What I'm Doing Here

It's hard sometimes to explain to a non-Mormon what Zion means to a Latter Day Saint.  The Puritan "City on a Hill" helps suggest a small portion of what the concept evokes within the LDS tradition.  Zion is the social goal of the gospel, a society where people dwell in righteousness and unity; a society characterized by a concern for both beauty and social justice; a society without poor or marginalized individuals.  To some degree, to speak of Zion is to open up the entire range of Mormon social, economic and environmental thought, for the archetype of Zion looms behind every Mormon discussion of these topics.

In this blog I want to begin collecting and annotating texts that deal with the doctrine of Zion.  The scope as I have described it above is admittedly huge.  I make no pretense of being in a position to create an exhaustive collection of Mormon texts dealing with social, economic and environmental issues.  The topic fascinates me, however.  Perhaps foolishly, I am about to begin building a tower without first knowing that I have the resources to finish it. 

Each entry will be tagged with the decade of its origin.  One of my interests is the development of this doctrine over time.  The blog entry itself will be the complete document.  My annotations will appear only in the comments below it.

My annotations in the comments will generally include at least the following topics

• Times and Seasons:  The context and intended audience of the text.   
• Principles:  Universal concepts that can be pulled from each text.
• Applications:  Ideas, speculations and questions about how the principles might be applied in our own time and season.