Explore the transition from communal property deeding to individual tithing, with a focus on united orders and cooperatives in Nauvoo and Utah. Learn about the challenges faced by these communities, including government intervention and conflicts with the federal government. Discover how the Church eventually settled on the tithing system after various experiments with financial consecration.
59:48
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
insights INSIGHT
Consecration: The Foundation of Church Finances
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' financial history is rooted in the principle of consecration.
This principle evolved from communal property systems to the modern tithing system.
insights INSIGHT
Flexible Consecration
Doctrine and Covenants Section 42 outlines the principles of consecration, not a rigid practice.
Consecration practices were flexible and adapted to different circumstances.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Nauvoo and a Broader Definition of Consecration
After being expelled from Missouri, the Saints settled in Commerce, Illinois, renaming it Nauvoo.
Despite hardships, Joseph Smith broadened the definition of consecration to encompass service and care for others.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
In his July 1838 tithing revelation, the Lord both affirmed the law of consecration and modified the ongoing way in which the saints were expected to consecrate of their money and property. Rather than following the 1831 system outlined in D&C 42 of legally deeding all of their property to the bishop and receiving back from him a legal lease of property known as a stewardship, the Lord asked the saints instead to follow a tithing system of paying “one-tenth of all their interest annually” (D&C 119:4). Only months after this tithing revelation was received, however, the saints were violently expelled from Missouri and, just over a year later, found themselves as refugees settling a swampy piece of land in Illinois they would call Nauvoo.
In this episode of Church History Matters, we begin by diving into what consecration looked like in Nauvoo and then trace the practice into Utah. And rather than seeing a clean linear break from the D&C 42 financial consecration system of stewardship to the D&C 119 consecration system of tithing, we instead see in the historical record what appears to be various forms of overlap between and hybridization of these two systems. We’re talking about united orders and business cooperatives Brigham City, Orderville, how the federal government broke up these cooperatives, and finally how we as a Church came to settle more exclusively on the tithing system.
Church History Matters