Social Work Theology: Joseph Smith, Bill W., and the Grammar of Practice

Joseph Smith and Bill W., though separated by a century and operating within markedly different religious imaginaries, each generated enduring communities of social and caritative care. Smith’s restorationist project organized revelation, covenant, and communal discipline toward the horizon of Zion, while Bill W.’s Twelve-Step fellowship ritualized surrender, anonymity, and mutual aid toward the promise of serenity. This article places these figures in analytic dialogue not as theological authorities but as laboratories of transformation whose practices disclose recurring structures through which social and caritative care is organized and sustained. Drawing on social work theology, the analysis employs three interlocking interpretive matrices—five types of intelligibility, five forms of corporeality, and five modes of consciousness—to examine how each movement configures meaning, embodiment, and responsibility amid breakdown and renewal. In doing so, the article clarifies their internal grammars and reveals analogous structures already operative within contemporary social work practice.