Morality as the enemy of equality: Law,economy, and moral responsibility in the early Mormon church

The Law of Consecration and Stewardship, revealed to the prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., in 1831, sought to establish obligations of mutual moral responsibility that would simultaneously serve to promote economic equality among members of the early Mormon church. The failure of the law, leading to its demise in 1834, is considered with reference to some current conceptions of the bases of human moral responsibility and their implications regarding moral stratification. This analysis suggests that by seeking to create a system of moral responsibility in the interests of economic equality, the law would necessarily have impaired the expression of a disposition to act morally on the part of individual Mormons. This inhibition of the capacity for personal moral action as much, if not more than, an uncharitable human nature may have undermined the law.