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The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

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Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#101

Post by darksaints »

codingdave wrote: post #52
wincy wrote: post #12

So I’m officially a Mormon but am not a tithing member or active at all. I’ve asked some of my Mormon friends about this and their response is basically “well of course they are, how else would they build Zion in the city of Independence, Missouri?”. They’ve said that’s where the latter days will be spent a long time ago, and they’re preparing to make that a reality “when the time comes”. They have a form of socialis…

> It still sounds a lot like Communism, though. That is because it is, 100%. If your teacher freaked out over it, she is having trouble reconciling it with the American cultural meme of "Communism is pure evil.", which stems from the Cold War, not religious doctrine. And yes, something is off if a tithing LDS family is living on food stamps. I have had family who lost jobs and had no money, and the LDS church gave th…

Mormons might be confused given Ezra Taft Benson's use of the church and his position as president and prophet to literally promote the John Birch Society. If there was any indication from god that communism was evil, mormons believe it would come from their prophet, and in this case it did, thousands of times over.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#102

Post by zozbot234 »

tasogare wrote: post #87
dagmx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd definitely not agree with the "protects the most vulnerable against marginalization and oppression" Perhaps if you are a member of the church, but definitely not if you don't abide by the exact, often conservative , rules of a given church. Look at slavery, equal rights for lgbtq and people of color, abortion etc. Not only do people in power use the churches to hide their personal beliefs behind, many churches us…

> Look at slavery, equal rights for lgbtq and people of color, abortion etc. What are your talking about? I know no church that possess any slaves. Also, most christians around the world aren't white... > I mean the crusades were a thing... Yes, a defence after centuries of aggressions from a people and religion that stole huge territories. The invader showed no pity against non-believers and this attitude persists u…

> Yes, a defence after centuries of aggressions from a people and religion that stole huge territories.

That might prove grandparent's point, actually. But it's a fact that tribalism was a big force in the ancient world, and that likely provides the best explanation. The religious group that the crusaders fought against "stole huge territories", but so did the Romans before them. Who knows how relevant the religious motivation really was to them.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#103

Post by mattrp »

Findeton wrote: post #20
mythrwy wrote: post #11

Churches should go back to being churches. No reason a religious organization needs a 100 billion warchest. What they are planning to eventually do with it? Buy off my local pol? Buy Utah and secede? Never mind the advantageous tax treatment enjoyed. This disturbs me.

I would be happy if churches had exactly the same status as any other business. Nothing less, nothing more.

It is often the case that they do. For example, the church that I attend bought adjacent property to keep as vacant open space.. but since there is no church on the land, the church pays property tax on it just like any other non tax exempt entity would. Kind of ironic since if it were farmland deemed open space it would be a different story in most places. Our tax code is not perfect but the path forward is to look at it in totality... the minute you try to solve one problem here, you’ll create a dozen there. Churches are global organizations... I’m sure it wouldn’t take much thinking, painful as it may be, for the Mormons to decide to hold their wealth outside of the US should our tax policies become unsustainable for them. Just because it’s a large number doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#104

Post by tomrod »

themodelplumber wrote: post #84
Iwillgetby wrote: post #78

Question as a member. Would today be a good day to request that janitorial services be restored? Do I really need to clean the church's toilets once a year to get to heaven?

The cleaning is part of the church's treasured psychology of self-reliance, not just a money thing. In fact the money could be argued to have emerged from that self-reliance psychology, even if it's also true that a psychology can be emphasized within an organization or individual to a relatively pornographic degree (detached from current/realistic context). Plus they've been selling off buildings since they are such…

This seems like a post-hoc justification. The LDS facility services had several lifetime career workers they fired after implementing this policy, and the congregants rarely kept it as clean.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#106

Post by themodelplumber »

tasogare wrote: post #95
squarefoot wrote: post #70

"You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion".

You can do both at the same time like Raël (Claude Vorilhon) did.

I remember meeting some Raelians in Japan when I was a Mormon missionary! They had neat flyers. Major flyer jealousy.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#107

Post by sturgill »

Can you imagine the criticism if the investment arm was losing money? The Church does amazing work providing resources during crises. I’ve personally cut trees off of people’s houses with chainsaws provided by the Church and given buckets of sanitation supplies when hurricanes swept through Florida.

There is always a tension in “what do you spend now and what do you invest for later” but I honesty feel like the Church cannot win this argument. Those who are distrustful of organized religion can win if the church is poor (“why didn’t their ‘prophet’ know better”); if they’re rich (“why don’t they give to X”); or if they do nothing (“they teach their own members to save but don’t practice that themselves—the hypocrites”).

