This is an unplanned insert in the series I've been writing about how The Book of Mormon was written for our day. Call it my Words of Mormon equivalent. Click here for part 1, and here for part 2.
I’ve been about to publish part 3 of this series for at least a week, maybe longer. But I keep being prevented by the feeling that I’m not ready yet. I thought it was because it needed some edits that I just couldn’t see yet, and I think that was partially true, but today, after watching General Conference, I finally saw the problem. Before I can go on to talk about religion and politics and how the Book of Mormon can guide us in both of those things, I have to say a few words about why I’m going to do that.
Back in part 1, I said this topic had been weighing on my soul, and that I felt I had to write about it. Let me try to be a little more specific about that. For a long time—so many years that I can’t really pinpoint when it started—I’ve been persuaded by the scriptural call to build up Zion. I realize that Zion is a fraught word right now if all you have is the association with the Israel-Palestine conflict, so let me explain, with a great deal of over-simplification, about the concept of Zion through a Latter-day Saint lens.
In Moses 7:18*, we read, “And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.” More on the last part of that verse later, but this is in reference to the city of Enoch, the place to which anyone who would hearken to the voice of the Lord was gathered a couple generations prior to the flood.** So the first definition of Zion is this city/people of the Lord. The whole thing is eventually taken up into heaven. It is prophesied that prior to the second coming of Jesus, there will be a new Zion built on the earth to which Enoch and his city will return. You can read more about that here.
In the early days of the church, the saints attempted to build this new Zion, also called the New Jerusalem, in Jackson County, Missouri. Many people in the church still consider that to be the eventual place where it will be built, but many of those same people might also refer to the Salt Lake Valley, or Utah*** in general, as Zion, mainly because the saints were actually successful in establishing themselves here. This is the second definition of Zion: a place of safety and freedom for the saints. A community of believers prepared to receive the Lord when He comes again.
The third and in my experience the most common use of the word (unless we’re specifically talking about the 1800s) comes from Doctrine and Covenants 97:21. In that section, the Lord is promising many things to Zion, and these promises all seem to be made to the Jackson County saints. But then the Lord clarifies what He means with these words: “for this is Zion—the pure in heart.”
Suddenly, Zion is more than a once and future city, and more than the established church, wherever it may be. It’s something much more personal and nebulous and probably much more difficult. It goes back to that verse in Moses about why the people were given that name. It calls to mind the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). By adding that layer, the Lord reminds us that Zion is a thing we can individually become, and that is how we earn the right to call our communities by that name. We have to do more than merely gather. We have to do more than build a community. It has to be a community of righteousness. In fact, we can be a part of this kind of Zion even if we’re far from any geographical community of the saints, because it’s the pure condition of our hearts that unites us as one people. This is what Latter-day Saints usually mean when they talk about “building up Zion.” They mean striving for purity of heart, and building up faith and righteousness around the world.
But all three of these definitions have to be taken together to really understand Zion. There is more to it than unified believers with pure hearts. Let’s go back to Moses again: “And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them” (emphasis added). So we might be Zion individuals if we can achieve purity of heart (no mean feat on its own), but the Lord doesn’t call us Zion as a people until we have created the conditions in which we can dwell in unity and righteousness, and there are no poor among us.
I challenge you to think about what that means. Can we be “of one heart and of one mind” while caught up in partisan polarization? Can we be said to “[dwell] in righteousness” if we endorse, participate in, or perpetuate political or economic systems rife with inequality, that grind the faces of the poor, and foster corruption? Why are there “no poor among them” in Zion? How? Is it because we kick them all out, or because we create the social, economic, and political conditions that lead to the elimination of poverty (hint: it’s the second one)? Until we’ve done that, can we be said to have succeeded in building Zion?
It’s this that demonstrates most clearly the reasons why the Zion of old was a city, with geopolitical separation from the rest of the world. The rest of the world was rife with wickedness and inequality. In Zion, those things had been done away. This is why you can be a Zion person wherever you live by the condition of your heart, but Zion must also, inescapably, be at least one geographical place, if it is to exist fully again on the earth. We may not all have to live there, but it does have to exist.
And that, in turn, is why those called upon to build Zion must pursue the kinds of reforms in their own communities/nations that would bring about an end to inequality, no matter where they live. Is there true unity? Is there true righteousness? Then poverty cannot exist. Is there poverty? Then we have not yet achieved sufficient unity or righteousness to call ourselves Zion.
What to do then? Wait mournfully for the day when we’re all called back to Jackson County to build a separatist community based on the law of consecration? Jackson County can’t begin to contain all the people we would want included in a Zion of our own. Then do we move away from places with wild inequality to places where the saints are gathered sufficiently to influence the way things are done in their communities? For some people, maybe, and we’ve been trying that for nearly two centuries now. But I live in the middle of one of the most heavily Latter-day Saint communities there is, and there is still poverty, and wickedness, and partisanship, and iniquity. So if this is the answer, then the communities of the saints have their work cut out for them.
But that’s also not enough. The pure in heart don’t just sit around and let people suffer when they can do something about it, because they themselves are also a kind of Zion. Are you pure in heart? Then you are not the kind of person who can be content with poverty or iniquity in your community. Can you be content with iniquity or poverty in your community? Then you are not pure in heart.
I imagine the ways of building Zion so are as diverse as the people there are to do them. You can work towards building that unity of heart and mind that defines a Zion people. You can work on the dwelling in righteousness part. You can work on finding an end to poverty and all inequality (it’s hard to imagine any inequality in a place where poverty has been successfully eliminated). And while you do all that, you can work on purifying your own heart.
I don’t pretend to know what each person should be up to, but there is a way to know. The Book of Mormon, as I’ve been discussing in the earlier parts of this series, is there to give us the guidance we need for the things we’re called upon to do. As I wrote elsewhere, “The Book of Mormon is the story of a people’s struggle to structure their society around the teachings of Christ. It shows us how hard it is, what challenges we will face in attempting it, and what it looks like when we’re successful.”
In other words, the Book of Mormon is a field guide for building Zion. We also have other scriptures as supplements, but there is nothing quite like The Book of Mormon. This is what motivates me to write this series. It’s not about which political party I think has things more right. It’s not about picking fights or causing divisions. And it’s not me losing my way by contorting my faith to fit my political ideology.
It’s an attempt to take seriously the idea that the Book of Mormon is written for our day, as individuals, as a church, and as the whole family of God, both temporally and spiritually. I’m not claiming to have all the answers, but I am interested in exploring the questions. And so, in part 3 of this series, hopefully coming soon, I’ll explore the reason why it can’t be religion OR politics, but why it has to be both. I hope to see you then.
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*The book of Moses is a section of The Pearl of Great Price, a book of scripture accepted by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It contains a revelation given to Moses by the Lord, and recounts the story of the creation, and the events from that time down to the flood of Noah.
**After Zion is taken, Methuselah, the son of Enoch, stayed behind, having received the promise that Noah would be his descendant, and through Noah, the righteousness of God would be refreshed on the earth. Long story short, Noah’s work was to offer the rest of the people who had missed being taken up into Zion one last chance to repent and to warn them of the floods to come. Famously, they didn’t listen.
***As a missionary from Utah, serving in Arizona, where there is also a sizable community of Latter-day Saints, this was a constant punch line. “Where are you from, Elder?” people would ask. “Utah,” I would answer. “Oh, welcome to Zion!”
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