(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
In reading various responses to the controversy engendered by the Washington Post‘s would-be “exposé” regarding the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I find myself thinking about a statement from St. Thomas Aquinas:
“For those with faith,” St. Thomas said, “no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.”
I also find myself thinking about a famous story from Genesis 41 (given here, partially, in the NIV translation):
46 Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout Egypt. 47 During the seven years of abundance the land produced plentifully. 48 Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it. 49 Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure. . . .
Were there no Egyptian poor at the time? (There are plenty of them today.) Could that grain not have been distributed to the needy? Why was Joseph hoarding it? Greed? Justified on the basis of pretended “revelation”?
But consider the sequel:
53 The seven years of abundance in Egypt came to an end, 54 and the seven years of famine began, just as Joseph had said. There was famine in all the other lands, but in the whole land of Egypt there was food. 55 When all Egypt began to feel the famine, the people cried to Pharaoh for food. Then Pharaoh told all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph and do what he tells you.”
56 When the famine had spread over the whole country, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe throughout Egypt. 57 And all the world came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe everywhere.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-18.html
Sunday, December 29, 2019
LDS Inc. - part 17
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
Some new pieces have come out in reaction to the Washington Post’s recent “exposé” about the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This one, for example, is quite positive and comes from a practicing member of the Church:
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ finances and honoring the widow’s mite”
Another active member of the Church weighs in:
“Loyola University Law Professor Sam Brunson On Transparency In The Mormon Church”
John Turner, a non-Latter-day Saint historian (a somewhat critical biographer of Brigham Young but, in my experience with him, a really nice guy), also waded into the controversy:
“Mormons and money: An unorthodox and messy history of church finances”
One of the people who should be invited by the news media to comment on the story is the historian D. Michael Quinn, an excommunicated former Latter-day Saint who has been quite willing in the past to criticize Church leaders and the Church itself, but whose lifelong interest in Church finances, culminating in his 2017 volume The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth & Corporate Power, had him praising Church leaders and telling Latter-day Saints that they should be “proud” of the way the Church has managed its financial stewardship. Listen to a 2017 interview with Dr. Quinn here:
“D. Michael Quinn on LDS Church finances”
Another person who should probably be invited to comment is the economist and economic historian Larry Wimmer, who reviewed Dr. Quinn’s book for Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:
“Through a Glass Darkly: Examining Church Finances”
I note with interest (pun not entirely unintentional) the figure that has been bandied about by the “whistleblower” and his anti-Mormon activist brother and various controversialists: If I’m not mistaken, they say that the Church takes in approximately seven billion dollars annually in tithing, and that it spends six billion of those dollars on temples and chapels and humanitarian aid and educational subsidies and the like, while putting one billion dollars aside each year for a “rainy day” fund.
By my calculation, that has the Church saving or investing just slightly less than 14.3% of its annual income. Some critics regard that as exorbitant, unchristian, immoral, and possibly illegal.
But it doesn’t seem exorbitant or excessive to me. It appears that the Church is simply following its own counsel, given to its members for many generations, on prudent or provident living.
Non-Latter-day Saint counselors — including the left-leaning Senator Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi, in their book All Your Worth: Your Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan — regularly suggest that individuals and families try to save something in the range of 20% of their incomes. Here are some examples:
TIAA
Money Under Thirty
The Balance
Forbes
Capital One
I’m grateful that the Church’s funds are competently managed. Among other things, such successful management makes possible the construction of temples in places like Richmond, Virginia, and Aba, Nigeria.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-17.html
Some new pieces have come out in reaction to the Washington Post’s recent “exposé” about the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This one, for example, is quite positive and comes from a practicing member of the Church:
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ finances and honoring the widow’s mite”
Another active member of the Church weighs in:
“Loyola University Law Professor Sam Brunson On Transparency In The Mormon Church”
John Turner, a non-Latter-day Saint historian (a somewhat critical biographer of Brigham Young but, in my experience with him, a really nice guy), also waded into the controversy:
“Mormons and money: An unorthodox and messy history of church finances”
One of the people who should be invited by the news media to comment on the story is the historian D. Michael Quinn, an excommunicated former Latter-day Saint who has been quite willing in the past to criticize Church leaders and the Church itself, but whose lifelong interest in Church finances, culminating in his 2017 volume The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth & Corporate Power, had him praising Church leaders and telling Latter-day Saints that they should be “proud” of the way the Church has managed its financial stewardship. Listen to a 2017 interview with Dr. Quinn here:
“D. Michael Quinn on LDS Church finances”
Another person who should probably be invited to comment is the economist and economic historian Larry Wimmer, who reviewed Dr. Quinn’s book for Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:
“Through a Glass Darkly: Examining Church Finances”
I note with interest (pun not entirely unintentional) the figure that has been bandied about by the “whistleblower” and his anti-Mormon activist brother and various controversialists: If I’m not mistaken, they say that the Church takes in approximately seven billion dollars annually in tithing, and that it spends six billion of those dollars on temples and chapels and humanitarian aid and educational subsidies and the like, while putting one billion dollars aside each year for a “rainy day” fund.
By my calculation, that has the Church saving or investing just slightly less than 14.3% of its annual income. Some critics regard that as exorbitant, unchristian, immoral, and possibly illegal.
But it doesn’t seem exorbitant or excessive to me. It appears that the Church is simply following its own counsel, given to its members for many generations, on prudent or provident living.
Non-Latter-day Saint counselors — including the left-leaning Senator Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi, in their book All Your Worth: Your Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan — regularly suggest that individuals and families try to save something in the range of 20% of their incomes. Here are some examples:
TIAA
Money Under Thirty
Forbes
Capital One
I’m grateful that the Church’s funds are competently managed. Among other things, such successful management makes possible the construction of temples in places like Richmond, Virginia, and Aba, Nigeria.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-17.html
LDS Inc. - part 16
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
In the excellent new Latter-day Saint publication Public Square, Aaron Miller has provided a lucid and extremely useful response to the current controversy about the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I recommend it highly:
“The $100 Billion ‘Mormon Church’ Story: A Contextual Analysis”
However, I offer a quibbling footnote to just one paragraph in Professor Miller’s article, which reads as follows:
“Related to this, and arguably the most revealing is the fact that those who control these assets are not getting wealthy from them. Part-time volunteer Church leaders are not paid. Full-time Church leaders are given an annual stipend that is frequently much less than what they were earning prior to their ministry. It’s speculated that some or many of the wealthier full-time leaders simply donate much or all of their money back to the Church. The lack of transparency, whatever its motivation, doesn’t appear to be driven by greed.”
Two or three years ago, when an earlier controversy about Church finances had broken out, specifically regarding compensation for General Authorities, the widow of a former member of the Seventy with whom I happen to be acquainted told me that, at the time that President Gordon B. Hinckley invited her husband to serve as a general Church leader, he also asked whether he would require financial compensation. No, her husband answered. He would not. He had been a successful corporate leader, and could survive on his savings and investments. “Wonderful,” President Hinckley replied. So her husband served for several years without drawing any money from the Church. (Thus, it’s not mere “speculation” “that some . . . of the wealthier full-time leaders simply donate much or all of their money back to the Church.”) Moreover, she told me, she was aware of several other General Authorities who did the same, and she suspected that there were still more. It wasn’t a topic that was much discussed among them.
In the meantime, there seems to be discord between the “whistleblower” and his anti-Mormon activist brother:
“Mormon Whistleblower Denounces Brother’s Media Leaks as Church Responds to $100 Billion Tithing Controversy”
Presiding Bishop Gérald Caussé, whose responsibilities include oversight of the temporal aspects of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and whose new house is shown in the photograph above, is a principal source for the significant article below:
“An inside look at how Church finances fund humanitarian efforts, temples, worship, missionaries and education”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-16.html
In the excellent new Latter-day Saint publication Public Square, Aaron Miller has provided a lucid and extremely useful response to the current controversy about the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I recommend it highly:
“The $100 Billion ‘Mormon Church’ Story: A Contextual Analysis”
However, I offer a quibbling footnote to just one paragraph in Professor Miller’s article, which reads as follows:
“Related to this, and arguably the most revealing is the fact that those who control these assets are not getting wealthy from them. Part-time volunteer Church leaders are not paid. Full-time Church leaders are given an annual stipend that is frequently much less than what they were earning prior to their ministry. It’s speculated that some or many of the wealthier full-time leaders simply donate much or all of their money back to the Church. The lack of transparency, whatever its motivation, doesn’t appear to be driven by greed.”
