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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

#161

Post by jacques_chester »

zozbot234 wrote: post #53
cultus wrote: post #39

I cannot fathom why churches are automatically tax exempt. Regular nonprofits have to jump through all kinds of hoops to prevent these kind of shenanigans. We are supposed to have a secular government. How is it that we single out this one class of institution for special treatment?

Religious orgs are a time-tested model for providing sustainable and widespread social cohesion, which is a huge positive externality and also protects the most vulnerable against marginalization and oppression. The tax exemption seems obviously warranted on that basis alone, even abstracting away from any of the more visible charity work or social support that these orgs usually provide.

> Religious orgs are a time-tested model for providing sustainable and widespread social cohesion

I think we have read different history books.

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

#162

Post by umvi »

snuxoll wrote: post #112
annoyingnoob wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think having your members tithe is a big part of it. I know some wealthy mormons that have always given their 10%, at least that's what they tell me. I also know a couple of really large mormon families, like 12 kids large - they all tithe.

> at least that's what they tell me. Assuming the countless anecdotes on /r/exmormon are to be believed, nobody really gets a choice. Your local leaders will browbeat you and try to look over your financials if they don’t feel you are tithing appropriately.

/r/exmormon is a distillation of disgruntled exmembers. It's extremely biased and not representative at all of nearly anything.

Not all exmembers are disgruntled. The ones that aren't disgruntled don't hang out in /r/exmormon.

It's like distilling all of the people in the world who had a bad experience with the police to /r/fthecops and then using anecdotes in there to make assumptions about all police.

Or using anecdotes in /r/atheism to make assumptions about all religion.

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

#163

Post by starskublue »

tomrod wrote: post #160
sturgill wrote: post #107

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 Churc…

> I’m pretty comfortable assuming he would have made more money in his life had he not accepted a calling to full-time ministry. Two comments. [1] The Mormon church is a corporation sole, meaning presently Nelson is the sole controller of all assets. He could reasonably set up his family for life with beneficial contacts and contracts. That is worth more than (now probably expired) intellectual property associated wi…

[1] Yet no one has alleged that anything like that has happened. Also if I was 90 years old and had plenty of money I would much rather live a comfortable retired life than work at the pace he works at.

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

#164

Post by prepend »

xtracto wrote: post #142
zippie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this quoted a lot whenever there is discussion of wealth. However, as with all verses, the context is important as well as the follow up verses. This is not in defense of. 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” he inquired. Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you…

As an atheist I love reading these passages.. it is amazing how people in this day and age are trying to find "meanings" from a book full of the stories of one person... who lived 2000+ years ago.. imagine if someone tried to find meaning in Beckhams biography 2000 years from now...

There’s lots of wisdom in old texts. Plato is 2000+ years old. Heroditus. Confucius. Rumi is almost a 1000.

Beckham is a football player and isn’t known for writing down (or saying) wisdom. But I can definitely imagine people reading Marx and Darwin and Hayek 2000 years from now. Biographies and published text.

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

#165

Post by gwilliams »

darksaints wrote: post #111
darkerside wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moneymakers in the temple were making money for themselves, profiting off of the nominally faithful. This is very different from saying the church shouldn't acquire wealth.

The Mormon church tried for years to pretend that their leaders don't make money from the church. That too was confirmed as a lie not too long ago.

They don't get wealthy from it.

Those who work for the church full time (with the exception of missionaries) receive a stipend to cover their living expenses and not much else.

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

#166

Post by tomrod »

wincy wrote: post #132
Osiris wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they’re barely getting by, tithing their 10%, but the Mormon church is amassing such wealth yet my friend’s family of five is on food stamps. Something feels off there. The church has welfare programs to help members and non-members that are need. I've personally recommended such food and rent assistance from the church at a point in my life. I've even had the church cover expenses for mental health counseling. I'v…

Absolutely! As I said, I’m officially a member and live in a fairly affluent area. When I was unemployed and going through some tough times, even though I’ve never tithed they extended food aid to me. It was a very humbling experience, and if I didn’t have to believe all the stuff Joseph Smith made up I’d probably be an active Mormon. The ingroup exhortations of beliefs that, charitably, are very unlikely, is somethi…

You bring up something that bothers me too. The manipulation of local congregations in order to fund the central corporation is disappointing to say the least. Mormons are often the nicest people you'll find. It's a shame they are expected to express belief in racist, sexist, or other bigoted beliefs in order to be fully acceptable to their in-group.

I point out in another comment that, charitably, congregations receive about 8% of donations back to fund local congregations, often several multiples less. Some congregations I saw send about $25k/week on average for ~200 congregants, and have an $8k budget (about twice that if you account for mainteance, about about $20k when taking charitable giving of food and bill payment into account). What was most disappointing was the training of how to get people with long term needs off of the congregation's dime.

I think the Mormon church would do well to adopt a less centralized form of governance, treasury, and cash management.

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

#167

Post by ak217 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #90
sjwright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then that disadvantages groups which might perform the same role outside of a religious context. Thus in practice it only serves to have Government favour a specific genre of cohesion. (Not to mention that your so-called “cohesion” also includes Scientology, Westboro Baptists and prosperity theology.)

Government does not perform "the same role" of building up social capital at a truly grassroots level, unfortunately. Not even close. And the jury is still out wrt. non-religious social organizations, though some do appear to help quite a bit along those same lines, viz. labor unions and perhaps similar "interest-focused" mass groups.

"The jury is still out"? On what, the Rotary club?

Your underlying assumption that churches are unique as providers of social capital in modern society is... peculiar. The fact that churches are tax-exempt is a consequence of the dominant position of the Catholic church in the middle ages, and the compromises made in the subsequent struggle to remove the church bureaucracy from the government.

I expect that as religiousness across the US population declines, churches will gradually be required to behave more like other non-profits. But that will probably take many decades.

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

#168

Post by prepend »

darkerside wrote: post #91
dorian-graph wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when Jesus was not very fond of amassing money I'm guessing you're talking about the moneychangers being thrown out of the temple ? There are examples recorded in the scriptures of tithes and offerings, and also of a people preparing/amassing the relative wealth/supplies (Noah, Joseph, etc). There are multiple levels of preparedness taught in the LDS church. The lowest, the family, being to only have necessary debt…

The moneymakers in the temple were making money for themselves, profiting off of the nominally faithful. This is very different from saying the church shouldn't acquire wealth.

I would imagine that the moneychangers were paying some amount to the church.

I think the issue was that the church was being used as a place for worldly pursuits.

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

#169

Post by starskublue »

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…

I think the key difference is the Church's system is voluntary and communism is not voluntary.

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

#170

Post by tomrod »

starskublue wrote: post #163
tomrod wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m pretty comfortable assuming he would have made more money in his life had he not accepted a calling to full-time ministry. Two comments. [1] The Mormon church is a corporation sole, meaning presently Nelson is the sole controller of all assets. He could reasonably set up his family for life with beneficial contacts and contracts. That is worth more than (now probably expired) intellectual property associated wi…

[1] Yet no one has alleged that anything like that has happened. Also if I was 90 years old and had plenty of money I would much rather live a comfortable retired life than work at the pace he works at.

People have, it just doesn't hit home like seeing the $100B figure.[0]

[0] https://davidvbartosiewicz.blogspot.com/2010/12/lds-apostles...

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