Socialism and The Book of Mormon

A writer in The Salt Lake Tribune the other day asserted a link between The Book of Mormon and socialism. His premise -- at their very worst the people portrayed in the record were greedy capitalists, and at their best they were socialists.

I suspect there are few things that get my blood boiling more than someone who asserts the law of consecration resembles socialism in any way imaginable.

President Marion G. Romney

I have written extensively in the past about the law of consecration. This is one example. Here's another, where I wrote the definitive book about the establishment of Zion in the latter-days based upon the scriptures and the statements of the living prophets who succeeded Joseph Smith. I even cited President Marion G. Romney (a registered Democrat) who has written and spoken persuasively against this misinformed position.

Harry Reid (D-NV), a Mormon and the Senate majority leader, embodies this flawed and misguided political philosophy better than anyone I could suggest. When political rhetoric reaches its extreme in Utah we get articles like this one appearing in the "rival" newspaper. It is tempting to reach for alternative explanations anchored in the core beliefs of the predominant point of view here in Utah. This present attempt, however, is pathetic and misrepresented the truth (I didn't call him a bad name).

The writer asserts: 

"My reading of the Book of Mormon is not idiosyncratic. As a missionary in England I met many Mormon socialists with testimonies of the scriptural admonition for equality. They saw in their sacred texts a spiritual rationale to support their own government programs, including their prized National Health Service.

"They actually believe the admonition of Jesus, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' Matthew 25:40."

The leap in logic here is breathtaking, and the premise is simply mangled beyond recognition and reclamation. Were the writer actually informed by his reading and study as a member of the Church, he would conclude the federal, state and local governments should have NO role in administering relief to the poor and the afflicted.

Why? Because government mandates participation through taxation. There is nothing voluntary about a tax code being imposed upon the citizenry. There is nothing voluntary about how those tax revenues are spent in a representative republic like America's. There is nothing voluntary in socialism.

However, if we discuss the law of consecration, EVERYTHING about it is voluntary, a sacred private covenant between the individual and God. Until there is a proper and perfect theocracy in place when the Savior comes again, it seems we are stuck with "collective salvation" as a false doctrine. The idea one cannot be saved without saving everyone is at the core of the doctrine of the atonement, and that is the exclusive domain of the Savior of the world, NOT governments and elected leaders who would assume that role for themselves.

You can call it "anti-Christ" and you would not be far off the mark.

One may reach for a "scriptural admonition" if one wishes for equality mandated by government solutions, but the operative word here is "reach." The law of consecration is something quite different, foreign, even alien to a government mandating socialism through the redistribution of wealth by taxing the haves in the name of religion, then helping the poor in whatever way "they" determine.

Zion will not come about because we will all become the willing minions of a man-managed government. The principles of the Constitution, while God-given, are drifting further and further from the mooring. And anything More or Less than what God gave is devilish by definition.

And that includes trying to equate socialism with the pure religion of The Book of Mormon!