Two or three years ago, when an earlier controversy about Church finances had broken out, specifically regarding compensation for General Authorities, the widow of a former member of the Seventy with whom I happen to be acquainted told me that, at the time that President Gordon B. Hinckley invited her husband to serve as a general Church leader, he also asked whether he would require financial compensation. No, her husband answered. He would not. He had been a successful corporate leader, and could survive on his savings and investments. “Wonderful,” President Hinckley replied. So her husband served for several years without drawing any money from the Church. (Thus, it’s not mere “speculation” “that some . . . of the wealthier full-time leaders simply donate much or all of their money back to the Church.”) Moreover, she told me, she was aware of several other General Authorities who did the same, and she suspected that there were still more. It wasn’t a topic that was much discussed among them.
In the meantime, there seems to be discord between the “whistleblower” and his anti-Mormon activist brother:
“Mormon Whistleblower Denounces Brother’s Media Leaks as Church Responds to $100 Billion Tithing Controversy”
Presiding Bishop Gérald Caussé, whose responsibilities include oversight of the temporal aspects of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and whose new house is shown in the photograph above, is a principal source for the significant article below:
“An inside look at how Church finances fund humanitarian efforts, temples, worship, missionaries and education”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-16.html
LDS Inc. - part 15
(by Dan Peters sic et non blog)
Lately, in my informal little series of blog posts on the theme of “LDS Inc.,” I’ve included photographs of the relatively humble homes of recent Church presidents. Some critics have claimed that such photographs are irrelevant, but I regard them as highly relevant: They visibly support the important proposition that, unlike certain Renaissance cardinals and popes and evidently unlike some television evangelists, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not becoming wealthy off of the tithes and offerings of faithful Church members.
Another response, though, has been to note that I’m not showing the homes of current Church leaders but, rather, those of long past leaders. Apparently some people imagine that the homes of the prophets and apostles suddenly became gigantic and lavish upon the death of the immediately prior president of the Church, Thomas S. Monson, which occurred way back in 2018. (A color photograph of President Monson’s home — color photography was virtually unknown in that distant era — was featured in “LDS Inc. [Part 13].”)
Now, one might think — and I would of course say — that I haven’t posted photographs of the homes of current Church leaders out of respect for the privacy of living persons. But that obviously can’t be true; my motivations are never honest, honorable, or good. And, as it happens, Church leaders did suddenly become shameless plutocrats back in distant 2018 and their homes did suddenly become enormous palaces in that bygone era before internet transparency. (Witness the accompanying photographs that I reveal here for the very first time. They will eventually appear in my explosive forthcoming Letter to an AIA Architect.)
Here are some helpful new materials on LDS Church finances:
“How the Church of Jesus Christ Uses Tithes and Donations”
“Church presiding bishop details how tithing and donations are used: ‘It’s about building a reserve of the church, and ultimately, all of those funds will be used for church purposes,’ Bishop Gérald Caussé says”
“LDS Church fund unlikely to face IRS backlash, experts say”
“Global Effort to ‘Light the World’ Generates Donations for Charities: Giving Machines in 10 locations”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-15.html
Lately, in my informal little series of blog posts on the theme of “LDS Inc.,” I’ve included photographs of the relatively humble homes of recent Church presidents. Some critics have claimed that such photographs are irrelevant, but I regard them as highly relevant: They visibly support the important proposition that, unlike certain Renaissance cardinals and popes and evidently unlike some television evangelists, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not becoming wealthy off of the tithes and offerings of faithful Church members.
Another response, though, has been to note that I’m not showing the homes of current Church leaders but, rather, those of long past leaders. Apparently some people imagine that the homes of the prophets and apostles suddenly became gigantic and lavish upon the death of the immediately prior president of the Church, Thomas S. Monson, which occurred way back in 2018. (A color photograph of President Monson’s home — color photography was virtually unknown in that distant era — was featured in “LDS Inc. [Part 13].”)
Now, one might think — and I would of course say — that I haven’t posted photographs of the homes of current Church leaders out of respect for the privacy of living persons. But that obviously can’t be true; my motivations are never honest, honorable, or good. And, as it happens, Church leaders did suddenly become shameless plutocrats back in distant 2018 and their homes did suddenly become enormous palaces in that bygone era before internet transparency. (Witness the accompanying photographs that I reveal here for the very first time. They will eventually appear in my explosive forthcoming Letter to an AIA Architect.)
Here are some helpful new materials on LDS Church finances:
“How the Church of Jesus Christ Uses Tithes and Donations”
“Church presiding bishop details how tithing and donations are used: ‘It’s about building a reserve of the church, and ultimately, all of those funds will be used for church purposes,’ Bishop Gérald Caussé says”
“LDS Church fund unlikely to face IRS backlash, experts say”
“Global Effort to ‘Light the World’ Generates Donations for Charities: Giving Machines in 10 locations”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-15.html
LDS Inc. - part 14
 |
| President Hunter home |
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
Alfred W. McCune, a prominent Utah financier, railroad builder, mine operator, and industrialist, built what came to be known as the McCune Mansion in 1900. Just north of downtown Salt Lake City, the mansion was given to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1920 as a proposed private residence for the president of the Church. However, President Heber J. Grant felt that the building, with its elaborate interior, sculpture, and art, was too opulent for the president of the Church and determined that it should be used, instead, as a cultural center, the McCune School of Music and Art. (Thanks to Kelly Bingham for calling this to my attention.)
Here’s a relevant piece from Paul Alan Cox:
“7 reasons I am grateful for the principle of tithing”
And here’s a good article by the always-worthwhile Boyd Matheson:
“Is the Church of Jesus Christ rich, or is it enriching?”
Here’s a nice piece by Dr. S. Hales Swift:
“Post-Mortem Analysis on this Year’s Exposé Stunt”
I have always very much admired the website “Get Religion,” which is run by the veteran journalist Terry Mattingly. I do not, however, admire this piece by Julia Duin, which seems to take the accusations made recently in the Washington Post at face value:
“Washington Post and ReligionUnplugged both land stories on Mormon $100 billion slush fund”
I wrote a brief note to Mr. Mattingly this morning. He responded, asking “What is the publication that has on the record statements that contradict the claims of the whistleblower, since what we have at this stage is claims?” And he wrote a second time, saying “Please understand that Julia is critiquing the coverage, not doing ground up coverage herself. Critique is what we do here. Also, everyone is presenting the whistleholder material as what it is — charges that will be investigated.”
If anybody wants to engage with Mr. Mattingly in response to his question and comments, please do so. (His contact information is available on the site.) I’m on the road today and have little disposable time. I hope that you will do it, if you do it, calmly, respectfully, and substantively. It’s a good site. They’re good people, and not enemies. We are, if anything, more allies than opponents.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-14.html
LDS Inc. - part 13
 |
| President Monson's home |
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
Well, Church finances are really in the news in the wake of the Washington Post‘s “exposé.” And it seems that my little informal and chatty series on “LDS Inc.” was remarkably well-timed if not altogether prescient. So much so that some of my more unhinged critics are smelling a conspiracy behind it.
But the claims made in the Post aren’t being received with universal genuflection.
Here, for example, is a piece by the estimable Tad Walch at the Deseret News:
“Church responds to allegations made by former employee in IRS complaint”
And here are some comments by Jana Riess, who is not at all unwilling to criticize the institutional Church and its leaders:
“How persuasive is whistleblower’s claim the LDS church is hiding wealth from the IRS?”
