants should be met only “inasmuch as his wants are just” (D&C 82:17). For the sustainability of the system, basic needs and positive free cash flow had to be prioritized over discretionary wants.
The distinction between “just” and “unjust” wants raised the question of who should be the judge of which wants are just. Edward Partridge, now bishop of the church in Independence, Missouri, wrote to Joseph Smith in May or June for instructions on how to assess and enforce members’ tithing obligations. Joseph replied on June 25th, with “it is not right to condescend to verry great pa[r]ticulars in takeing inventories … I will tell you that every man must be his own judge how much he should receive, and how much he should suffer to remain in the hands of the Bishop.” But if the bishop should not act as an auditor, neither should he simply rubber stamp whatever his parishioners decided. “The matter of consecration must be done by the mutual consent of both parties. … The fact is, there must be a balance or equilibrium of power between the bishop and the people,” with the bishop neither a “King” nor a “Slave.” If an agreement could not be reached, a council of twelve high priests was to be formed to mediate.
The complex interplay between investors in the Law, the Bishop, and the council of high priests reflected an even more complex community structure gradually revealed in 1832–1833, with subsequent clarifications and extensions. A September 1832 revelation introduced a physical layout that would appear in all subsequent designs for the city of Zion, featuring a centrally-located building around which the community would be built (D&C 84:1–2). Joseph’s revelations referred to this recurrent layout as “the pattern” (D&C 94:2).
The June 1833 Plat of the City of Zion included 24 central “houses of the Lord,” which were defined in descriptive text on the plat itself and in a pair of explanatory revelations received in June and August as multipurpose public buildings for administrative office space, printing, secular education, and religious observances. Architectural specifications were given for these buildings as part of the pattern, including that each floor should have a “lower court” and a “higher court” — i.e., that there should be two vertically-ordered sections to each floor (D&C 94:3–6, 10–12; see also D&C 95:13–17). The plat itself, revealed in vision at this time to Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams, provided a template not only for religious life, but for an entire community founded upon the Law. It therefore included designs not only for “houses of worship,” but also “store houses,” “schools,” and other “publick buildings” that would house various officers who would serve as “Messenger[s] to the people,” “helps in gover[n]ment,” etc.
Each of the 24 central buildings was to have a specialized function and was to be run by a distinct presidency who oversaw that specialized aspect of the community. This specialization was necessary to run a fully-functioning community. In the society envisioned in the plat, in which the ecclesiastical life was just one facet of a larger communal life, no single leader could comprehend every specialization. Rather than just a single leader, an entire array of leaders would be necessary to fully realize the vision. Without the distinct, specialized presidencies indicated by the plat, failure in the Law’s implementation was inevitable. The Law and the plat were egalitarian and bureaucratic in nature, not autocratic, and could only hope to bring about their promised prosperity when practiced accordingly.
However, the plat was not designed only to promote economic success, but also to enact architecturally the values underlying the Law. Its architectural vision provided an egalitarian spatial layout — a community design that lent itself structurally to conditions of widespread education and prosperity. The community’s physical layout, which Sidney Rigdon referred to as “compact society,” placed all residents in a state of structural equality by virtue of a shared proximity to the community’s center. Regardless of education, social class, or background, all willing to work earnestly and abide by the standards of the community were to be afforded equal opportunity to prosper in their stewardships and equal access to the educational, cultural, and recreational activities occurring at the community’s central nexus. That such benefits were intentional is indicated by Joseph Smith himself, when he observed in 1833 by way of explanation of the plat:
The farmer and his family … will enjoy all the advantages of schools, public lectures and other meetings. His home will no longer be isolated, and his family denied the benefits of society, which has been, and always will be, the great educator of the human race; but they will enjoy the same privileges of society, and surround their homes with the same intellectual life, the same social refinement as will be found in the home of the merchant or banker or professional man.
Remarkably, this community design was not intended to be merely provincial or sectarian. An instruction in the margins of the plat made clear that it was intended to be global in scope: “When this square is thus laid off and supplied, lay off another in the same way, and so fill up the world in these last days, and let every man live in the city.” The plat is not merely a design for a single community but a pattern for the entire world, and its design can be scaled and adapted to a wide variety of geographical and cultural circumstances.
