On 1–2 March 2018, the Department of Religious Education at Brigham Young University and the History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, hosted a symposium addressing the historical intersection of business, finance, and religion within the Church. The goal of the conference was to stimulate scholarship on and thought about the economic history of the Church and to explore how financial aspects have influenced social, cultural, political, and intellectual developments in the Latter-day Saint tradition. From the papers given at that symposium, we have gathered fifteen to showcase the type of work that is ongoing in the exploration of Latter-day Saint economic history and the history of business and finance in the Church.

In our discussions of Latter-day Saint economic and financial history, we—like many historians interested in the Latter-day Saint tradition—take a broad view of the topic, regarding it as a study of how economic factors, business enterprises, and financial interests affected both the Church and Latter-day Saints themselves. The studies in this volume are not statistical analyses of economic processes and methods, but are more about the ways that people and the Church itself interacted with the economy and dealt with financial interests and needs. The essays explore the ways in which money, finance, and business affected the institutional Church and the lived religion of Latter-day Saints, as well as how Latter-day Saints and the Church itself dealt with trends of financial stability and instability.

The articles in this volume build on and expand the work of other scholars, especially Leonard J. Arrington, the historian who, more than any other scholar, dominated the field of Latter-day Saint economic history in the twentieth century. In 1958 Arrington published Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900, which set the bar for the history of economics and finance in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to Arrington, the book was “a study of Mormon concepts, and of the efforts of church leadership to develop an economy in harmony with those concepts.”[1] The book also made solid contributions in understanding the ways that Jacksonian America influenced the economic and community-building ideas of Church leaders, while also providing a comprehensive economic understanding of the Saints’ exodus to the Great Basin in the 1840s and Brigham Young’s economic policies in Utah.[2]

With its focus on these topics and on the nineteenth century, Great Basin Kingdom defined the direction of Latter-day Saint economic history for the next several decades. Led by Arrington himself, who wrote additional studies about finances and business in the Intermountain West, much of the emphasis on economic history remained on the Great Basin in the nineteenth century.[3] Studies concentrating on other regions generally examined the law of consecration in the early Church, or the history of the Kirtland Safety Society in the 1830s, or the Nauvoo, Illinois, economy during the Saints’ sojourn there in the 1840s.[4] Some historians, including Arrington himself, also examined twentieth-century topics, including the influence that the US Department of Defense had on Utah’s economy through the establishment of defense installations during the Second World War and the postwar period.[5] In addition, Arrington produced business histories of establishments influenced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, most of which were rooted in the Great Basin, and of Latter-day Saint entrepreneurs.[6]

In recent years, historians have moved outside of the focus on the economics of the institutional Church and explored the intersection of religion and economics in the lives of average Latter-day Saints. Some of this has been influenced, no doubt, by larger trends within the history of business and finance in the United States. Historians have increasingly examined how economics and business have influenced religion and religious practices, and these examinations have provided better understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity, among other things, within American religion. As one scholar has noted, looking at the intersection of economics and religion “allows historians in a given place and time to rethink what is going on in a broad sweep of the American religious experience.”[7]

In similar ways, recent articles and books have explored how economics and finance have influenced average Latter-day Saints in their lives. Building on the work of Thomas G. Alexander in his groundbreaking book Mormonism in Transition, which included a chapter on the transformation of the Latter-day Saint “temporal kingdom” from 1890 to 1930, Ethan Yorgason examined the cultural transformations that occurred among Latter-day Saints as the Church moved away from cooperation and self-sufficiency and into the national capitalist economy at the turn of the twentieth century. He argued that the “major turn-of-the-century change” was the acceptance of Church members of “capitalist cultural logic,” including embracing individualism over communitarianism.[8] Other scholars have examined what material culture such as pottery and furniture can tell us about the ways that Church members engaged in community and national economies, and how such artifacts illuminate the Saints’ ideas about industry, communalism, and capitalism.[9] Still others focused on how Latter-day Saint theology about work and industry influenced members’ attitudes about labor relations over the years.[10]