And here is a response by a plainly non-Latter-day Saint contributor to the financial magazine Forbes:
“$100 Billion In Mormon Till Does Not Merit IRS Attention”
My friend Tom Pittman instructively juxtaposes two propositions asserted by the so-called “whistleblower” in this case:
- These are donated funds and they should be used for charitable purposes.
- A sizeable proportion of them should be given to me, as the whistleblower.
***
I ran across the claim yet again just this morning, in connection with a report that a real estate organization affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is looking to buy a substantial piece of property in London, that what “the Church” intends to expend on the building is far more than what it expends per year on humanitarian aid.
I’ve been mocked for belaboring the point — a point that should be obvious to anybody thinking clearly about the topic — that an “expenditure” on an investment (e.g., a deposit in a bank account, or a purchase of property, or any other means of storing wealth for future use) is fundamentally different from an “expenditure” on a non-investment (e.g., on a wedding reception, a crate of expensive wine, or, for that matter, a charitable gift).
But the difference is crucial.
Those who claim, often in an accusatory tone, that the Church “spends” more on investments than on actual charity — an accusation, by the way, that appears to be false with respect to the Church as a whole — could, with far greater justice, level precisely the same charge against virtually every charitable foundation in existence. Does the Rockefeller Foundation have more in investments than it distributes in any given year? Does the Ford Foundation? Does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Of course they do. Could they give all of their assets away within a twelve-month period? Of course they could.
Should they? That’s up to them. It’s not a moral issue. It’s one of prudence and stewardship. It’s a decision about which good people can differ.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-13.html
LDS Inc. - part 12
 |
| President Kimball's home |
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
By now, many of you will be aware of the Washington Post exposé entitled “Mormon Church misled members on $100 billion fund, whistleblower alleges.” There has already been an official response from the First Presidency:
“First Presidency Statement on Church Finances: Statement provided in response to media stories”
There will probably be other responses, and I look forward to reading them. Here is an excellent reply that has appeared in the Deseret News:
“The Washington Post says the Church of Jesus Christ has billions. Thank goodness”
I also expect that one of the people invited by the news media to comment on the story will be the historian D. Michael Quinn, an excommunicated former Latter-day Saint who has been quite willing in the past to criticize Church leaders and the Church itself, but whose lifelong interest in Church finances, culminating in his 2017 volume The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth & Corporate Power, had him praising Church leaders and telling Latter-day Saints that they should be “proud” of the way the Church has managed its financial stewardship.
Anyway, he should be consulted for comment. Listen to a 2017 interview with Dr. Quinn here:
“D. Michael Quinn on LDS Church finances”
Another person who should probably be invited to comment is the economist and economic historian Larry Wimmer, who reviewed Dr. Quinn’s book for Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:
“Through a Glass Darkly: Examining Church Finances”
I claim no special expertise on this subject, and I should not be interviewed regarding it. I’m neither a tax lawyer nor an accountant nor a historian of the modern Church, let alone an organizational insider. But I do have a couple of things to say about the topic.
I’m guessing that at least a few of the Washington Post’s readers will assume, at the end of the article, that this is simply yet another sordid tale of ecclesiastical leaders enriching themselves, in the manner of certain television evangelists, off of the contributions of the faithful. But there is no evidence for this. Zero. (See Dr. Quinn’s book.)
And I will offer this observation:
As it happens, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time in the homes of several General Authorities, including two very senior members of the Twelve (both now still fairly recently deceased). These homes were nice, but they were very far from lavish. (Many homes in my neighborhood are newer, bigger, and more expensively furnished.) They weren’t in special enclaves or even gated communities.
I conclude from my observations that the General Authorities do not grow wealthy from their service. For, if they do, where does that wealth go? Not, plainly, into their homes. And not into lavish vacations, either, because their travel schedules are quite well known. (I personally know that some General Authorities who were capable of it have served without any remuneration at all from the Church.)
Moreover, I’ve been involved in many meetings with the Brethren (not only in my own wards and stakes but at Church headquarters and elsewhere), and I have some sense of their typical daily calendars. Service as a General Authority is anything but “retirement.” It’s endless meetings and committees and responsibilities, day in and day out and on weekends, in Salt Lake City and across the United States and around the world, until they’re released as General Authorities at something like the age of seventy (and at that point, often, called to serve as temple presidents or in some other demanding capacity). Or, if they’re ordained apostles — who are not permitted to retire — it continues until they’re released by death. Commonly in their eighties or nineties. Service as a General Authority is scarcely a posh and easy life.
Who is profiting from the Church’s “wealth”? Definitely not its leaders.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-12.html
LDS Inc. - part 11
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
Some insist on reading what I’ve been writing here as my argument that it’s perfectly fine for a Church to look like and behave like a typical American business or corporation, to be motivated by the same profit incentives that motivate profit-seeking corporations — while exploiting tax breaks that properly pertain only to legitimate churches and non-profits — and that corporate culture is somehow intrinsically good.
I’m arguing none of these things.
Fundamentally, I do not grant the premise that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a profit-driven corporation masquerading as a church. Not only do I not grant it, I find the allegation spectacularly false, both ridiculous and offensive.
Home and visiting teaching aren’t about profits. Ministering isn’t about profits.
Family history isn’t about profits.
Temples aren’t about profits.
Bishops storehouses aren’t about profits.
Latter-day Saint Charities is not about profits.
Now, I’m aware of arguments that attempt to demonstrate that nobody ever does anything for selfless reasons. They can be clever, but, in the end, they strike me as mere sophistry and equivocation. And I’m no more impressed when analogous arguments are applied to the Church. Temples are simply not profit-seeking investments. The various campuses of Brigham Young University and LDS Business College and the Church’s seminaries and institutes are simply not designed to maximize income. Even the much reviled City Creek Mall — which was clearly intended as an urban renewal project for downtown Salt Lake City, for the area immediately surrounding Temple Square, the Conference Center, and the Church’s leadership campus (a private investment that would be generally regarded, elsewhere and by non-ideologues, as deserving of praise) — closes on Sundays, and the decision behind such Sabbath-closure was plainly not driven by greed.
When I was serving as a bishop, it was certainly never about profits. Not for me and not for the Church.
Here too, though, I’m aware of some who argue that there is a difference between the sincere and devout rank and file and “the Church,” a distinct and distinctly cynical corporate entity. Local bishops and other leaders are probably idealistic dupes, but the higher leaders are, at the least, more complex in their motives — at the extreme, in the view of some very radical critics, the Church is rather like the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.
There is, however, no evidence for this. See, for example:
D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power
Larry T. Wimmer, “Through a Glass Darkly: Examining Church Finances”
We have no distinct clergy or leadership caste in the Church, no elite with its own distinct interests. The men who currently serve in the Presiding Bishopric, the quorums of the Seventy, the Council of the Twelve, and the First Presidency spent most of their lives as missionaries, elders quorum presidents, bishops, mission presidents, counselors in stake presidencies, and so forth. They weren’t in quest of profits. They weren’t in it for themselves. Nor are they now.
I’ve always liked this reminiscence from Heber J. Grant, who was called to the Twelve in 1882, and who served as president of the Church from 1918 to 1945:
“I had a letter when I, as a young man, was made an apostle, from a nonmember of the Church. … Of prominence in the world so far as business affairs are concerned, he was the manager of a great corporation. … He said: ‘I never thought very much of the leaders of the Mormon people, in fact I thought they were a very bright, keen, designing lot of fellows, getting rich from the tithes that they gathered in from a lot of ignorant, superstitious, and over-zealous religious people. But now that you are one of the fifteen men at the head of the Mormon Church, I apologize to the other fourteen. I know that if there were anything crooked in the management of the Mormon Church you would give it all away’”
I believe in the divine mission of the Church. I recognize that money is necessary for that mission to be achieved. I believe that the law of the tithe is divinely given, that it was revealed before Moses and that it continues in this dispensation. I believe that the Church should prudently manage the funds placed in its care, so as to maximize the good that can be done with it. I believe that money is a means to an end. It is, most definitely and unequivocally, not an end in itself.
