By Heather Wrigley
Church Magazines
Several addresses during the 181st Annual General Conference of the Church were dedicated to the commemoration of the Church's welfare program, now celebrating its 75th year.
On its inaugural day in 1936, President David O. McKay, then a counselor in the First Presidency, affirmed the divinely inspired roots of the Church's welfare plan: "[The welfare program] is established by divine revelation, and there is nothing else in all the world that can so effectively take care of its members."1
Seventy-five years have come and gone. Economic cycles have run their course and begun again. The world has seen huge societal and cultural changes, and the Church has seen monumental growth.
But the words spoken of the Church's divinely inspired welfare plan on that day in 1936 are as true today as they were then.