Harper, “Let’s Talk About the Law of Consecration” (Reviewed by Dennis Clark)

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Review
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Title:   Let’s Talk About the Law of Consecration
Author:   Steven C. Harper
Publisher:   Deseret Book
Genre:   Devotional
Year Published:   2022
Number of pages:   129
Binding:   Paperback
ISBN13:   978-1-63993-030-2
Price:   $11.99

Reviewed by Dennis Clark for the Association for Mormon Letters

Let’s Talk About the Law of Consecration is part of Deseret Book’s “Let’s Talk” series, which, according to the back cover, are meant to be “small, approachable books on important Latter-day Saint topics. Each one is written by a trusted, faithful scholar.” So far, the other topics covered are Faith and Intellect, by Terryl Givens; Polygamy, by Brittany Chapman Nash; Religion and Mental Health, by Daniel K. Judd; The Book of Abraham, by Kerry Muhlestein; and The Translation of the Book of Mormon (coming early 2023, with no scholar noted). If Givens and Harper are examples of the “trusted, faithful scholars” who are writing the other books, all of whom I do not recognize, this series will prove very useful. If you are curious, the page listing the series invites you to “visit DesBook.com/LetsTalk.” There you can order the books or use the “db bookshelf” to listen to them.

Harper’s table of contents lists a preface, “Pursuing Consecration,” and 16 chapters:

  1. “To Spend and Be Spent.”
  2. “There Will I Give unto You My Law.”
  3. “The More Perfect Law of the Lord.”
  4. A Privilege
  5. “After Much Tribulation.”
  6. “It Is Your Duty.”
  7. The Literary Firm
  8. The United Firm
  9. An Unwise Steward
  10. Pretended Revelations?
  11. Covetousness and Feigned Words
  12. Broken Covenants and the Camp of Israel
  13. A Standing Law Forever
  14. “We Will Never Desert the Poor.”
  15. “For the Building Up of the Kingdom.”
  16. Endowed with Power

The contents end with an “Epilogue: All In,” suggestions for “Further Reading,” “Notes,” and an “Index.”

If you recognize the chapter titles in quotes, you should enjoy this book all the more. In contrast with Terryl Givens, in his Let’s Talk About Faith and Intellect, Harper, as a historian, sticks very close to his time and place. This speaks well of the selection of scholars by Deseret Book: the people chosen to write these books do not write to an outline or a formula.

Harper begins where most of us experience our first serious encounter with the Law of Consecration: in the temple while participating in our own endowment, which also provides a reminder every time any of us serve as proxy for someone who has died. This was and continues to be, my experience. And he goes directly from that into the history of the law of consecration and shows how it was introduced early in the history of the Church, how it was to be implemented by the members, and how the aim of the law was that each man should receive what was sufficient for himself and his family, and consecrate the rest to the Lord.

For us today, this is to be done through tithing and through our fast offerings. Now, when my bishop and stake president invite me to make a generous fast offering and assure me that much of that offering will stay in my ward, they are inviting me to participate further in the law of consecration. If I choose to do so, I am fulfilling the covenant I first made in 1965. I have heard in Fast and Testimony meetings many times how members of the Church have been blessed by this law when they struggle to pay a tithe of their increase and how often others have been blessed by assistance from the ward, and the bishop, from those fast offerings.

Although Harper does talk about the practice of consecration as practiced in the city of Zion, under the leadership of Enoch, the high priest of God, those references are mostly fleeting glimpses. He keeps the focus of the book on the latter-day Church, on the struggles of the members of the church to build the New Jerusalem in Independence, Missouri, and in Far West, and in parts of Utah, always striving to achieve a pure consecration and never succeeding. Harper calls his fourth chapter “A Privilege,” and that is how those called to establish the New Jerusalem viewed the call. It is also how we should view it today.

Harper opens his “Epilogue: All In” this way: “By now it should be clear that the story we sometimes tell—that early Saints failed at living the law of consecration—is self-serving,” because it “excuses modern Saints from wholehearted covenant keeping.” This is a severe indictment of many in the Church today, but Harper once again talks about the history of the law of consecration in our time and how the Lord invites everyone, but will never coerce anyone, to live the law of consecration now.  In this regard, it seems that the Church’s change from “Tithing Settlement” to “Tithing Declaration” is a further recognition of that invitation, and requires of us a willingness to declare ourselves “All In.”