Pretty straightforward, that. No slavish worship of corporate finance, no apologetic for greed masquerading as religion.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-eleven.html
Some insist on reading what I’ve been writing here as my argument that it’s perfectly fine for a Church to look like and behave like a typical American business or corporation, to be motivated by the same profit incentives that motivate profit-seeking corporations — while exploiting tax breaks that properly pertain only to legitimate churches and non-profits — and that corporate culture is somehow intrinsically good.
I’m arguing none of these things.
Fundamentally, I do not grant the premise that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a profit-driven corporation masquerading as a church. Not only do I not grant it, I find the allegation spectacularly false, both ridiculous and offensive.
Home and visiting teaching aren’t about profits. Ministering isn’t about profits.
Family history isn’t about profits.
Temples aren’t about profits.
Bishops storehouses aren’t about profits.
Latter-day Saint Charities is not about profits.
Now, I’m aware of arguments that attempt to demonstrate that nobody ever does anything for selfless reasons. They can be clever, but, in the end, they strike me as mere sophistry and equivocation. And I’m no more impressed when analogous arguments are applied to the Church. Temples are simply not profit-seeking investments. The various campuses of Brigham Young University and LDS Business College and the Church’s seminaries and institutes are simply not designed to maximize income. Even the much reviled City Creek Mall — which was clearly intended as an urban renewal project for downtown Salt Lake City, for the area immediately surrounding Temple Square, the Conference Center, and the Church’s leadership campus (a private investment that would be generally regarded, elsewhere and by non-ideologues, as deserving of praise) — closes on Sundays, and the decision behind such Sabbath-closure was plainly not driven by greed.
When I was serving as a bishop, it was certainly never about profits. Not for me and not for the Church.
Here too, though, I’m aware of some who argue that there is a difference between the sincere and devout rank and file and “the Church,” a distinct and distinctly cynical corporate entity. Local bishops and other leaders are probably idealistic dupes, but the higher leaders are, at the least, more complex in their motives — at the extreme, in the view of some very radical critics, the Church is rather like the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.
There is, however, no evidence for this. See, for example:
D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power
Larry T. Wimmer, “Through a Glass Darkly: Examining Church Finances”
We have no distinct clergy or leadership caste in the Church, no elite with its own distinct interests. The men who currently serve in the Presiding Bishopric, the quorums of the Seventy, the Council of the Twelve, and the First Presidency spent most of their lives as missionaries, elders quorum presidents, bishops, mission presidents, counselors in stake presidencies, and so forth. They weren’t in quest of profits. They weren’t in it for themselves. Nor are they now.
I’ve always liked this reminiscence from Heber J. Grant, who was called to the Twelve in 1882, and who served as president of the Church from 1918 to 1945:
“I had a letter when I, as a young man, was made an apostle, from a nonmember of the Church. … Of prominence in the world so far as business affairs are concerned, he was the manager of a great corporation. … He said: ‘I never thought very much of the leaders of the Mormon people, in fact I thought they were a very bright, keen, designing lot of fellows, getting rich from the tithes that they gathered in from a lot of ignorant, superstitious, and over-zealous religious people. But now that you are one of the fifteen men at the head of the Mormon Church, I apologize to the other fourteen. I know that if there were anything crooked in the management of the Mormon Church you would give it all away’”
I believe in the divine mission of the Church. I recognize that money is necessary for that mission to be achieved. I believe that the law of the tithe is divinely given, that it was revealed before Moses and that it continues in this dispensation. I believe that the Church should prudently manage the funds placed in its care, so as to maximize the good that can be done with it. I believe that money is a means to an end. It is, most definitely and unequivocally, not an end in itself.
Pretty straightforward, that. No slavish worship of corporate finance, no apologetic for greed masquerading as religion.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-eleven.html
LDS Inc. - part 10
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
I posted the item below in October 2017, and it seems directly relevant to the topic that I’ve been pursuing in this series of blog entries:
I listened late tonight (Monday night) to an interview with historian D. Michael Quinn, on the Mormon News Report. I highly recommend the interview. (It begins at just about precisely the 45-minute mark of the podcast.)
In the past, I’ve been critical of some of Mike Quinn’s writing, and I’ve published things that were critical of his some of his work. But I’ve also liked a lot of what he’s done — especially his early articles — and I’ve said so. Back in the day, I thought he was one of the most interesting and insightful historians working on Mormonism. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, of course — to coin a wholly original new phrase — and, to put it mildly, Mike Quinn is no fan of mine.
This interview, though, which focuses on his new book The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power, is well worth the half-hour or so that it will take out of your life.
As just about anybody who recognizes the name of D. Michael Quinn also knows, he was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September 1993. That has made him a martyr and a hero to more than a few critics. But how, I wonder, will they react to what he’s saying on this topic? Detractors of Mormonism who might have been expecting his new book to be hostile to the Church and its leaders will, I think, be deeply disappointed. (Very possibly, they’ll simply pretend that he’s said nothing at all.)
In this interview, Dr. Quinn expresses frank admiration for the Church’s management of its finances, which he sees as essential to the global expansion of Mormonism. Moreover, although some enemies of the Church have been denouncing it for un-Christian corporate greed and, as is sometimes said, for giving only 40 million dollars to “charity” each year out of 15 billion in annual “profits” — see, on this, my recent blog entry “A church run by greedy and rapacious robber barons?” — Dr. Quinn points out that this claim grossly distorts the reality: Those 40 million dollars represent only the cash that the Church devotes to humanitarian efforts. The food and clothing and medicines and other goods that it gives, as well as the service that it coordinates and sponsors and provides — in other words, its non-cash humanitarian and welfare assistance — represent contributions many times the size of that $40m cash sum.
http://www.theculturalhallpodcast.com/2017/10/16/mormon-news-report-podcast-episode-15-week-of-october-16-2017/
Dr. Quinn believes that the Church should renew its longtime practice of publishing basic information about its annual finances. Not, though, because he believes that there are dirty secrets to be revealed. Quite the contrary, he says — and I’m inclined to agree with him — that doing so would be “faith-promoting.”
I’m not sure why we don’t publish at least a simple annual financial report. I can think of one reason, which may or may not play a role: There are critics who would obsessively comb through the figures, complaining that more money should go to x and that less money should go to y, second-guessing Church leadership at every turn, and I can easily imagine that some leaders just don’t want to deal with such nonsense.
But I am, on the whole, in favor of more openness and greater transparency. We have nothing to hide. I favor such a policy for our history, and I favor it for our finances.
Two parallels:
An acquaintance, a close friend to a close friend of mine, was in the Church’s leadership in the Philippines during a recent period of severe natural disasters there. The Church moved in to help in very big ways. As he put it, if the general Church membership had been aware of what the Church was doing in the Philippines during that trying time, they would have been enormously proud.
Analogously, for a number of years I had easy access to the marvelous unpublished journals of George Q. Cannon, a member of the Twelve and a counselor in the First Presidency to Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow. Those journals have been kept under wraps. But I have no idea why. Not only is there nothing sordid or discrediting in them, they’re . . . well, faith-promoting.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-ten.html
I posted the item below in October 2017, and it seems directly relevant to the topic that I’ve been pursuing in this series of blog entries:
I listened late tonight (Monday night) to an interview with historian D. Michael Quinn, on the Mormon News Report. I highly recommend the interview. (It begins at just about precisely the 45-minute mark of the podcast.)
In the past, I’ve been critical of some of Mike Quinn’s writing, and I’ve published things that were critical of his some of his work. But I’ve also liked a lot of what he’s done — especially his early articles — and I’ve said so. Back in the day, I thought he was one of the most interesting and insightful historians working on Mormonism. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, of course — to coin a wholly original new phrase — and, to put it mildly, Mike Quinn is no fan of mine.
This interview, though, which focuses on his new book The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power, is well worth the half-hour or so that it will take out of your life.