Yet studies of the institutional Church’s involvement in business and finance have still been important. Garth Mangum and Bruce D. Blumell, for example, produced an important study in 1993 on how the Church had attempted to take care of the poor and the needy since its establishment, especially focusing on the development of the welfare program in the twentieth century.[11] Edward Leo Lyman provided a detailed examination of how Church leaders dealt with the Panic of 1893, showcasing George Q. Cannon’s role in implementing a strategy that laid a foundation “for the Church’s amazingly diverse and extensive twentieth-century financial holdings.”[12] Matthew C. Godfrey, meanwhile, used the Church’s involvement in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company as a case study for the problems that national economic integration had on the Church and its leaders at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as highlighting the effects that Progressive reform in the United States generally had on Latter-day Saint economics.[13] Using exhaustive and creative research into a wealth of sources, D. Michael Quinn also examined the economic lives of Latter-day Saint leaders in the twentieth century and the involvement of the Church in business. Such studies show that there is more to be done on Church economics.[14]

The work of the historians showcased in this volume indicate the type of scholarship that can be done on all of these topics. In terms of individual Church members, Brooke Kathleen Brassard examines how Latter-day Saint farmers in Alberta, Canada, in the early twentieth century embraced political organizations such as the United Farmers of Alberta, which criticized capitalism and promoted cooperation at a time when Saints in Utah were turning more toward capitalism and away from cooperation. Brian Q. Cannon, meanwhile, explores what we can learn about private wealth and financial networks in Latter-day Saint society from a list compiled by the Presiding Bishopric in 1918 of individuals who paid more than $1,000 in tithing.

Another field that is ripe for harvesting is the role of women and ethnic groups in economic life. Four essays in this volume explore aspects of this topic, including Patricia Lemmon Spilsbury’s examination of the financial contributions that women made to their families and communities through the straw-braiding industry, a topic on which little has previously been written. Mary Jane Woodger and Kiersten Robertson look at a similar theme in the twentieth century, investigating ways that women raised money for the construction of a Relief Society building in the 1940s. Sherilyn Farnes examines the economic experiences Eliza and Caroline Partridge had as plural wives of Amasa Lyman, including their financial struggles. Farnes uses the Partridge sisters as a case study for the economic impact of plural marriage on individuals in Utah, thereby augmenting general studies on plural marriage conducted by Kathryn Daynes, Jessie Embry, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, among others.[15] Finally, Julie K. Allen examines the life of Hans Jørgenson, a Danish immigrant to Utah, to explore how those who converted to the Church outside of the United States and migrated to Utah faced economic struggles that at times conflicted with their goal of spiritual redemption. These four essays show the insights that can be gained into the lives of Latter-day Saint women and ethnic groups by examining their financial situations and contributions to community and family economics.

Other articles convey additional insights into the Church itself. Gerrit Dirkmaat looks at two early attempts to live the law of consecration and how these failed efforts convinced Church leaders of the necessity of obtaining deeded titles to consecrated land. Samuel D. Brunson depicts the Church’s battle with the federal government in the 1870s over whether it needed to pay income tax, using this conflict to show that, unlike the battles the Church had with the federal government over plural marriage, Church leaders engaged with government officials in productive ways in order to reach an acceptable solution. Joseph F. Darowski examines the development of the Church Security Plan by Church leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, describing it as a continuation of the Church’s concern for the poor and needy and a forerunner of the welfare program, while Scott C. Esplin looks at both the philosophies Church leaders had about the need to educate Latter-day Saint youth and the economic realities that complicated the implementation of these philosophies. These essays clearly indicate that there is much still to explore in regard to finance and the institutional Church.

