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What Happened to the Law of Consecration? The United Order, Common Property, and Modern LDS Tithing

Joseph Smith’s early revelations instructed Latter-day Saints to consecrate property for the building of Zion through a stewardship system. Official LDS history emphasizes that this was not simple communal ownership: members received stewardships and retained practical property responsibility. Experiments proved difficult, later Utah United Orders varied widely, and tithing became one modern…

Published · Updated · By the HonestApologist editorial team · How we work

Early Mormonism expected more than ordinary church giving.

Joseph Smith’s revelations envisioned a consecrated people building Zion. Members were instructed to dedicate property to God, care for the poor, and organize economic life under priesthood stewardship.

Today most Latter-day Saints live in ordinary market economies and pay tithing. What happened?

Consecration was not simple communism

This is the first misconception to remove.

Official LDS history describes the early law of consecration as a system of consecration and stewardship, not straightforward abolition of all private property.

Members consecrated property through the bishop. They then received stewardships appropriate to their circumstances and family needs. Church teaching emphasizes that these stewardships could involve deeds and real responsibility over property.

Surplus was directed toward the poor, Church needs, land, buildings, and establishment of Zion.

So the headline “Joseph Smith abolished private property and created communism” is historically crude.

D&C 42 and Zion

Doctrine and Covenants 42 lays out an early form of the law. The goal was not merely fundraising. It was a holy social order.

Economic discipleship belonged to the attempt to become “one” and eliminate poverty among the Saints.

This places consecration close to the moral world of Acts 2 and Acts 4, where Christians voluntarily share possessions and ensure that needy members are cared for.

The difference is that Joseph Smith built a much more explicit nineteenth-century administrative system around the ideal.

Why did implementation struggle?

Official LDS histories acknowledge serious practical difficulties. The Church had poor converts arriving in large numbers, expensive land needs, building projects, internal disagreement, hostile neighbors, expulsions, legal instability, and insufficient resources.

The early United Firm also struggled with Church business and finance.

Consecration was therefore not abandoned because one dramatic revelation declared, “God was wrong.” Rather, implementation changed under pressure.

That distinction is fair.

United Order versus United Firm

Terminology can be confusing.

Joseph Smith’s United Firm managed particular Church business ventures in the 1830s.

Later Utah communities experimented with various United Orders under Brigham Young. Those later arrangements were not all identical.

Some pooled labor and income. Some organized cooperatives. Some moved toward communal living. Others retained substantial private economic structures.

Official LDS history explicitly warns against treating “United Order” as one unchanging economic blueprint.

The move to tithing

In 1838 Joseph Smith received the revelation now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 119. It established tithing.

Official Church history describes tithing as a component or later means of living the principles of consecration.

Later LDS leaders taught that tithing, fast offerings, welfare, and Church service embody aspects of the higher law while full implementation of consecration awaits Zion.

So the modern Church does not normally claim, “Consecration was false and tithing replaced it because the first revelation failed.”

The claim is continuity of principle with changing administration.

Is that development coherent?

Yes, internally.

Christian traditions regularly distinguish moral principles from changing institutional forms. The command to care for the poor does not require every century to use the same treasury system.

Orthodox monasteries live forms of common property that ordinary Orthodox households do not. Parishes collect offerings without requiring every family to enter monastic economics.

Therefore change in economic administration does not by itself disprove a church.

The historical problem is stronger than “they changed”

The issue is the Restoration claim.

Early LDS Zion was not presented as merely one optional experiment. It was bound to revelations about gathering, consecration, Missouri, building Zion, economic equality, and preparation for the Lord’s coming.

When that program proved unsustainable, Mormon practice moved toward a far more ordinary financial structure.

Today, tithing functions within a worldwide institution integrated into modern capitalism. That is a substantial historical transformation.

Acts and Orthodox Christian sharing

The New Testament Church took economic solidarity seriously. Acts describes voluntary sale and distribution. St. Paul organizes collections for poor Christians. The Fathers preach fiercely against hoarding wealth.

St. Basil asks the rich why they treat God’s gifts as private possessions while neighbors suffer. Orthodox monasticism later embodies radical common life.

So an Orthodox critique of Mormon consecration cannot be “serious sharing of property is unchristian.” Quite the opposite.

The Christian question is authority and continuity. The apostolic Church already possessed a theology of almsgiving, common life, and care for the poor without Joseph Smith’s new Zion economy.

Final Verdict

The law of consecration did not simply mean “Mormon communism,” and the modern LDS Church has not officially repudiated the principle.

Early Saints used a stewardship system, later United Orders varied significantly, and tithing eventually became one principal way the Church says members live consecration today.

The historical development is real.

From an Orthodox Christian standpoint, the difficulty is not that administration changed. Christianity itself has diverse forms of common life and economic stewardship.

The difficulty is that Joseph Smith presented a distinctive Zion order as restored revelation, yet its practical forms repeatedly changed and disappeared while the ancient Church’s own traditions of almsgiving, sacramental communion, and voluntary monastic common life had never vanished in the first place.

Key Sources

Topic: Mormonism