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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

#401

Post by mistrial9 »

calibas wrote: post #62

I was told that capitalism is supposed to be opposed to ideals like theocracy, monarchy and socialism, but look at the Mormons, the Evangelicals, Saudi Arabia and China, they're better at capitalism than most capitalists. And I'm not ranting against capitalism, I'm against this fairy tale idea that capitalism somehow magically brings freedom. Especially in America, it's become part of national pride, yet we've forgot…

dramatically declining attendance and other factors, have led various Protestant churches in California to divest, divide or sub-let many family-oriented Church properties.. The LDS does not seem to be suffering from that.. so its not so simple as "for or against" .. there is execution and timing, and a lot of other factors

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

#402

Post by drKarl »

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 actually not real evidence that Jesus even existed. The "official" gospels were chosen in the council of Nicaea in the year 325. There were lots of other gospels wildly contradicting each other, which were arbitrarily dismissed. Even the chosen gospels contradict each other. The writers of the gospels were born between 50 and more than 100 years after the alleged story they're telling. No roman or jew historian of the time even mentions Jesus, and some mentions usually used to claim otherwise are either a medieval addition, or not really a mention of Jesus. I won't go through all otherwise this post would be extremely long. The myth of Jesus' life has many parallels with other mythical figures, like Mythra, Amon Ra, and others, which probably influenced and converged into the figure of Jesus. It was probably considered to be mythical until someone decided to make it historical for political reasons. There were also lots of "Messiah's", which was more expected to be a political and military leader to raise the Jews against the roman oppressors. Even if there was a man with a life similar to what is described in the gospels, minus the miracles, it wouldn't have been god anyway, so it doesn't really matter, but there's absolutely no evidence of that, so most likely there wasn't.

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

#403

Post by xlqiwq »

NiekvdMaas wrote: post #13
lr4444lr wrote: post #2

How much does the Roman Catholic Church have, especially when you appraise the artwork?

According to the article around 50 billion USD, so half the size.

The catholic church has unbelievable real estate locations in Europe. The arch diocese Cologne has 12 billion in assets.

If you count the real estate, it is easily at least 500 million per historic city in Europe. This is a rough estimate (area for 500 houses in absolutely top locations).

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

#404

Post by __david__ »

dkarl wrote: post #338
jacurtis wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can third this. I left about 7 years ago. I have moved from Wisconsin, to North Carolina, to Virginia, to Texas, and then to Washington. The Mormon church managed to find me each time. (I briefly moved to Pennsylvania for work for about 6 months between living in NC and VA, and that was the one time they never found me). I have always rejected all attempts to "re-activate" me. I have never provided notice of my lea…

FWIW, my friend was able to have her name completely removed from the membership rolls, and she was never visited after that except by random missionaries who didn't know who she was. Nobody she talked to in the church told her of the existence of this process, even when she was directly begging to be completely forgotten and never bothered again, which makes it sound like a conspiracy theory or an urban legend, but…

https://www.exmormon.org/remove.htm

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

#405

Post by jboggan »

tomrod wrote: post #9

That is just what is uncovered in the investment market with one subsidiary. They also own 2% of Florida[0], huge land tracts in Argentina, Oklahoma and elsewhere, and attractive urban real estate in most major metropolises including apartment complexes in PA. They centralize donation collection of tithes and good will offerings such that about 8% stays back at congregations (based on personal observation as the fina…

I don't fully agree with this characterization. My girlfriend and her brother have left the church and there seems to be zero love lost in the family or their friend group that they grew up with. I know that this does happen to many people but it is not a uniform experience.

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

#406

Post by Invictus0 »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #171

I'm an active Mormon, and I want to try to address a couple of the ideas being discussed on this thread. My purpose is not to change anyone's mind, nor is it to defend the LDS church in this particular case (actually I think they've got it quite wrong). Instead, it is to inform people what the culture of the church is like, and maybe if I'm really successful to help you understand how we can produce members like Clay…

Thanks for your comment, it provides nice additional context to the discussion--but I feel like you've done more to affirm the other comments in this thread than refute them. In your own words, the Church is a gerontocracy wielding enormous wealth and therefore power, dodging taxes, and siphoning funds intended for charitable purposes. It's one thing for the Church to want to avoid going bankrupt, but how can you justify an ostensibly charitable, non-profit organization amassing funds in excess of $100B?