In a similar way, three essays show aspects of the economic history of Utah Territory that are in need of further study. R. Devan Jensen and William P. MacKinnon look at the Utah War and some of the economic causes and consequences of it. Specifically, Jensen examines the establishment of the Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company (Y. X. Carrying Company) and the role Young’s desire to obtain a mail contract played in the outbreak of the Utah War, while MacKinnon explores the economic implications of Brigham Young’s creation of the Standing Army of Israel during the war. Jeffrey Paul Thompson, meanwhile, takes a closer look at the history of Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution, tracing it from its founding as a way to promote cooperative endeavors among the Saints to its embrace of capitalism and consumerism in the early twentieth century to its demise in the late twentieth century because of changing philosophies Church leaders had about Church-owned businesses.

This collection of essays, then, explores lived religion and economics among the Saints, ventures by the Church itself to take care of its people financially, the ways in which finances influenced decisions by Church leaders about building and education programs, and how women and immigrants provided for themselves and their families and contributed to the wider economic community. Much more needs to be done in these realms, but these essays point us in the right direction and invite scholars to continue along these avenues.

We have divided the book into four groups. The first group consists of the two keynote addresses that were given at the symposium. The first keynote was by Bishop Gérald Caussé, the Presiding Bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on the spiritual foundations that govern his and other Church leaders’ approaches to financial management. As the Presiding Bishop, Bishop Caussé is responsible for the Church’s temporal affairs, including the administration of tithing, Church investments, and the construction and development of Church buildings. Although not in the same vein as the scholarly articles that follow, Bishop Caussé’s keynote provides unique insight into how and why the Church governs its finances and business.

Following Bishop Caussé’s article is the second keynote, a presentation made by Sharon Ann Murphy, professor of history at Providence College in Rhode Island, about the Kirtland Safety Society and other Latter-day Saint attempts at creating their own currencies. An expert in the field of banking history, Murphy provides a much-needed perspective from outside Church history on how larger trends in American society affected Latter-day Saint financial efforts. Her paper allows for a more nuanced explanation of why the Kirtland Safety Society failed—one that places the story squarely in the context of difficulties other financial institutions experienced in the United States in the 1830s.

The rest of the essays are placed into three groups: one consisting of the practice of consecration and cooperation by the Church; one examining specific case studies of business and economics in Utah Territory; and one exploring financial issues pertaining to the institutional Church. Together, the essays show that examining questions of finance and economics can illuminate topics such as plural marriage, immigration, the Saints’ relationship to the federal government, and the creation and demise of Church programs. It is hoped that this volume can encourage scholars to look at economics and finance in their work—no matter what the field—and benefit from the insights that will result.

Several people helped with both the conference and the book. We would like to thank Mary Jane Woodger and Elizabeth Kuehn, who served on the conference committee; Debra Xavier Abercrombie of the Church History Department and Andrea Ramsey of BYU Continuing Education’s Conference and Workshops, who helped in conference arrangements; and Reid Neilson, managing director of the Church History Department, and Alex Baugh, head of BYU’s Church History and Doctrine Department, who provided leadership and oversight of the conference. We are indebted to many at BYU’s Religious Studies Center for their help in preparing the manuscript for publication, including Thomas Wayment, Scott Esplin, and Devan Jensen. We would especially like to thank Shirley Ricks for her wonderful editing, Abigail Crimm for her editorial assistance, Carmen Cole for her design and typesetting skills, and Brent Nordgren for his logistical help with photographs, permissions, and other aspects of the book’s publication.

Notes

[1] Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958; repr., Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993), xxiii (page references are to the reprint edition).

[2] Jonathan Hughes, “Great Basin Kingdom after Thirty Years,” in Great Basin Kingdom Revisited: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Thomas G. Alexander (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1991), 99–104.

