5 - Organization and leaders

Summary

Mormon theology is essentially an ecclesiology. It is a theology of the Church established by prophecy through its two major priesthoods and its wider supporting organization. The deep underpinning of this ecclesiology lies in the doctrine of the Restoration itself, the teaching that God has, once more, given power to humanity to achieve divinity. With that in mind, this chapter explores the ways in which the Church's organization has related to economic and political aspects of life through distinctive ideals, institutions and individual leaders. In particular it shows how the relational element of Mormonism is subject to the principles inherent in the LDS attitude to ‘organization’.

‘Organization’ is a word whose theological significance for Mormonism pervades church and wider cultural life. Its theological source appears as a variant of the biblical account of creation in the Book of Abraham, itself the most distinctive of all LDS texts. It rehearses a form of the Genesis creation story by speaking of the Gods – in the plural – who, at the beginning, ‘organized and formed the heavens and the earth’ (Abraham 4: 1). These gods ‘organize’ the growth of plants, sun and moon and everything else ready for the moment when they, similarly, ‘organize man’ in their own, divine, image (Abraham 4: 27). So it is that men and women, in their turn, rightly and properly have the task of organizing what falls to their duty and responsibility, not least the organization of the Church and of the family units that help to compose it and the wider community.