I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

The first problem of trying to write about the socioeconomic conditions known to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as "Zion" is that there's no linguistic framework from which to begin.

To everyone outside the Church "Zion" and especially "Zionism" have a completely different meaning. Zion refers to a peaceful, utopian place but has no connotations related to economic conditions. The main forums for discussions of Zion are Judaism and Rastafari, and neither is referring explicitly to the economic system described in Acts 2:44-45. One could argue it is implicit that a heavenly society would have a radically-different economy, but just about nobody outside of the Church would make the connection without a lot of thinking.

And Zionism usually means even more specifically the creation of a physical gathering place for Jews. Since the establishment of Israel the term is even MORE narrowed to basically refer only to the existence of Israel: Zionists support the Israeli state and antizionists oppose it.

It would be great if I could just take a cue from Catholic Social Thought (CST) and create the term "Mormon Social Thought," but in October, 2018, Church president Russell M. Nelson encouraged members to retire the term "Mormon," as it has little to do with Church doctrine and merely happens to be the name of an ancient adherent to the religion. Okay, then: Latter-day Saint Social Thought (LDSST)? No dice. "LDS" is on the outs, too. Restoration Social Thought? Restored Christian Social Thought? I don't know.

Even if I had a name for it, there's no succinct way of stating what it is. There are a TON of terms for things LIKE it, but none actually fits. I'll write later this weekend about the variety of terms and their distinct meanings. And I'll try to determine which collection of them does the best job describing what I mean. But for now, I guess I'll call this socioeconomic system Restored Christian Social Thought (RCST).