[3] See, for example, Leonard J. Arrington, “Abundance from the Earth: The Beginnings of Commercial Mining in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (Summer 1963): 192–219; Arrington, “Cooperative Community in the North: Brigham City, Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 33 (Summer 1965): 198–217; Arrington, “The Transcontinental Railroad and the Development of the West,” Utah Historical Quarterly 37 (Winter 1969): 3–15; Lee Soltow and Dean L. May, “The Distribution of Mormon Wealth and Income in 1857,” Explorations in Economic History 16 (April 1979): 151–62; James R. Kearl and Larry T. Wimmer, “Household Wealth in a Settlement Economy, 1850–1870,” Journal of Economic History 40 (September 1980): 477–96; Clayne L. Pope, “Households on the American Frontier: The Distribution of Income and Wealth in Utah, 1850–1900,” in Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past, ed. David W. Gallenson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 148–89.

[4] See, for example, Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976); Lyndon W. Cook, Joseph Smith and the Law of Consecration (Provo, UT: Grandin Book, 1985); Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, and Larry T. Wimmer, The Kirtland Economy Revisited: A Market Critique of Sectarian Economics (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1977); Jeffrey N. Walker, “The Kirtland Safety Society and the Fraud of Grandison Newell: A Legal Examination,” BYU Studies 54, no. 3 (2015): 33–147; Dale W. Adams, “Chartering the Kirtland Bank,” BYU Studies 23 (Fall 1983): 467–82; Gordon A. Madsen, “Tabulating the Impact of Litigation on the Kirtland Economy,” in Sustaining the Law: Joseph Smith’s Legal Encounters, ed. Gordon A. Madsen, Jeffrey N. Walker, and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2014), 227–46; Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 144–78; R. Philip Reynolds, “Ecclesiastical Economics: Some Financial Considerations of Mormon Settlement in Illinois,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 32 (Fall/Winter 2012): 132–48.

[5] See, for example, Leonard J. Arrington, “The Commercialization of Utah’s Economy: Trends and Developments from Statehood to 1910,” in A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah’s Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression, ed. Dean L. May (Provo, UT: Charles Redd Monographs in Western History, 1974), 3–34; Leonard J. Arrington and Jon G. Perry, “Utah’s Spectacular Missiles Industry: Its History and Impact,” Utah Historical Quarterly 30 (Winter 1962): 1–39; Leonard J. Arrington and Thomas G. Alexander, “They Kept ’Em Rolling: The Tooele Army Depot, 1942–1962,” Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (Winter 1963): 3–25.

[6] See, for example, Leonard J. Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West: A History of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1891–1966 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966); Arrington, David Eccles: Pioneer Western Industrialist (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1975).

[7] James Hudnut-Beumler, “Afterword,” in The Business Turn in American Religious History, ed. Amanda Porterfield, Darren E. Green, and John Corrigan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 226.

[8] Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930, 3rd ed. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2012), 79–98; Ethan Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 78–129.

[9] Timothy James Scarlett, Robert J. Speakman, and Michael D. Glascock, “Pottery in the Mormon Economy: An Historical, Archaeological, and Archaeometric Study,” Historical Archaeology 41, no. 4 (2007): 72–97; Karl M. Main, “‘The Things of This World’: Mormon Resistance and Assimilation as Seen in the Furniture of the Brigham City Cooperative, 1874–88,” Winterthur Portfolio 36 (Winter 2001): 191–212; Greg “Fritz” Umbach, “Learning to Shop in Zion: The Consumer Revolution in Great Basin Mormon Culture, 1847–1910,” Journal of Social History 38 (Autumn 2004): 29–61.

[10] See, for example, Warner P. Woodworth, “Mormonism, Work, and Labor Relations,” Perspectives on Work 12 (Summer 2008/Winter 2009): 46–48.

[11] Garth L. Mangum and Bruce D. Blumell, The Mormons’ War on Poverty: A History of LDS Welfare, 1830–1990 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993).

[12] Edward Leo Lyman, “George Q. Cannon’s Economic Strategy in the 1890s Depression,” Journal of Mormon History 29 (Fall 2003): 4–41.

[13] Matthew C. Godfrey, Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007).

[14] D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2017).

[15] Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001); Jessie L. Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017).