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

#408

Post by GlenTheMachine »

Invictus0 wrote: post #406
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #171

I'm an active Mormon, and I want to try to address a couple of the ideas being discussed on this thread. My purpose is not to change anyone's mind, nor is it to defend the LDS church in this particular case (actually I think they've got it quite wrong). Instead, it is to inform people what the culture of the church is like, and maybe if I'm really successful to help you understand how we can produce members like Clay…

Thanks for your comment, it provides nice additional context to the discussion--but I feel like you've done more to affirm the other comments in this thread than refute them. In your own words, the Church is a gerontocracy wielding enormous wealth and therefore power, dodging taxes, and siphoning funds intended for charitable purposes. It's one thing for the Church to want to avoid going bankrupt, but how can you jus…

The claimed concern is that in a severe economic downturn, the church wants to be able to both continue operating and help people in need. They say it’s a rainy day fund, and I think in the leadership’s mind that’s exactly what it is.

The church’s yearly operating expenses are somewhere in the neighborhood of $7B. Add another $7B on top of that for feeding the membership in a Great Depression situation, and add a loss of 50% of your investments due to the stock market crash, and some loss of liquidity due to market turmoil, and a significant loss of tithing income due to that same downturn, and $100B isn’t that far off the right number.

The problem, of course, is that there are people who are hungry today. We don’t need to wait for an economic downturn to find people in need.

But I guess my overall point is this. The church makes a lot of mistakes, and it has some significant structural issues. But at core it isn’t malicious. Church leadership really isn’t getting rich off this. They’re true believers, and although they have a culture of secrecy you can usually take what they do say at face value.

They’re just... about forty years behind culturally, and very slow to change, and have a world view that was informed by many decades of teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And they really do believe that Jesus is going to return sometime soon.

But, again: people are hungry right now. We should feed them.

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

#409

Post by calcifer »

sturgill wrote: post #186
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…

I don’t know enough about the legal structure of [1] to have an informed opinion. Contacts and contracts are always the gift to children of connected parents. I hope to give the same to my kids... ;) I’m sure it happens as it does in any family (hello Biden!) but I’m not convinced it’s more prevalent in the Church than any other organization of people. It’s an interesting thought, but I’m not sure how prevalent it is…

> I don’t know enough [...] to have an informed opinion.

Spoken like a true believer, welcome to the church!

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

#410

Post by godelski »

tptacek wrote: post #396
godelski wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't surprising, but that's also not the point of the comment. If what you're taking away is "anyone can be saved" then you're __REALLY__ missing the point.

Educate me? I'm trying to understand.

The church (LDS) has 3 kingdoms of heaven (see link wiki I provided above). The lowest tier of heaven is where Hitler would go were he to accept Christ, in the afterlife. Presumably someone would do a baptism for him and he would have to accept it or not. The post is saying that those that leave the church would be placed into the same grouping as Hitler (tier 3).

My actual understanding, having grown up in the church, is that ex-members would actually go to the Terrestial Kingdom (tier 2). Though it depends on how you interpret "rejecting the gospel". The distinction depends on if I rejected the gospel or was a good person who was blinded by the evils of the world. The church is a little vague on the subject and I can easily understand an interpretation of ending up in the Tellestial Kingdom (tier 3). It can entirely be interpreted that I rejected the gospel and so am placed into the same category as mass murderers.

In my upbringing it was taught that the only people that went to hell were those that outright rejected the gospel with knowledge, so that puts a lower bound. See Doctrine and Covenants 76[0].

[0] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-test...

Side note: You can only get into the Celestial Kingdom (tier 1) if you accept the Mormon doctrine while on Earth (there are also 3 subdivisions of the Celestial Kingdom that you can move through within the afterlife, but you are not able to move kingdoms).

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