During the nineteenth century of the Latter-day Saints engaged in a series of economic enterprises that were unique for that time. Most prominent of these was the United Order, a bold experiment in economic idealism initiated by Brigham Young on a regionwide scale in 1874. Though its immediate effects were short-lived, it remains a powerful symbol for Latter-day Saints, a vivid expression of the reform impulse that has been a recurring aspect of Mormonism since its founding.
Building the City of God traces the development of Mormon communitarianism and cooperative experiments from 1831, when Joseph Smith announced the Law of Consecration and Stewardship as part of a design for building a city of Zion in Jackson County, Missouri, a religious and administrative center that would serve during Christ’s millennial reign. These plans were cut short by persecution, but the Missouri experience of the 1830s set an archetype that has helped ever since to define for Mormons the appropriate relationship of individual, community, and economic processes.
This lively study of communitarian and cooperative experiments interprets such episodes as part of the ongoing process in which faithful Latter-day Saints are schooled through all-embracing church activity in those very qualities needed to make a success of cooperative endeavor. The authors maintain that Mormon communitariansim is by no means dead—as witness the far-reaching effects to today’s Welfare Program—and may, in fact, be gaining a relevance to contemporary world problems greater than at any time in the past.
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