As just about anybody who recognizes the name of D. Michael Quinn also knows, he was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September 1993. That has made him a martyr and a hero to more than a few critics. But how, I wonder, will they react to what he’s saying on this topic? Detractors of Mormonism who might have been expecting his new book to be hostile to the Church and its leaders will, I think, be deeply disappointed. (Very possibly, they’ll simply pretend that he’s said nothing at all.)
In this interview, Dr. Quinn expresses frank admiration for the Church’s management of its finances, which he sees as essential to the global expansion of Mormonism. Moreover, although some enemies of the Church have been denouncing it for un-Christian corporate greed and, as is sometimes said, for giving only 40 million dollars to “charity” each year out of 15 billion in annual “profits” — see, on this, my recent blog entry “A church run by greedy and rapacious robber barons?” — Dr. Quinn points out that this claim grossly distorts the reality: Those 40 million dollars represent only the cash that the Church devotes to humanitarian efforts. The food and clothing and medicines and other goods that it gives, as well as the service that it coordinates and sponsors and provides — in other words, its non-cash humanitarian and welfare assistance — represent contributions many times the size of that $40m cash sum.
http://www.theculturalhallpodcast.com/2017/10/16/mormon-news-report-podcast-episode-15-week-of-october-16-2017/
Dr. Quinn believes that the Church should renew its longtime practice of publishing basic information about its annual finances. Not, though, because he believes that there are dirty secrets to be revealed. Quite the contrary, he says — and I’m inclined to agree with him — that doing so would be “faith-promoting.”
I’m not sure why we don’t publish at least a simple annual financial report. I can think of one reason, which may or may not play a role: There are critics who would obsessively comb through the figures, complaining that more money should go to x and that less money should go to y, second-guessing Church leadership at every turn, and I can easily imagine that some leaders just don’t want to deal with such nonsense.
But I am, on the whole, in favor of more openness and greater transparency. We have nothing to hide. I favor such a policy for our history, and I favor it for our finances.
Two parallels:
An acquaintance, a close friend to a close friend of mine, was in the Church’s leadership in the Philippines during a recent period of severe natural disasters there. The Church moved in to help in very big ways. As he put it, if the general Church membership had been aware of what the Church was doing in the Philippines during that trying time, they would have been enormously proud.
Analogously, for a number of years I had easy access to the marvelous unpublished journals of George Q. Cannon, a member of the Twelve and a counselor in the First Presidency to Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow. Those journals have been kept under wraps. But I have no idea why. Not only is there nothing sordid or discrediting in them, they’re . . . well, faith-promoting.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-ten.html
LDS Inc. - part 9
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
For at least a few critics of Church finances, the issue seems to be, to some extent anyway, one of aesthetics and politics. I have particularly in mind a certain critic — not surprisingly, an academic in an exceptionally impractical field (we’re akin, in that regard) — who has objected for years to the “corporate” character of the Church. His politics, so far as I can tell, trend distinctly leftward, and he apparently dislikes and distrusts business and the people who engage in it. (In academic circles, from my own experience, I doubt that he encounters very many people who don’t share such attitudes. It’s the water in which academic fish swim.)
I don’t know the family background of this particular critic. Of my own background, though, I can say this: I grew up the son and nephew of small businessmen. Nobody in the previous generation (of parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents) and very few among my cousins had earned a bachelor’s degree. When breaks and proximity allowed, I worked from high school through my doctorate at the family construction company. I have absolutely no sense that academics are, by nature, either more ethical or more spiritual than people involved in — as Jane Austen’s smug landed gentry would put it — “trade.” (Yuck!) Accordingly, I’m not disposed to see the term corporate as damning, in and of itself. In fact, I’m acutely aware of the fact that we academics (and especially those of us in unmarketable fields such as, say, Islamic philosophical theology and classical Roman history) survive off of the economic surplus generated by agriculture and commerce, including the taxes paid by corporations. So far am I, therefore, from looking down upon businesspeople and farm workers that, instead, I think that we unproductive intellectualoids should give regular and humble thanks for them and for the work that they do to sustain us.
Anyway, before moving on, let me simply restate the fact that I see nothing wrong or dishonorable in the term corporate. Corporations simply one way of organizing human enterprises. Operating under current national and international laws, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is legally organized as a corporation. There is nothing sinister about this, and it’s not clear what the alternative would be. In ancient societies under the strong influence of Rome and Roman law, authorities (Pliny will serve as an example) tended to view the early Christian church as a hetaeria or “burial society.” That option isn’t available today, and it’s not clear, anyway, how it would be superior.
The particular academic that I have in mind also seems to find the male leadership of the Church deficient because they wear business suits. Seriously. Perhaps, instead, they should ostentatiously dress as first-century Galilean peasant fishermen? Maybe he would prefer that they wear beards. Honestly, though, I can’t see why dressing in robes or wearing a beard should be deemed any more spiritual or ethical or “prophetic” than wearing a dark suit. The early apostles probably didn’t dress like ancient people in order to be quaint or “authentic.” They dressed that way because that’s the way their contemporaries dressed. And ditto for today.
To the extent that such objections aren’t mere jokes, they’re mere jokes.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-nine.html
For at least a few critics of Church finances, the issue seems to be, to some extent anyway, one of aesthetics and politics. I have particularly in mind a certain critic — not surprisingly, an academic in an exceptionally impractical field (we’re akin, in that regard) — who has objected for years to the “corporate” character of the Church. His politics, so far as I can tell, trend distinctly leftward, and he apparently dislikes and distrusts business and the people who engage in it. (In academic circles, from my own experience, I doubt that he encounters very many people who don’t share such attitudes. It’s the water in which academic fish swim.)
I don’t know the family background of this particular critic. Of my own background, though, I can say this: I grew up the son and nephew of small businessmen. Nobody in the previous generation (of parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents) and very few among my cousins had earned a bachelor’s degree. When breaks and proximity allowed, I worked from high school through my doctorate at the family construction company. I have absolutely no sense that academics are, by nature, either more ethical or more spiritual than people involved in — as Jane Austen’s smug landed gentry would put it — “trade.” (Yuck!) Accordingly, I’m not disposed to see the term corporate as damning, in and of itself. In fact, I’m acutely aware of the fact that we academics (and especially those of us in unmarketable fields such as, say, Islamic philosophical theology and classical Roman history) survive off of the economic surplus generated by agriculture and commerce, including the taxes paid by corporations. So far am I, therefore, from looking down upon businesspeople and farm workers that, instead, I think that we unproductive intellectualoids should give regular and humble thanks for them and for the work that they do to sustain us.
Anyway, before moving on, let me simply restate the fact that I see nothing wrong or dishonorable in the term corporate. Corporations simply one way of organizing human enterprises. Operating under current national and international laws, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is legally organized as a corporation. There is nothing sinister about this, and it’s not clear what the alternative would be. In ancient societies under the strong influence of Rome and Roman law, authorities (Pliny will serve as an example) tended to view the early Christian church as a hetaeria or “burial society.” That option isn’t available today, and it’s not clear, anyway, how it would be superior.
The particular academic that I have in mind also seems to find the male leadership of the Church deficient because they wear business suits. Seriously. Perhaps, instead, they should ostentatiously dress as first-century Galilean peasant fishermen? Maybe he would prefer that they wear beards. Honestly, though, I can’t see why dressing in robes or wearing a beard should be deemed any more spiritual or ethical or “prophetic” than wearing a dark suit. The early apostles probably didn’t dress like ancient people in order to be quaint or “authentic.” They dressed that way because that’s the way their contemporaries dressed. And ditto for today.
To the extent that such objections aren’t mere jokes, they’re mere jokes.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-nine.html
LDS Inc. - part 8
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
As I pointed out in “LDS Inc. (Part Seven),” I understand the desire for greater financial transparency on the part of the Church and — like one now-departed senior leader of the Church of whose position on the subject I was personally aware — I’m not unsympathetic to it.
That said, however, I can think of at least one serious reason not to be fully open and transparent.