Cooperative Enterprise under the Law
The integration of spiritual life and physical life envisioned in the plat communities was not new to the plat itself. Revelation to Joseph Smith shortly after the founding of the church and months before the Law or the plat had abolished the distinction between “spiritual” and “temporal,” declaring, “all things unto me are spiritual” (D&C 29). Physical creation, on the model presented in this revelation and Smith’s contemporaneous revision of Genesis 1–2, is the materialization of pre-existing or pre-established spiritual patterns (D&C 29:31–32; Moses 3:5). In line with this, the Law was grounded in revelation and spiritual principles yet constituted a financial system, one that promised high profits. The Law required the investment of participants’ initial property into the community, which would use the consecrated properties to establish community capital. In return for an individual investor’s consecration, the community provided a stewardship and the ability to draw on community capital.
The saints may initially have understood the assignment of stewardships to consist simply of redistributing land, money, and goods. This understanding shifted with the November 1831 establishment of the Literary Firm, which set a precedent for a more complex and holistic view of stewardships as full-fledged business enterprises backed by community capital.
The November 12, 1831 revelation establishing the firm assigned Joseph Smith, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and Rigdon “to be stewards over the revelations and commandments,” which they were to publish (D&C 70:3). This stewardship was an assignment to advance the mission of the church, but also to monetize the church’s intellectual property so the mission could advance in a self-sustaining and even revenue-generating way. The revelation told the stewards that “this is their business in the church of God to manage them & the concerns thereof yea the profits thereof” (D&C 70:5). To motivate them to multiply the value invested, the revelation authorized them to use profits from the business as “a reward of their diligence & for their security for food & for raiment for an inheritance for houses & for lands,” for the worker is “worthy of his hire” (D&C 70:12,16). Of course, like all stewards, they were still required to return any surplus above what “is for their necessities and wants” to the storehouse to be reinvested in the community and to provide inheritances for other, future stewards; for “none is exempt from this law who belong to the church of the Living God” (D&C 70:7–11).
A few weeks later, a revelation received on December 3 appointed Newel K. Whitney to replace Edward Partridge as bishop and manager of the storehouse in Kirtland, freeing Partridge to head west as bishop of a new Latter-day Saint community called “Zion” in Independence, Missouri. This revelation allowed that until the literary firm turned a profit, its managers might draw working capital from the Kirtland storehouse now managed by Whitney — though it enjoined them to prove themselves “wise” in the use of funds (D&C 72:20–22). In recognition that the church’s resources were already under strain, the revelation commanded that elders fulfilling their “wants” from the church’s storehouse should “pay for that which they receive inasmuch as they have wherewith to pay” (D&C 72:11). And to keep stewards accountable for progress toward profitability, it commanded that “every Elder in this part of the vinyard must give an account of his stewardship unto the Bishop in this part of the vinyard,” who would judge the wisdom of his management and the faithfulness of his labor (D&C 72:17–18).
The same revelation directed that if church members contracted debts they could not pay, they could hand those debts over to Partridge, who was directed to pay them out of the storehouse in Zion. Extending the Law’s command to contract no new debts outside the community, this commandment provided for the discharge of pre-existing obligations. This plan was ambitious, since no storehouse had yet been established in Zion, but the revelation promised that missionary work would “answer the debt unto the Bishop in Zion” by bringing in new members and new consecrated funds (D&C 72:13–15). The strategy could have worked, temporarily, as long as new converts brought into the community more surplus funds than new debt, but it depended on productivity growth and shrewd management to stem other large drains on the storehouse’s funds.
The need for productivity growth was underscored by revelation on April 26, 1832, when Smith received a commandment merging the literary firm with the mercantile business being done out of the church’s storehouses and Sidney Gilbert’s store. The new conglomerate would bear the name “United Firm,” with Gilbert, Zion-based publisher W. W. Phelps, and the Kirtland and Zion bishops joining the managers of the Kirtland literary firm as covenant partners in the business. Each of the partners would “have equal claims on the properties,” the community capital, for use in their businesses, thus sharing resources and pooling risk. This “everlasting firm” was to generate funds that would “become the common property of the whole Churc[h].” Explicitly invoking the biblical parables of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30) and of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–12), the revelation promised “an hundred fold” return if the stewards invested well.
