Free Agency, Hard Work, and the Justification of Economic Inequality in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Abstract

while running for president of the united states against incumbent Barack Obama in 2012, then-governor of Utah and lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Mitt Romney infamously told his supporters: [They] will vote for [Obama] no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for the president no matter what . . . These are people who pay no income tax . . . [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.1Many were shocked by Romney's statement. Such a callous remark from a presidential candidate showed just how out of touch he was with the lived realities of those below his tax bracket. Suggesting that Americans who do not pay federal income taxes “believe they are victims” and thus do not “take responsibility and care for their lives” is both misleading and harmful. As an article subsequently featured in the New York Times’ Economix blog clarified, though some 46 percent of families do not pay federal income taxes, almost every single one pays taxes, whether payroll taxes, sales taxes, or state and local taxes.2 However, it mattered little that Romney's claim was misleading. It hardly even mattered to many of his supporters that it was insensitive. Among Latter-day Saints in particular, Romney's charge likely felt plausible because it echoed long-standing stereotypes within the church about government “dependents.”How did we go from Joseph Smith saying “it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another” (D&C 49:02) to a multimillionaire openly expressing his indifference toward Americans who make less than fifty thousand dollars a year?3 I propose that two interrelated developments helped Saints normalize and justify economic inequality. First, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, church leaders used the theological term “free agency” to criticize economic interventionism and tax-funded antipoverty programs. Instead, they argued that the only way to preserve Americans’ free agency was to ameliorate poverty through voluntary acts of charity. While these charitable deeds have mitigated some of the most grievous effects of poverty, particularly within the church, they have done little to curb soaring levels of inequality over the last half-century. Put simply, wealthy Saints have not voluntarily ensured that there are “no poor among them.”4Relatedly, church leaders grounded this new interpretation of free agency in individual explanations of poverty. This ideology proliferated alongside the creation of the Welfare Plan in 1936, and it solidified amidst mid-twentieth century fears over creeping socialism. Church leaders’ insistence that poverty spawns from imprudence and/or laziness placed the onus for greater economic equality on poor individuals. Contrary to Saints’ nineteenth-century critiques, neither inequality nor the system that produced it was the problem; poor individuals were.Ezra Taft Benson once claimed that “the right of choice—free agency—runs like a golden thread throughout the gospel plan of the Lord for the blessing of his children.”5 The concept of free agency (if not the term itself)—often shortened to “agency”—does, in fact, run through Latter-day Saint scriptures. However, its definition is not static, nor are its implications self-evident. How and why church leaders have used the term “free agency” has changed with the context surrounding them.6Church leaders once used free agency to discuss moral demands placed upon Latter-day Saints. This understanding of free agency centers on the belief that God imbued humans with “an inherent human characteristic” that allows them to choose between good and evil. Everyone thus has the freedom to choose whether they will follow God or not and, subsequently, whether they will choose “good” or “evil.” In that way, free agency was similar to free will. It was a term used to place the onus on individuals for their moral choices.7However, in the mid-twentieth century, church leaders began using the term to promote “free enterprise.” For example, in 1950, David O. McKay critiqued progressive legislation that “seductively undermines man's right of free agency, robs him of his rightful liberties, and makes him but a cog in the crushing wheel of a regimentation which, if persisted in, will end in dictatorship.”8 By proposing the inevitability of a system unanimously feared, McKay thwarted sincere engagement with government-run programs that could ensure greater economic equality. Two years later, McKay similarly warned against “collectivist” threats to “free enterprise.” This was not merely a political warning; McKay insisted these collectivist efforts intended to “deprive man of his free agency.” McKay's frequent slippage between “freedom” and “free agency” exhibits how this theological term had become politicized. Rather than a call for moral responsibility, McKay used the term to defend free enterprise.9In 1950, Joseph L. Wirthlin delivered a similar general conference talk on free agency and its bearing on “modern times.” “Today,” he began, “the