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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

#461

Post by ryanwaggoner »

dang wrote: post #442
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the earful consists of a bunch of toxic nonsense about how I’m not raising my kid according to your dogmatic interpretations of some fairy tale from the Bronze Age, you can fuck right off. Being related doesn’t give you some inviolable right to my time or attention, despite what you may think. You can spout off all you want about “western views” and what your rights are because we share parents, but at the end…

Please don't react to flamebait by going into flamewar. We're trying to cultivate the exact opposite reaction here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, touched a nerve from my own family experience.

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

#463

Post by mola »

Fellshard wrote: post #201
camhart wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the role of agency (or choice) in your evaluation. Forcing someone to do something vs someone choosing to do it of their own accord is quite different.

Figures you're being downvoted to pieces, when this is among the key aspects of Jesus' teachings. Indeed, the entire Sermon on the Mount is centered around the centrality of the /heart/ as the seat of sin, and the thoughts and intentions of the /heart/ as being the fount from which actions stem. Individual sin is what Jesus demanded repentance from; there is no 'collective sin' in Scripture, though groups of people w…

I really think you have major misconceptions about social democrat ideology.

Your 'ancestral sin' interpretation could easily be said on capitalists who don't have a problem with people capital fortune being decided mostly a birth. (You're born poor, you are likely to stay poor, you're born rich you're likely to stay rich no matter what you do). Or, You could also easily say that the Protestant morals equate physical wealth accumulation with how moral you are. Because if you do good by God, of you'll get rewarded with prosperoty. In your lifetime.

This is of course nonsense just as your interpretation of social democrat ideology.

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

#464

Post by Aperocky »

jacurtis wrote: post #321
trenning wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they all get the same stipend which for many is less than they made in their professional lives It's weird how much this is being repeated in this thread. It's clear this opinion didn't form on an individual level but rather is directed by the church to their followers to repeat. It's an odd way of justifying position is all.

Ex Mormon here. Yes, it is drilled down into our brains. The same exact phrases. And the stipend is 6-figures per year (most members don't know this though, it was leaked a few times now on paystubs). But all travel and room is also paid for. Plus most leaders of the church that receive this stipend are 70+ years old, so they are already living off healthy retirements in addition to now free housing and a healthy sti…

It seem to me that humans who does advance to the top are either greedy, combative and out of touch. The question is whether the selection criteria favors such people or the position itself engages part of human nature that are such. I incline to the former, it's sad to see there's no other way to make decent leader other than have everyone's eye fixated on any mistake he might have made.

One more argument for AI overlord.

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

#465

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

In addition to the money changers (who exchanged local currency for Roman gold or silver), the dove sellers were also expelled. Doves were the cheapest sacrificial creature, and they were gouging poor widows.

The whole point is that the temple authorities were part of and profiting from what was happening. Jesus was dead with 10 days of this event.

There is a lot of depth here and it’s a genuinely fascinating story whether you ascribe to religious belief or not.

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

#466

Post by swsieber »

darksaints wrote: post #345
sturgill wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I called it an entity that invests in businesses. It very clearly has an investment arm (which I have known about for decades). The Church owns physical assets and I’m okay with that. I’d rather it have liquid assets than struggle to pay its bills like in the 1800s - early 1900s. I’m a fan of financial prudence. At the end of the day, and as unpopular as it is, I believe Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son. Other…

The modern church teaches that you should pay tithing irregardless of living condition, income level, destitution or poverty conditions. I taught this principle to people who were literally starving to death in Honduras. It was extremely hard for me to tell people who didn't even have a cup of rice in their 4x4 corrugated steel shack that they needed to donate 10% to the church before they could buy food for their th…

And Jesus praised the widow for casting in all she had. And Elijah took the last of the flour of that one family. The church is hardly unique in Christian theology in asking for sacrifices that requires faith.

Also church policy has changed over time too - the word of wisdom is a prime example of this.

If you want to find reasons to hate the church, you can. I guarantee it. If you believe God doesn't reward tithing, then yeah, it's scummy.

Personally, I believe and don't think it's scummy.

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

#467

Post by henrikschroder »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #196
snuxoll wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That has never been true in my experience. I’ve been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for most of my life and I have always struggled with tithing and offerings and nobody has ever said much to me about it. In my now 50+ year experience, the ONLY time tithing has ever been brought up is at the end of the year when the bishop asks if I’ve been a full tithe payer. I say “No,” and he writes th…

> I say “No,” and he writes that down on the little paper and then we’re done.

...and then he withdraws your temple recommendation, because that privilege is only reserved for full tithe payers. If he doesn't, he's going against church policy, and letting you off the hook nicely. Congrats, you won the local leader lottery.

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

#468

Post by henrikschroder »

bensonn wrote: post #239

Is 100 billion really that much? The church has 16 million members. That is about $6,000 per member. The church has had 200 years of tithing and compound interest to get to this point. If used as an endowment to support 16 million people in 170+ countries that doesn't seem too crazy. A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.

> A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.

Technically, legally, the current president of the Mormon church, Russel Nelson, has those 100 billion dollars, and everything else the church owns, because of its corporate structure.

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

#469

Post by henrikschroder »

ngngngng wrote: post #447
darksaints wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 billion in one fund. $32 billion accounted for in other funds [0]. Not to mention 2% of the land in Florida, several billion dollars in commercial and residential real estate. Who knows what else they're hiding. And 16 million members is fools' accounting. It doesn't account for the millions of people like me who don't go to church and yet are still members because I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to f…

> I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to force the church to take my name off the records. You literally just have to ask in writing. Send a letter to church headquarters in Salt Lake. But you already knew that didn't you? I swear ex-mormons are more devoted to getting people converted to their way of thinking than believing mormons are.

> You literally just have to ask in writing.

No, that is no longer true. Because of the popularity of services like quitmormon.com, all resignation requests have to be notarized since a couple of months back.

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

#470

Post by henrikschroder »

nabla9 wrote: post #372
ashton314 wrote: post #189

Here is one statement that the Church of Jesus Christ put out about their finances, which addresses several of the complaints/questions posited here: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-fina... I don’t see any incongruity with a church that teaches its members to save to likewise have a large savings fund. It’s not like they’re just hoarding money: the Church actively donates billions of dollars t…

> the Church actively donates billions of dollars to world-wide humanitarian projects. This is not true. Just tens of millions annually. Laughably small sum compared to $7 billion annually in tithes (in 2012). Insight: Mormon church made wealthy by donations https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-mormons/insi... How the Mormons Make Money- How the Mormon Church Makes Its Billions https://www.bloomberg.com/ne…

Yeah, but you see, building that temple in Rome was just so much more important than actual charity work...

I like how the Mormon church one-upped the Catholic church in this. The Catholic church sold indulgences, one-time absolutions for sin to fund their projects, but the Mormon church transformed it into a subscription service, for the low low fee of 10% of all your income forever.

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