As interpreted by Smith, these biblical parables — which cast God in the role of a rich man and humans in the role of hired managers or “stewards” — stressed the importance of diligence, shrewdness, and earning a positive investment return. The latter parable told of a lord who went away on a trip and left his stewards in charge of multiplying his money. The first two did so by investing the money and were rewarded as “faithful” stewards, but the third hid the money in the ground, where it was preserved but could not be multiplied. The lord reprimanded “the unprofitable servant” for not, at the very least, putting the money in an interest-bearing account so “I should have received mine own with usury [i.e., interest].” For his failure, the servant was cast into outer darkness and condemned (Matt. 25:14–30).
A breach opened between Firm managers by mid-1833, with Kirtland managers chastising Missouri managers for a “covetous disposition.” The dispute seems to have centered on dwindling resources and mounting debt. A note dated April 23, 1834 indicates that by that date, the managers had drawn a whopping $3,635.35 from the storehouse. Although the Firm’s managers had been commanded to share resources equitably, the lion’s share — $1151.51 — had been drawn by a single partner, Joseph Smith. By April 18, the Kirtland mercantile business had also contracted with New York merchants — in contradiction of the Law — an $8,000 debt, due in September, for store goods. Meanwhile, in late 1833 a mob expelled the Missouri Latter-day Saints from their “Zion” community in Jackson County. Joseph planned a military expedition to “redeem” the abandoned lands, but was delayed, in part, by lack of funds.
These developments led to a revelation, on April 23, 1834, charging that some Firm leaders had “not kept the commandment but have broken the covenant, by coveteousness & with feigned words,” and declaring them cut off from the church unless they repent. Reiterating the commandment “that every man may give an account unto me of the stewardship which is appointed unto him … that I the Lord, should make every man accountable,” the revelation threatened damnation upon those who drew on the storehouse and failed to contribute (D&C 104:34–42).
With this scathing prologue, this April 1834 revelation pronounced the disuniting of the Kirtland and Zion firms, now ironically to act separately as two United Firms. Perhaps reflecting a breach of trust even within each firm, the revelation also divided the Kirtland firm’s assets among its various managers, who would no longer have equal claim on those assets (D&C 104:19–48). They were now to “do their business in their own name [as the United Firm of the City of Kirtland], and in their own names [as individuals]” (D&C 104:49–50). In an effort to protect church assets from firm managers or insulate them from firm creditors, the revelation also commanded the creation of two strictly separate church treasuries — one for sacred purposes and the other for business expenses (D&C 104:60–77).
For all intents and purposes, this revelation marked the end of the firm as a functioning business entity. In publishing revelations about the firm in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, editors fictionalized them to conceal the identities of the firm’s managers and the final disposition of its assets so that creditors could seek no recompense for unpaid debts.
The effective suspension of attempts to enact the Law soon followed the effective end of the firm. In June 1834, Joseph Smith led an abortive military expedition to “redeem” the saints’ abandoned lands in Zion. Upon the expedition’s failure, Joseph received a revelation deferring both the redemption of Zion and observance of the Law by the Missouri church until some future date: “and let those commandments which I have given concerning Zion, and her Law be executed and fulfilled after her redemption” (D&C 105:34). Although this revelation declared no equivalent suspension of the Law for the church in Kirtland, Ohio, observance of the Law seems to have ended there as well.
Why did implementation of the Law fail in Kirtland and Missouri? Joseph Smith’s 1834 revelation suspending the Law offered the explanation that the saints “have not learned to be obedient to the things which I require at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil and do not impart of their substanc[e] as becometh saints.” Smith followed this statement with the self-exculpatory declaration that “I speak not concerning those who are appointed to lead my people who are the first elders of my church … but I speak concerning the church abroad” (D&C 105:7–8). On this explanation, the Law failed for lack of sufficient new money flowing into the system from new converts.