Already, in the little discussions here, we’ve had avowed and unbelieving critics of the Church solemnly advising us on how the Church’s understanding of its divine mission needs to be altered and, accordingly, what sweeping changes need to be made to its budgetary priorities. To the extent that Church financial data were made generally public, such complaints and demands and campaigns as these would now have the power of actual numbers behind them.
Can you imagine the debates that would erupt, and the demonstrations that would be organized, were the overall Church budget to be made public? The Church should spend less on temples! It should give more to humanitarian aid! Too much for missionary work! Too much for family history! Too little to this country! Too much to that country! This temple cost too much! This temple is too small! Is it small because Church leaders consider the people who will attend it second-class Saints? Are different ethnic groups being treated exactly alike? Should they be treated exactly alike? Should the Church be equitable, or should it practice affirmative action? Does x really deserve a temple? Why doesn’t y get one? Are tithepayers like shareholders? Should they be allowed a vote?
The slogans practically write themselves, and I can already see the placards in the demonstrations at Church headquarters and elsewhere: “Food for the living, not temples for the dead!” “Keep our tithes at home!” “American members are suffering! No aid for foreigners!”
The issues are innumerable, the possibilities are limitless, and, in our divisive and litigious society, there would be no end to the controversies. There would be a feeding frenzy with every release of financial data. The Church would be under constant attack, and it would either defend itself or go silent and, thus, remain undefended.
I’m reminded of the Hebrew biblical book of Nehemiah. In chapter four, we’re told that those who worked to reconstruct Jerusalem’s temple after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity were obliged to labor with trowel in one hand and sword in the other. Here is Nehemiah 6:1-4 in the English Standard Version (ESV):
Now when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it (although up to that time I had not set up the doors in the gates), Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come and let us meet together at Hakkephirim in the plain of Ono.” But they intended to do me harm. And I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” And they sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-eight.html
As I pointed out in “LDS Inc. (Part Seven),” I understand the desire for greater financial transparency on the part of the Church and — like one now-departed senior leader of the Church of whose position on the subject I was personally aware — I’m not unsympathetic to it.
That said, however, I can think of at least one serious reason not to be fully open and transparent.
Already, in the little discussions here, we’ve had avowed and unbelieving critics of the Church solemnly advising us on how the Church’s understanding of its divine mission needs to be altered and, accordingly, what sweeping changes need to be made to its budgetary priorities. To the extent that Church financial data were made generally public, such complaints and demands and campaigns as these would now have the power of actual numbers behind them.
Can you imagine the debates that would erupt, and the demonstrations that would be organized, were the overall Church budget to be made public? The Church should spend less on temples! It should give more to humanitarian aid! Too much for missionary work! Too much for family history! Too little to this country! Too much to that country! This temple cost too much! This temple is too small! Is it small because Church leaders consider the people who will attend it second-class Saints? Are different ethnic groups being treated exactly alike? Should they be treated exactly alike? Should the Church be equitable, or should it practice affirmative action? Does x really deserve a temple? Why doesn’t y get one? Are tithepayers like shareholders? Should they be allowed a vote?
The slogans practically write themselves, and I can already see the placards in the demonstrations at Church headquarters and elsewhere: “Food for the living, not temples for the dead!” “Keep our tithes at home!” “American members are suffering! No aid for foreigners!”
The issues are innumerable, the possibilities are limitless, and, in our divisive and litigious society, there would be no end to the controversies. There would be a feeding frenzy with every release of financial data. The Church would be under constant attack, and it would either defend itself or go silent and, thus, remain undefended.
I’m reminded of the Hebrew biblical book of Nehemiah. In chapter four, we’re told that those who worked to reconstruct Jerusalem’s temple after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity were obliged to labor with trowel in one hand and sword in the other. Here is Nehemiah 6:1-4 in the English Standard Version (ESV):
Now when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it (although up to that time I had not set up the doors in the gates), Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come and let us meet together at Hakkephirim in the plain of Ono.” But they intended to do me harm. And I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” And they sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-eight.html
LDS Inc. - part 7
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
Since I began this little series on “LDS Inc.,” a number of critics, here on this blog and elsewhere, have responded to it by demanding more “financial transparency” from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which hasn’t issued expenditure reports since 1959. This is a distinct matter from the one that I’ve been addressing, but it’s obviously related. I haven’t wanted to become involved at this juncture in the controversy over opening the Church’s books, and I still don’t intend to do so at any length, but I think that I’ll offer a few brief remarks on the topic, beginning here.
The immediate occasion for my doing so is an article in the Salt Lake Tribune by Jana Riess, entitled “I just paid my LDS tithing. Why don’t I feel better about it?” Sister Riess is unhappy about not knowing where her tithes are actually going.
I must say that I understand the complaint. I get it. My impression is that the most vocal critics of the Church’s relative lack of financial transparency tend to be disaffected critics who don’t contribute financially anyway but there are manifestly some exceptions to that, and I get it.
I happen to know of a very senior Church leader, now deceased, who wanted to make Church finances more open. For what little it’s worth, I would have supported that. I don’t know how far he would have gone, but I can certainly understand the inclination to open things up a bit.
However, just for the record, let me say that I always feel really happy about paying my tithes. The amounts that I donate are significant, by my standards — and you must surely understand that, since I am a munificently paid apologist, we’re talking huge sums of money (not only cash, but various cryptocurrencies, imperial [galactic] credits, precious jewels, gold bullion, and bags of 1913 Liberty Head V nickels) — but I inevitably feel a warm glow after I’ve made my contributions and after I’ve finished with tithing settlement. I like to think that I’m assisting, in my small way, with the construction of chapels and temples worldwide, backing educational efforts, helping to support missionaries, and so on and so forth. I feel enormous satisfaction in being part of a great international work. I take it very seriously. To me, it is literally to be a participant in building the Kingdom of God on the earth.
Wherefore, may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come, that thou, O God, mayest be glorified in heaven so on earth, that thine enemies may be subdued; for thine is the honor, power and glory, forever and ever. Amen. (Doctrine and Covenants 65:6)
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-seven.html
Since I began this little series on “LDS Inc.,” a number of critics, here on this blog and elsewhere, have responded to it by demanding more “financial transparency” from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which hasn’t issued expenditure reports since 1959. This is a distinct matter from the one that I’ve been addressing, but it’s obviously related. I haven’t wanted to become involved at this juncture in the controversy over opening the Church’s books, and I still don’t intend to do so at any length, but I think that I’ll offer a few brief remarks on the topic, beginning here.
The immediate occasion for my doing so is an article in the Salt Lake Tribune by Jana Riess, entitled “I just paid my LDS tithing. Why don’t I feel better about it?” Sister Riess is unhappy about not knowing where her tithes are actually going.
I must say that I understand the complaint. I get it. My impression is that the most vocal critics of the Church’s relative lack of financial transparency tend to be disaffected critics who don’t contribute financially anyway but there are manifestly some exceptions to that, and I get it.
I happen to know of a very senior Church leader, now deceased, who wanted to make Church finances more open. For what little it’s worth, I would have supported that. I don’t know how far he would have gone, but I can certainly understand the inclination to open things up a bit.
However, just for the record, let me say that I always feel really happy about paying my tithes. The amounts that I donate are significant, by my standards — and you must surely understand that, since I am a munificently paid apologist, we’re talking huge sums of money (not only cash, but various cryptocurrencies, imperial [galactic] credits, precious jewels, gold bullion, and bags of 1913 Liberty Head V nickels) — but I inevitably feel a warm glow after I’ve made my contributions and after I’ve finished with tithing settlement. I like to think that I’m assisting, in my small way, with the construction of chapels and temples worldwide, backing educational efforts, helping to support missionaries, and so on and so forth. I feel enormous satisfaction in being part of a great international work. I take it very seriously. To me, it is literally to be a participant in building the Kingdom of God on the earth.