I’m a believer so my view is not disinterested, but where is the conversation that they are conservative in their investments; won’t make money from industries they teach against; etc.

There are very few people in the ecclesiastical arm of the church who work full-time and are provided a living stipend. And many of those people were very successful before leaving their professional lives.

The current President (Russel Nelson) was a pioneer in open heart surgery. I’m pretty comfortable assuming he would have made more money in his life had he not accepted a calling to full-time ministry.

To me this article is interesting but the reaction is predictable. People will read into the confirmation of whatever biases they had to begin with.

For my part, I’d rather the church invest wisely than poorly...

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#108

Post by throwaway894345 »

camhart wrote: post #36
x1oqw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always surprises me that wealthy churches pretend to take Christ seriously, when Jesus was not very fond of amassing money. I get why the churches do it (of course they don't believe in Christ), but why do the exploited masses believe them?

The concept of tithing is absolutely taught in the Bible. If you believe Christ to be the God of the Old Testament then He absolutely taught it. You seem to be under the impression all religious people who give tithing are merely being exploited. I can promise you are wrong there. The mentality of "I've had no such experience with God so everyone who claims they have is a kook" is quite ignorant. Perhaps you could le…

Did the parent significantly revise their comment? Because in its current incarnation, it doesn't argue against tithing nor that those who tithe are being exploited. It seems like you're responding to the wrong comment. For posterity, here's the original comment at the time that I read it:

> It always surprises me that wealthy churches pretend to take Christ seriously, when Jesus was not very fond of amassing money. I get why the churches do it (of course they don't believe in Christ), but why do the exploited masses believe them?

And here is your response:

> The concept of tithing is absolutely taught in the Bible. If you believe Christ to be the God of the Old Testament then He absolutely taught it. You seem to be under the impression all religious people who give tithing are merely being exploited. I can promise you are wrong there. The mentality of "I've had no such experience with God so everyone who claims they have is a kook" is quite ignorant. Perhaps you could learn something from those who have.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#109

Post by tomrod »

rrss wrote: post #100
xrd wrote: post #48

A prior discussion of Clay Christianson mentioned how he wouldn't play basketball on Sunday because it was the first small step that leads to larger steps (of sinning). This is a massive amount of money. I'm struggling to understand if this money was gathered under the tax exempt status of churches in the US. And if this isn't a bigger sin than playing basketball on Sunday, if you believe in sinning. Remember, downvo…

Clay Christensen was referring to one of the Ten Commandments - "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." I don't think many religions count churches not paying taxes as sins. Incidentally, Christensen almost certainly contributed a rather significant amount of money to this sum, and likely would have said it would be a sin not to have done so. "Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have w…

Note the irony that the scripture you quote was given to the priests, who were benefiting from the tithes and offerings of the nation [akin to the Mormon church giving luxurious homes to their General Authorities and plum book deals through Deseret Book], not the people themselves.

Tithing got re-defined over the years. Consider: https://puremormonism.blogspot.com/2012/12/are-we-paying-too...

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#110

Post by dagmx »

tasogare wrote: post #87
dagmx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd definitely not agree with the "protects the most vulnerable against marginalization and oppression" Perhaps if you are a member of the church, but definitely not if you don't abide by the exact, often conservative , rules of a given church. Look at slavery, equal rights for lgbtq and people of color, abortion etc. Not only do people in power use the churches to hide their personal beliefs behind, many churches us…

> Look at slavery, equal rights for lgbtq and people of color, abortion etc. What are your talking about? I know no church that possess any slaves. Also, most christians around the world aren't white... > I mean the crusades were a thing... Yes, a defence after centuries of aggressions from a people and religion that stole huge territories. The invader showed no pity against non-believers and this attitude persists u…

I never mentioned ethnicity or "race" in my post. That was your own take. Slavery existed around the world.

Per the former, you'd have to be ignoring the argument that many slave owners made during the slave era up to today with many pro Confederates, who claim slavery was a God given right. This was not fought by many southern churches to my knowledge.

The point of mentioning the crusades was to point out that church powered oppression is a thing that's gone on through history.

I don't really understand your argument here. The point I was making, and others, was that the churches have no historical or current consistent fight against oppression, and have often been the oppressors themselves.

Nothing you said refutes that. It just says you don't care. Which are two different things

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