Other possible explanations for the Law’s failure seem more plausible. First, if the Law’s promises of “an hundred fold” return on community capital were unreachable, then the Law may have failed under the weight of its own untenable ambition. Certainly the demands placed upon the Law’s revenue system were enormous. By July 1830, Joseph Smith received a revelation requiring the New York church to support him financially (D&C 24:3), and by mid-1831 — according to dissenter Ezra Booth — he reportedly asked the Ohio church to provide him $1000 and build him a house. Around the same time, he was dedicating a temple site in Missouri; commanding the Ohio church to support “the poor and needy” (D&C 38:35); urging financial support for the families of elders, high priests, and bishops (D&C 42:71–73); and planning large-scale land purchases and construction of a holy city (D&C 42:35). To prioritize so many non-revenue-generating projects may have been premature.
Second, alternatively, the Law’s promises may have been achievable but not effectively pursued. One observation that may be made about the early Latter-day Saint application of the Law is that the saints focused more on the immediate redistribution of consecrated properties than on wise, productive, and accountable management of community capital. Unlike the faithful servants in the parable of the talents, the stewards of community capital failed to generate a positive return on managed funds. This was as out of keeping with the principles of the Law, just as it was also with Robert Owen’s vision of the community as a productive “beehive.”
Perhaps all the managers fell short, but Joseph’s lack of financial savvy was a particular cause of concern to other church leaders. Newel K. Whitney reportedly contended openly in council meetings against Joseph Smith having anything to do with temporal affairs, arguing that Joseph was “not capable of dictating [to] this people in a temporal point of view.” Whitney was not alone in his doubts. Joseph was in the business not of turning a profit, but of covering debts and shortfalls with gifted or borrowed funds. And as the prophet and leader of the church, he was a difficult person for a bishop to hold accountable, no matter what the Law required.
Conclusion
The Law of 1831 brought together two restorationist communities — the Church of Christ of New York State and the Big Family commune of Kirtland, Ohio. It aimed at integrating two visions of the restoration of the apostolic church, one focused on spiritual gifts and the other on the community of goods. It also brought together the New Testament restorationism of Sidney Rigdon and Alexander Campbell with the integrated Hebraic and Christian restorationism of Joseph Smith. Not just a religious restoration, the Law aimed at restoring a sacred society and economic order that would bring the saints riches of body and soul.
Although the Law has sometimes been understood as a communalistic redistribution program, a closer analysis shows it to have been a blended system in which egalitarian ends were achieved by entrepreneurial means. Under the Law, participants would share communal capital to further their individual stewardship enterprises, with the promise of vast multiplication of the properties they invested.
The Law’s failure is often assumed to have been due to the saints’ selfishness and disobedience, or to the untenability of the system, rather than to the idiosyncrasies of its attempted implementation. Neglected in this explanatory model is that one of the Law’s defining features is its covenant of mutual obligations between community and steward. The Law crucially depended on managers to exhibit wisdom — including creativity, productivity, thrift, and self-education in principles of finance — to provide for stewards’ wants and needs. This was to be achieved collaboratively, through systems of accountability. The Law was not designed to function as an autocracy, and its failure owed, in some part, to the difficulty of imposing oversight on strong-willed prophetic leaders.
Previous scholarship has tended to understate the intricate connections between the Law and the pattern, or Plat of the City of Zion. The plat was meant to serve as an architectural manifestation of the virtues contained within the Law and to lay the structural foundation for a prosperous yet equal society. Like the Law, the plat was multifaceted, its economic, social, moral, and aesthetic dimensions reflecting a difficult but achievable ideal.
Like any idealized vision, the Law was revised as those attempting to implement it encountered practical problems, ranging from a lack of accumulated capital, problematic business plans, to outside social pressures and mob violence and forced removal.
© Don Bradley. Published here by permission. This paper’s own discussion continues into the 1837 collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society and the 1838 tithing revelation; that later material falls outside this site’s 1829–1834 scope and is omitted here. Full citations available in the original.