Origin from 1936
In April 1936, at general conference in Salt Lake City, Church President Heber J. Grant announced a new Church Security Plan, later renamed the Church Welfare Plan, to answer the Great Depression's toll on Latter-day Saint families without relying on government relief, more than four decades after the Salt Lake Temple's 1893 dedication, already recorded here. The plan organized stake presidencies into regional councils, encouraged fast offering donations to fund direct relief, put unemployed members to work on Church agricultural and manufacturing projects, and established a chain of bishops' storehouses, the first of them built in Salt Lake City, to store and distribute what those projects produced. The following month Elder Melvin J. Ballard traveled to Washington to explain the program to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who received it favorably, and the Church went on to build Welfare Square around the original storehouse and open its first Deseret Industries thrift store within two years, well before the Church opened its first temple in Europe at Bern, Switzerland in 1955, already recorded here.
Facts
Dates
StatusEstablished marks Heber J. Grant's April 1936 announcement of the Church Security Plan as an institutional milestone in Latter-day Saint self-reliance, a specific dated event between the Salt Lake Temple's 1893 dedication already recorded here and the Church's first European temple opening in 1955 also already recorded here. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Switzerland directly: "its first temple in Europe at Bern, Switzerland in 1955, already recorded here."
This source names Washington directly: "Ballard traveled to Washington to explain the program to President Franklin D."
Occurred In
Spread Event Of
Adds a specific, dated institutional milestone between the Salt Lake Temple's 1893 dedication and the Church's first European temple opening in 1955, both already recorded here: Heber J. Grant's April 1936 announcement of the Church Security Plan, later the Church Welfare Plan, organizing stake relief efforts, fast offerings, work projects, and bishops' storehouses during the Great Depression.
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