Provident Living

"My generation had its beginnings during the great depression. We witnessed the concern of our parents as they worried about supplying us with the basic needs of life. We witnessed the waste of inactive people standing in bread lines or leaning on shovels in WPA projects. I remember marveling, as a young man, at my mother’s ability to make things stretch. I guess I had the easiest job on the block when it came to carrying out the garbage cans. The neighbors would always carry out two or three big ones. Ours was a small size, usually only half-full. The great cities would not be having the problems they have today with their garbage if all the residents were as frugal as my mother. Almost everything she processed was either biodegradable or reuseable."

“There is only so much property in the world. There are the elements that belong to this globe, and no more…. [A]ll our commercial transactions must be confined to this little earth and its wealth cannot be increased or diminished.”

"Ye Latter-day Saints, learn to sustain yourselves. . . . Learn to do without that which you cannot purchase and pay for; and bring your minds into subjection that you must and will live within your means."

"The Church has urged its members to be efficient users of our resources and to avoid waste and pollution, and to clean up their own immediate environment, or that over which they have control. . . We have made an appeal to all Church members to clean up their premises, to plant gardens and trees, and then to use efficiently what they can grow. We have found that Church members have responded well to this appeal, thus becoming more self-reliant and responsibly concerned for their neighbors and their environment."

"I try to practice these principles of stewardship in my own home. Some of what I do takes more work and time than most Americans are used to spending on household chores, but I find that my efforts increase my sense of worth as a stay-at-home mom and improves my family’s quality of life. I am reclaiming the virtue of my domestic work from the disposable convenience products corporations want to sell me."

"Attempting to make everything we do into a virtuous practice brings us closer to the exercise of responsible stewardship over the earth. To encourage us in these virtuous efforts, the Church advocates the principles of thrift, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency; it also promotes gardening, eating seasonal produce, and limiting the amount of meat we consume. Generally our church couches these messages in terms of 'temporal self-reliance' without any mention of their environmental effects, but the environmental benefits of such a life are clear. If all Mormons practiced these principles, we would be the greenest people on the earth."

But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of they people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with they oliveyard.

And even I myself have labored with all the power and faculties which I have possessed, to teach you the commandments of God, and to establish peace throughout the land, that there should be no wars nor contentions, no stealing, nor plundering, nor murdering, nor any manner of iniquity;

That they should let no pride nor haughtiness disturb their peace; that every man should esteem his neighbor as himself, laboring with their own hands for their support.

And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their houses, yea, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings.

Having all manner of fruit, and of grain, and of silks, and of fine linen, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things;

And thus, in their prosperous circumstances, they did not send away any who were naked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished; and they did not set their hearts upon riches; therefore they were liberal to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, whether out of the church or in the church, having no respect to persons as to those who stood in need.

And now, because of the steadiness of the church they began to be exceedingly rich, having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need—an abundance of flocks and herds, and fatlings of every kind, and also abundance of grain, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things, and abundance of silk and fine-twined linen, and all manner of good homely cloth.