term security is best defined in the promises of economic kings and politicians in the form of doles, grants, and subsidies.” According to Wirthlin, the only possible result of these “promises” was a “loss of free agency.” Moreover, Wirthlin conceptualized taxation as a “‘leveling down process,’ which takes from the man who has achieved and distributes to those who are not willing to put forth like effort.” Not only did he thus believe that taxation denied well-to-do men their free agency, but he also maintained that it prevented recipients from achieving their potential. It lulled them into thinking that sitting back and collecting checks was an ideal way to live, thereby denying them the opportunity to exercise their free agency. According to Wirthlin, protecting free agency thus required Saints to denounce any “compulsory” (government-directed) efforts to achieve greater economic equality.10This interpretation demonstrated impressive staying power. Phillip J. Bryson, then professor of economics at Brigham Young University, wrote an article in 1999 for BYU Studies that contained a section titled “Agency—Fault the Sinner Not the System.” Bryson blamed sin (individual greed) instead of the system that allows the sin to occur (capitalism). He connected this idea to preserving free agency and insisted that individuals must be free to hoard wealth, as denying individuals this freedom causes their moral muscles to atrophy. Many church members have similarly insisted their hands are tied. If they want to preserve individuals’ free agency, they must allow people to exploit each other. Many have agreed that the gaping economic inequality Americans have seen across the last half-century is not a desirable outcome. However, given that the alternatives are a planned economy and/or a robust, tax-based welfare system, they have continually deemed the persistence of inequality the only moral choice.11Though church leaders’ use of the term “free agency” was hardly indistinguishable from a libertarian use of “freedom,” they could rely on its theological heft to incite political action. Over the last seven decades, many church members came to see denouncements of the welfare state and economic interventionism as a way to protect free agency. However, church leaders’ alternative, private, religiously based charity has done little to close the gap between rich and poor, whether within or outside the church.12 Thus, church leaders’ ability to alter the definition of a theological term helped justify economic inequality. If Saints wanted to protect free agency, they had to relinquish aspirations of “eliminating the inequalities among men.”13This interpretation of free agency centered on the idea that hard work invariably results in financial security. J. Reuben Clark and Heber J. Grant popularized this idea in the wake of the Great Depression. For example, when Heber J. Grant formally announced the LDS Church “Security Plan” (as the Welfare Plan was originally called) in 1936, he declared, “Our primary purpose was to set up . . . a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift, and self-respect be once more established amongst our people.”15 Both Grant and Clark insisted that poverty was almost invariably caused by “idleness.” Accordingly, the only way to ameliorate poverty was to ensure that needy members became productive, efficient workers. They claimed the government could never do this. Rather, it was only by establishing a welfare system that stood wholly apart from government funding and oversight that church leaders could ensure members learned the value and significance of hard work.As the federal government continued expanding across the mid-twentieth century, church leaders juxtaposed Latter-day Saints’ penchant for hard work with “misguided individuals” who availed themselves of government-funded anti-poverty programs.16 In 1965, for example, David O. McKay reminded readers of the Improvement Era: “The religion of the Latter-day Saint teaches him to work. The idler has no place in the Church.” He encouraged them to “glance at the history of this Church” for inspiration. “Go back a little more than a short century when the Intermountain West was covered with sagebrush,” he continued. There were “the furrows to be plowed, the ditches to be dug, the sagebrush to be cleared, the bridges to be built, the water to be brought from the mountain streams. . . . Think of the hardships endured and whether there is anything in the Latter-day Saint religion to teach a man to be idle.”17 Similarly, in 1968, Henry D. Taylor reminded Saints that their ancestors “met the wilderness on their own terms and pushed it back.” These men and women lived in a time when “there were few governments to do things for them.”18 Their message was clear: if the pioneers did not need to rely on the government during such a precarious period, church members certainly did not need to rely on the government in the mid-twentieth century.19If church leaders were going to place the burden of financial security on individuals, they had to clearly articulate the skills, attitudes, and behaviors that would engender that