This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Economic inequity is not an abstraction. It is not a set of numbers, tables, or graphs. It is the homeless on Rio Grande: families, mothers, children and fathers.
This election season has invited a national conversation concerning the threat that income inequality poses to American life. None of this is new for Utah Mormonism, of course. In 1875, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles released a report declaring that "one of the great evils with which our own nation is menaced at the present time is the wonderful growth of wealth in the hands of a comparatively few individuals." Industrial capitalism had given "monstrous power … to a few individuals and a few powerful corporations."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the gap between those in the 90th and 10th percentiles of household income has increased by just over 23 percent since 1999. Denying its existence is unacceptable, both as a matter of data and as a matter of faith. Whether saints consider the Book of Mormon to be a historical text or strictly a work of inspired fiction, its message on the evils of income inequality is "plain and precious," clear and unambiguous.
A War on the Poor • One need not support any particular candidate in order to acknowledge that Latter-day Saint doctrine does not equivocate on the evils of disproportionate distribution of and access to material resources. In the Book of Mormon, there are no examples of the poor persecuting the wealthy; in every instance, the wealthy discriminate against the poor.
The development of class structures created the environment in which pride could take hold. Alma's community "s[at] their hearts upon riches" and "began to be scornful one towards another" (Alma 4:7). Alma saw "great inequality among the people," as the wealthy "turn[ed] their backs upon the needy and the naked" while "great lamentations among the people" rang through the air (Alma 4:12). It was the wealthy Zoramites chasing the poor out of the synagogues — not the reverse. One Nephite prophet chastised his people since they "rob the poor because of their fine clothing; and they persecute the meek and the poor in heart" (2 Nephi 28:13).
In the years prior to Christ's coming to America, "there became a great inequality in all the land." The Nephites "began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning." Wealth disparities led to self-perpetuating educational structures of discrimination: "Some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches" (3 Nephi 6:12). At no time did Nephite chroniclers consider the poor to be lazy or morally deficient. In every instance, conditions of economic equity created the environment most conducive toward developing a community of charity and belongingness.
Those who attacked the system hailed from both the elite and the ordinary. When Abinadi opposed the rampant lasciviousness and heavy taxes of King Noah's regime, he enjoyed no title. He was nothing more than "a man among them." Jacob, Nephi's brother and successor, used his position as king following Nephi's death to criticize the development of a class system: "because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye ... persecute your brethren because ye suppose that ye are better than they" (Jacob 2:13).
Those who have means (and I count myself among them) carry the moral responsibility to rectify the disparity, as Jacob declares; they should use it to "clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive" (Jacob 2:19). Or, Dr. Martin Luther King's vision of compassion demands, we must do more than "flinging a coin to a beggar." We must see that "an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
A Radical Vision • The Book of Mormon presents a radical and sustained vision of how to assess our condition, consistently demonstrating the evils that arise from the stratification of income classes. Brigham Young assures us that, "If we possessed hundreds of millions of coin and devoted that means to building up the Kingdom of God … we would be as much blessed and as much entitled to salvation as the poor beggar that begs from door to door."
However we choose to align ourselves politically, we have the opportunity to unite our efforts on behalf of the vulnerable and dispossessed, to "remember in all things the poor and the needy" (D&C 52:40).
Russell Stevenson is author of "For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013" and winner of the Mormon History Association's Best Book Award in 2014.