Wherefore, may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come, that thou, O God, mayest be glorified in heaven so on earth, that thine enemies may be subdued; for thine is the honor, power and glory, forever and ever. Amen. (Doctrine and Covenants 65:6)
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-seven.html
LDS Inc. - part 6
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
One of the more frivolous forms of the complaint to which I’ve been responding here points out that, unlike today’s Latter-day Saint leaders (who tend to wear suits and ties), Jesus (who seldom if ever wore either a suit or a tie) never bought stocks or invested in a shopping mall. Of course, maybe those who like to intone this particular criticism may mean it seriously; in an age of bumper-sticker polemics and tweeted political philosophy, who knows?
But, obviously, neither malls nor stocks existed in the Palestine of the first century. The fiscal institutions of today were still many centuries in the future, as were the many regulations and legal jurisdictions under which we operate. For instance, missionaries going door to door today and preaching without purse or scrip would, in very many places, be subject to arrest under anti-vagrancy statutes.
Still, there is a perhaps more fundamentally important reason why the modern Restored Church plans and invests for the long term whereas the ancient Church apparently did not:
Today’s Church is intended to continue through the Second Coming and throughout the Millennium. By contrast, the ancient Church arguably was not. And, arguably, it behaved in a manner that reflected its lack of expectations for a prolonged institutional future. (For Hugh W. Nibley’s classic argument to this effect, see his “The Passing of the Primitive Church: Forty Variations on an Unpopular Theme.”)
The ancient Church spread quite rapidly throughout the Mediterranean basin and beyond. But it’s extremely unlikely that the ancient general leadership of the Church — the apostles and the seventy — were able to serve much if at all as any real kind of international administration or centralized management for it. For one thing, they were under too much pressure. (They were effectively eliminated by the mid-sixties AD.) For another, ancient modes of transportation and communication made such management so difficult as to be impossible, practically speaking.
In my judgment, the inability of the apostles to effectively guide a widely dispersed international church, first because of poor communications and in the end because they were dead, was a principal reason for its demise. But their inability to serve as central leadership had other obvious implications. For instance, they had no general-church budget, no institutional bank account. Not because they wouldn’t have had one if they could have — John 12:6 suggests that, during the mortal lifetime of Jesus, the apostles kept a common purse or fund — but probably because, after the ascension and after the very first years of the post-resurrection Church, they scarcely ever met together. They were on their own, and constantly on the road.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-six.html
One of the more frivolous forms of the complaint to which I’ve been responding here points out that, unlike today’s Latter-day Saint leaders (who tend to wear suits and ties), Jesus (who seldom if ever wore either a suit or a tie) never bought stocks or invested in a shopping mall. Of course, maybe those who like to intone this particular criticism may mean it seriously; in an age of bumper-sticker polemics and tweeted political philosophy, who knows?
But, obviously, neither malls nor stocks existed in the Palestine of the first century. The fiscal institutions of today were still many centuries in the future, as were the many regulations and legal jurisdictions under which we operate. For instance, missionaries going door to door today and preaching without purse or scrip would, in very many places, be subject to arrest under anti-vagrancy statutes.
Still, there is a perhaps more fundamentally important reason why the modern Restored Church plans and invests for the long term whereas the ancient Church apparently did not:
Today’s Church is intended to continue through the Second Coming and throughout the Millennium. By contrast, the ancient Church arguably was not. And, arguably, it behaved in a manner that reflected its lack of expectations for a prolonged institutional future. (For Hugh W. Nibley’s classic argument to this effect, see his “The Passing of the Primitive Church: Forty Variations on an Unpopular Theme.”)
The ancient Church spread quite rapidly throughout the Mediterranean basin and beyond. But it’s extremely unlikely that the ancient general leadership of the Church — the apostles and the seventy — were able to serve much if at all as any real kind of international administration or centralized management for it. For one thing, they were under too much pressure. (They were effectively eliminated by the mid-sixties AD.) For another, ancient modes of transportation and communication made such management so difficult as to be impossible, practically speaking.
In my judgment, the inability of the apostles to effectively guide a widely dispersed international church, first because of poor communications and in the end because they were dead, was a principal reason for its demise. But their inability to serve as central leadership had other obvious implications. For instance, they had no general-church budget, no institutional bank account. Not because they wouldn’t have had one if they could have — John 12:6 suggests that, during the mortal lifetime of Jesus, the apostles kept a common purse or fund — but probably because, after the ascension and after the very first years of the post-resurrection Church, they scarcely ever met together. They were on their own, and constantly on the road.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-six.html
LDS Inc. - part 5
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
A parenthetical comment or aside:
The Bible is certainly not opposed to sound fiscal principles, prudent management, and saving. Take this passage from Proverbs 6, for example:
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man. (Proverbs 6:6-11)
Consider, too, this passage from the book of Genesis:
Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.
And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants. And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art: Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. (Genesis 41:33-41)
And then there’s this, from the Savior himself:
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, aaying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. (Luke 14:28-32)
The Utah flag and seal (see above) use the symbol of a beehive and the word “Industry,” a legacy of the state’s previous identity as the provisional state of Deseret, the name of which derives ultimately from the deseret in Ether 2:3, in the Book of Mormon.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-five.html
A parenthetical comment or aside:
The Bible is certainly not opposed to sound fiscal principles, prudent management, and saving. Take this passage from Proverbs 6, for example:
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man. (Proverbs 6:6-11)
Consider, too, this passage from the book of Genesis:
Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.
And then there’s this, from the Savior himself:
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, aaying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. (Luke 14:28-32)
The Utah flag and seal (see above) use the symbol of a beehive and the word “Industry,” a legacy of the state’s previous identity as the provisional state of Deseret, the name of which derives ultimately from the deseret in Ether 2:3, in the Book of Mormon.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-five.html
LDS Inc. - part 4
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
As I observed at the end of “LDS Inc. (Part Three),” when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invests money that has come into its possession in stocks or bonds or real estate, it isn’t really spending it. It’s simply storing those funds for future use.
Thus, to say that the Church “spends” more on investments than it spends on the poor, as certain critics like to say, is to commit a logical fallacy of equivocation. The meaning of the verb to spend is fundamentally different in the two cases.
At this point, though, some critics raise an accusatory if typically implicit question: Should the Church store funds for future use? Or, given the many needs that exist around the world, should it rather spend all of its revenues as soon as they come in, or at least close to their time of receipt?
One can easily understand those who contend that the money ought all to be spent right away. There are, after all, lots and lots of sick, poor, and hungry people.
But are there any reasons for not spending all of the Church’s money immediately? (And let there be no doubt that, in this case, the money would really be spent — on medicines, housing, clothing, and/or food. It would be gone.)
Let me begin to suggest some reasons for retaining reserve funds that seem to me plausible:
“City Creek and the Choices of Thrift”
But I’m still not done with this topic.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-four.html
As I observed at the end of “LDS Inc. (Part Three),” when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invests money that has come into its possession in stocks or bonds or real estate, it isn’t really spending it. It’s simply storing those funds for future use.
Thus, to say that the Church “spends” more on investments than it spends on the poor, as certain critics like to say, is to commit a logical fallacy of equivocation. The meaning of the verb to spend is fundamentally different in the two cases.
At this point, though, some critics raise an accusatory if typically implicit question: Should the Church store funds for future use? Or, given the many needs that exist around the world, should it rather spend all of its revenues as soon as they come in, or at least close to their time of receipt?
One can easily understand those who contend that the money ought all to be spent right away. There are, after all, lots and lots of sick, poor, and hungry people.
But are there any reasons for not spending all of the Church’s money immediately? (And let there be no doubt that, in this case, the money would really be spent — on medicines, housing, clothing, and/or food. It would be gone.)
Let me begin to suggest some reasons for retaining reserve funds that seem to me plausible:
- If the Church were to give away all of its money, doing so would scarcely make a dent in world hunger, disease, and poverty. It would then be, at least intermittently, unable to do any more.
- Important though they are, there are many other things for which the Church needs to expend funds. And these are ongoing expenses that can’t simply be paid off at one fell swoop, such as the construction and maintenance of chapels and temples and schools, the sponsorship of family history research, the support of missionary efforts, and so forth. (The fact that many if not most critics of Church finances disdain these as unworthy causes is irrelevant.)