security. Many scholars have asserted that Latter-day Saints have risen to positions of power in our capitalist economy because “hard work” is part of their cultural DNA.20 However, this assertion does not account for the fact that church leaders invested middle-class financial advice and work habits with the same significance as tilling the earth for the people of Zion. These ideas were decidedly new and intentionally constructed; it is difficult to imagine how Latter-day Saint settlers in Utah digging ditches and clearing land would concede that investment bankers or venture capitalists righteously accumulate wealth “in the sweat of thy face” (Gen. 3:19).However, by continually redefining productive, meaningful work across the twentieth century, church leaders provided Saints with economic aspirations fit for individual capitalist strivings. Specifically, they detached “hard work” from physical output, and they encouraged Saints’ unbridled accumulation of individual wealth. As members urbanized and became more educated and cosmopolitan, they traded their communal and agrarian aspirations for wealth and status. Long-standing, scripturally grounded terms like “work,” “productive effort,” and “success” proved vague enough that church leaders could change members’ economic goalposts without being regularly forced to expound upon or justify these changes.To support these new aspirations, church leaders supplied theologically grounded, gender- and age-specific examples of “hard work” in the mid-twentieth century to help Saints achieve individual (or at least nuclear family) financial security. They intended these messages to train men to be valuable employees and women to be savvy and thrifty homemakers. The Improvement Era encouraged young men to get a good education. The Relief Society Magazine taught Mormon women to fastidiously itemize grocery budgets. Parents encouraged children to take on summer jobs, and they regularly reminded them to devote time and attention to their schoolwork. Saints observed what it meant to “work hard” in a way that was appropriate for their gender and life stage. Most importantly, they learned how to “work hard” in a way that should have assured long-term financial security.21Reducing financial security to this simple formula justified church leaders’ condemnation of government “dependents.” If financial security resulted from a series of universally accessible choices, a harsh stance was warranted. However, it is essential to remember that church leaders had to redefine what hard work and financial security meant. They had to reorient these goals toward individual strivings in a capitalist economy. These new goals were antithetical to Saints’ nineteenth-century aspirations, but the tradeoffs seemed worth it. Instead of being ostracized and persecuted, Saints were now accepted and even praised. Still the cost was high: Saints had to relinquish visions of egalitarianism, and they could no longer condemn capitalism for giving “monstrous power . . . to a few individuals and a few powerful corporations.”22 Instead, like most other Americans, they framed economic inequality as an individual problem, not a structural one.In a country where a child's SAT score can be reliably predicted by their parents’ tax bracket, insisting that everyone has equal access to financial security is not only misleading, it is harmful.23 However, this myth has proven difficult to discredit because its defenders have such a decisive stake in upholding it. Latter-day Saints are particularly vested in upholding this myth because their success demands explanation. Non-members want to know, for example, how and why these religious radicals managed to ascend “out of obscurity” and into positions of power.24 By pointing to universally praised skills and habits (hard work, sobriety, geniality), most insiders and outsiders alike have deemed Latter-day Saints rightful winners in American society. To maintain this reputation, church members must thus deny any advantages afforded to them on account of their race, gender, parents’ income, and so forth.However, church leaders’ paradoxical defense of freedom and equality reminds us to deal with reality and not abstractions. Most Americans, Latter-day Saints chief among them, want to maximize individual freedom and reward people based on merit. Relatedly, few Americans want to fund programs that would hand out paychecks to “idle” men and women. However, to maximize all Americans’ freedoms, we need to close our racial and gender wage gaps. To reward people based on merit, we must dismantle American systems and structures that disproportionately benefit people who are wealthy, White, and male. Moreover, if we want people to work for wages, we need to provide them with dignified jobs, a living wage, affordable childcare, and workplace protections. Contrary to church leaders’ assertions, Americans are not born onto a level playing field, and financial security is not the sum of a simple formula. Relinquishing these illusions could be the first step toward restoring Latter-day Saints’ prophetic warnings against the moral perils of class stratification.