UticaPowerhouse

As to discussion about the Church's efforts at establishing various egalitarian social orders as alternatives to capitalism, I would recommend reading two books by Church historian Leonard Arrington. The first is "Great Basin Kingdom" the second is "Building the City of God". By the way, the Church made several attempts at creating an egalitarian social order, all of which were different from each other. The three greatest attempts were the The Law of Consecration attempted under Joseph Smith's Presidency, the United Order attempted under Brigham Young, and the Church's cooperative movement attempted under Brigham Young and partly up into the 20th century. For anyone interested in the Church's earlier links to the Socialist movement and Socialist Party, as well as understanding when and why that association was broken, I would recommend reading "Mormonism in Transition" by Church historian Thomas Alexander, "David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism" by Church historian Gregory Prince, "Socialist Party of Utah" by John Sillito, "Socialist Saints" by John Sillito and John S. McCormack, "Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty: An Introduction to a Mormon Anarchist" by Jason Brown and Christopher Nielsen. If you are not a big reader, or have a hard time locating these writings, here is a short article that discusses the topic: Socialist Party had success in Utah, among Mormons 100 years ago Last but not least, here are some interesting quotesand tidbits a time when Socialism wasn't a bad word in LDS circles: “In no part of the city, or elsewhere in Utah, are their signs of abject poverty... While not communists, the elements of socialism enter strongly into all their relations, public and private, social, commercial, and industrial, as well as religious and political. This tends to render them exclusive, independent of the gentiles and their government, and even in some respects antagonistic to them. They have assisted each other until nine out of ten own their farms, while commerce and manufacturing are to large extent cooperative. The rights of property are respected; but while a Mormon may sell his farm to a gentile, it would not be deemed good fellowship for him to do so.” -quoted from "History of Utah, 1540-1886" by Hubert Howe Bancroft page 306 "thanks to a certain dose of socialist solidarity, the Mormons have in a few years attained a state of unbelievable prosperity" -quoted from "Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism" by Jonathan Beacher, p. 301 "I have no quarrel with Socialists. I am not blind to the abuses which exist in the world and the great necessity for social reform. I believe Socialists to be sincere in their efforts to improve the conditions of the masses" -Apostle Anthony Ivins, 1912 "I see no harm in the wise and intelligent study of socialistic principles, such of them at least as are true and as the teachings of the Gospel and the spirit of the Lord will approve, nor in belonging to a club or society having that as its only purpose" -President Joseph F. Smith, 1902 In a letter to his son Willard, just a year before his death, Brigham deplored the growing tendency in Utah to "teach the false political economy which contends against cooperation and the United Order" - Cited in Dean C. Jessee, ed., Letters of Brigham Young to His Sons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1974), 199.]. It may surprise modern Mormons that that "false political economy" was not socialism or communism but free enterprise capitalism, the lack of which in Utah was being used by gentiles as evidence that Mormons were un-American barbarians [Eugene England, 1995 Making Peace: Personal Essays, Ch.4, p.76] Lastly, one of the best selling socialist novels of all time is a book called "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy. Bellamy wrote the book after travelling to Utah and spending three days being escorted by Lorenzo Snow and spending the evenings discussing LDS cooperative enterprises and communities. The Church points this out in it's book "Church History in the Fullness of Times" while not going into detail about what the book was, who the author was, and gives only passing information about his visit with Lorenzo Snow (you can find it 20 paragraphs in on Chapter 31 if anyone still has one lying around from institute or seminary or something). As an interesting side note, Edward Bellamy's brother, Francis Bellamy (also a socialist), wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

If this was the history that surrounded you, don't you think you would look at religion somewhat suspiciously as well? The only European we've ever had as President of the Church, John Taylor, even stated that were it not for the fact that he found Mormonism, he would have rejected all religion.

