Introduction

Every effort to establish Zion — from Enoch's city to the early Christians to the nineteenth-century Saints — confronts the same recurring challenges. The historical record is not simply a story of success or failure. It is a source of patterns, principles, and honest questions for those who seek to build Zion today.

Four themes recur across every scriptural and historical account of Zion. The first is the elimination of poverty. From the days of Enoch, Zion has been associated with lifting the poor — not merely alleviating suffering but transforming the social conditions that produce poverty in the first place. The second is urban management. Every scriptural account of Zion involved building a city, with all the practical challenges that cities bring: managing land, organizing labor, providing services, and creating the physical conditions for community life. The third is land for a perpetual inheritance. God's covenants with His people nearly always involve promises regarding land — covenants that are still in place and must eventually be fulfilled. The fourth is unity among the Saints. Enoch's people were of one heart and one mind. The early Christians and the Nephites achieved the same condition, however briefly. What did that unity actually look like, and how was it sustained?

This website and book address these questions in four parts. The first reviews past efforts to establish Zion — ancient and modern — to establish context and draw lessons. The second develops the principles that should guide Zion's institutions and organizations, centered on five foundation stones drawn from scripture and prophetic teaching. The third turns to practical implications: how those principles apply to poverty, land, and the organizations of everyday life. The fourth addresses governance — the civil structures a Zion society requires and how we might begin moving our own communities in that direction.

The goal is not a distant vision of a future Zion but a set of principles and goals that should motivate and guide those who are actively seeking to establish Zion today. Personal righteousness is required of all — but it is not sufficient. Zion requires transformed institutions as well as transformed hearts, and that work is already underway.