Another way to look at this question is to examine how religion has often alienated particular societies where socialism has taken root (Europe forinstance). For example, many religions have been fighting a tooth and nail fight with science over numerous topics for years (luckily our Church takes no official position on topics like the Big Bang or evolution, and even teaches them at BYU). Brigham Young once pointed to this fact as being one reason why people are reject religion entirely when he said, "I am not astonished that infidelity prevails to a great extent among the inhabitants of the earth, for the religious teachers of the people advance many ideas and notions for truth which are in opposition to and contradict facts demonstrated by science, and which are generally understood." There is also the fact that Europe, where socialism is much more accepted and is consider more mainstream, has had terrible experiences with religion for centuries. It's very likely that their aversion to religion is a reflection of this history more than it is the reflection of socialism. Europe was dominated by a corrupt theocracy for centuries during the middle ages, and in some places up to the last few decades. Scientists were silenced and denounced by religious authorities, like with Galileo, others were burned at the stake, like Giordano Bruno. During this time European societies were devastated by religiously sanctioned witch hunts, inquisitions, crusades and tyrannies. When the Reformation came there wasn't much change... Protestants persecuted and killed Catholics, Catholics persecuted and killed protestants, each fought bloody wars to control various parts of Europe, then persecuted those they disagreed with within their own territories once they had won them. Europe went through the 30 years war, which was religiously based. During the First World War, religious priests and ministers of various faiths encouraged entry into the war as well as encouraging continued fighting despite it's devastating effects. Italy's fascist state under Mussolini was closely aligned with the religious elites of Italy. Spain's first attempt at a democratic republic was brutally smashed by a religious fascist rebellion that violently maintained power for 40 years (similar thing in Portugal under Salazar). Religious support was given to Hitler and the Nazi's by various Catholic and Protestant groups (including, shamefully, many LDS leaders in Germany at the time... not the Church itself, but by individual leaders within that country at the time). Religious involvement in the holocaust is well documented in the book "Betrayal" by Robert C. Ericksen. Molestation at the hands of Catholic priests and the subsequent cover ups that Catholic leadership was involved in. The current corruption issues the Vatican is involved in. The list could go on. Everything I said about Europe could carry over to other parts of the world where socialism can be found as well... Central and South America, Africa, Asia. My view is that those segments of society that reject religion in these parts of the world do so more because of the religiously sanctioned and brutal colonialism, as well as the brutal suppression of efforts at independence or reform movements.

"A few social surveys done recently have looked at cross-national studies and compared data between countries on religious belief, on religious practice, on frequency of prayer, and other things like that. One recent study looked at income inequality and frequency of prayer, and they found that the more unequal a society, the greater sense of personal insecurity, and the more often people are inclined to pray. Another study found an inverse relationship between state welfare spending and religiosity and the less a society spends on welfare, the more people turn to religion for comfort and support. For example, in the US religious belief remains quite high, and this has long been confusing to social scientists because date has shown that as countries become wealthier and industrialized, people tend to become less religious. The US has always been an outlier in that. Despite being the richest nation in the world, and one of the most industrialized, rates of religious identification and practice in the US remain comparable to many developing countries and considerably higher than any other industrialized country on most measures. But when the level of welfare spending per head is taken into account, the US no longer stands out. Put simply, religiosity in the US can be seen as a response to the fact that it is a much harder and insecure country to live in than other industrialized nations. Now correlation is not causation, so there are other ways to read this data and I'm sure social scientists will continue to dispute it, but in interviews done by social science researchers where they ask Christians about how they see God operating in their lives, the things they talk about are things like finding a job, stress at work, stress raising children, worries about money and health. In other words, their everyday conditions under capitalism. In a world that heaps enormous responsibilities on every single person to try to figure out how to deal with everything in their lives and to make it through, it's no wonder people look for God to be active in their lives. So unemployed people being passed over for yet another job, it's better to understand this as God telling them this wasn't the right job for them. For single parents raising three kids, believing that God will provide when they don't know where the money for their rent check is going to come from is an important coping mechanism just to get by in life. Capitalism is so uncertain, and God and prayer provide some kind of support and some kind of certainty." -Quoted from Dr. Rachel Morgain