- It seems important that the Church maintain reserve resources in order to meet unexpected needs and crises.
- Times of economic downturn, when unusual strains will be placed upon Church resources, will be precisely the times when tithing and other voluntary donations will also decline and when saved reserves will be of most urgent value.
“City Creek and the Choices of Thrift”
But I’m still not done with this topic.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-four.html
LDS Inc. - part 3
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
When we last left off, in “LDS Inc. (Part Two),” we had established that spending money on such things as daily excursions to Starbucks or the latest electronic gadgets is very different than spending money on investments.
In a very real sense, though, to spend money on investments isn’t really to spend money at all. It’s simply to find a means of storing, for future use, the value represented by that money.
If you were given $5oo dollars by your dotty aunt and immediately took it (and your vintage Yugo and your boyfriend) and headed off to Jean-Georges for some table-side French cuisine with fine imported wine, there would be no question that you had spent it. What, though, if you stuffed it in your mattress for safe-keeping? Would that be to spend it? No reasonable person would say Yes. But hiding $500 in your mattress would be rather stupid, wouldn’t it? So, instead, you deposit it in your checking account.
Is that “spending” it? Not really. Not yet.
You can get a slightly higher rate of interest, though, if you buy a $500 certificate of deposit. Is that “spending” it? In a sense, obviously yes. In another significant sense, though, not at all. It’s just yet another way of storing the $500 — a rather wiser way than hiding it in your dirty mattress.
How, though, do banks generate the interest that they pay you? Do they do it out of the generosity of their hearts? Is it a gift, paid for by some mysterious stranger for his own eccentric and inscrutable reasons? Not at all. The bank is lending or investing the money that it takes in from the people saving with it, and is sharing its profits with them in the form of interest.
So let us suppose that, instead of buying a certificate of deposit, you purchase ten fifty-dollar shares of the Main Street Widget Company. Does this mean that you’ve “spent” your five hundred dollar windfall? In a sense you have. But in a really important sense, you haven’t spent it at all. This is really just another way of storing the money that Aunt Cormorant gave you, not fundamentally different from putting it in a bank account but much more savvy than hiding it in your mattress.
When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invests money that has come into its possession, it isn’t really spending it. It’s storing those funds for future use.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-three.html
When we last left off, in “LDS Inc. (Part Two),” we had established that spending money on such things as daily excursions to Starbucks or the latest electronic gadgets is very different than spending money on investments.
In a very real sense, though, to spend money on investments isn’t really to spend money at all. It’s simply to find a means of storing, for future use, the value represented by that money.
If you were given $5oo dollars by your dotty aunt and immediately took it (and your vintage Yugo and your boyfriend) and headed off to Jean-Georges for some table-side French cuisine with fine imported wine, there would be no question that you had spent it. What, though, if you stuffed it in your mattress for safe-keeping? Would that be to spend it? No reasonable person would say Yes. But hiding $500 in your mattress would be rather stupid, wouldn’t it? So, instead, you deposit it in your checking account.
Is that “spending” it? Not really. Not yet.
You can get a slightly higher rate of interest, though, if you buy a $500 certificate of deposit. Is that “spending” it? In a sense, obviously yes. In another significant sense, though, not at all. It’s just yet another way of storing the $500 — a rather wiser way than hiding it in your dirty mattress.
How, though, do banks generate the interest that they pay you? Do they do it out of the generosity of their hearts? Is it a gift, paid for by some mysterious stranger for his own eccentric and inscrutable reasons? Not at all. The bank is lending or investing the money that it takes in from the people saving with it, and is sharing its profits with them in the form of interest.
So let us suppose that, instead of buying a certificate of deposit, you purchase ten fifty-dollar shares of the Main Street Widget Company. Does this mean that you’ve “spent” your five hundred dollar windfall? In a sense you have. But in a really important sense, you haven’t spent it at all. This is really just another way of storing the money that Aunt Cormorant gave you, not fundamentally different from putting it in a bank account but much more savvy than hiding it in your mattress.
When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invests money that has come into its possession, it isn’t really spending it. It’s storing those funds for future use.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-three.html
LDS Inc. - part 2
Noisy children are a real headache. Two aspirin will make a headache go away. Therefore, two aspirin will make noisy children go away.
Surely you can see the error in the passage above: The term headache shifts its meaning between the first two sentences. This is an example of what is called a fallacy of equivocation.
My favorite example of equivocation runs as follows:
I love you.
Therefore, I am a lover.
All the world loves a lover.
You are all the world to me.
Therefore, you love me.
(Keep your eye on the phrase all the world.)
Viewed superficially, this seems undeniably true.
However, it seems obvious to me that the complaint rests upon on a plain fallacy of equivocation as well as on a basic misunderstanding of finance and economics. I’ll treat the equivocation first.
Imagine two extraordinarily wealthy men. The first — let’s call him “Trevor” — buys a Lamborghini Veneno for $4.5 million. He loves fast cars, lavish parties, the yacht that he keeps in Monte Carlo, and skiing in Gstaad. The second of our two very rich men — we’ll call him “Russell” — buys a $4.5 million stake in the Acme Consolidated Megahuge Corporation. Russell has chosen ACM Corp. with an eye to steady income from dividends but also to likely growth in principal.
Both Trevor and Russell have spent $4.5 million dollars. But, although we use the verb to spend in both cases, surely there’s a distinction to be made between the two.
In buying the Lamborghini Veneno, Trevor hasn’t given a moment’s thought to “investment” or prudence. He simply likes the car, and he’s got money to burn. And burn it he will. A Lamborghini Veneno, of course, isn’t a typical car. Still, according to current depreciation rates, the value of a new vehicle can drop by more than twenty percent after just the first twelve months of ownership. Then, for the next four years, it will typically lose roughly ten percent of its value each year. This means that a new car can be worth as little as forty percent of its original purchase price after only five years. And we’ll say nothing about the risk of accidents, and so forth.
By contrast, if Russell’s reasoning with regard to Acme Consolidated Megahuge Corporation is sound, at the end of five years he will have had steady income from his shares and, upon their sale, will have achieved signfiicant capital gains. Unlike Trevor’s purchase, his purchase will leave him financially better off, with more money to use for whatever purposes he chooses.
To spend money on consumer goods — whether daily excursions to Starbucks or the latest electronic gadgets — is very different than spending money on investments.
This is a key point to keep in mind when considering the investments made by “LDS Inc.”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-two.html
Surely you can see the error in the passage above: The term headache shifts its meaning between the first two sentences. This is an example of what is called a fallacy of equivocation.
My favorite example of equivocation runs as follows:
I love you.
Therefore, I am a lover.
All the world loves a lover.
You are all the world to me.
Therefore, you love me.
(Keep your eye on the phrase all the world.)
A subset of critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like to complain that it spends far more money on malls and stocks than on humanitarian assistance to the needy.
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)Viewed superficially, this seems undeniably true.
However, it seems obvious to me that the complaint rests upon on a plain fallacy of equivocation as well as on a basic misunderstanding of finance and economics. I’ll treat the equivocation first.
Imagine two extraordinarily wealthy men. The first — let’s call him “Trevor” — buys a Lamborghini Veneno for $4.5 million. He loves fast cars, lavish parties, the yacht that he keeps in Monte Carlo, and skiing in Gstaad. The second of our two very rich men — we’ll call him “Russell” — buys a $4.5 million stake in the Acme Consolidated Megahuge Corporation. Russell has chosen ACM Corp. with an eye to steady income from dividends but also to likely growth in principal.
Both Trevor and Russell have spent $4.5 million dollars. But, although we use the verb to spend in both cases, surely there’s a distinction to be made between the two.
In buying the Lamborghini Veneno, Trevor hasn’t given a moment’s thought to “investment” or prudence. He simply likes the car, and he’s got money to burn. And burn it he will. A Lamborghini Veneno, of course, isn’t a typical car. Still, according to current depreciation rates, the value of a new vehicle can drop by more than twenty percent after just the first twelve months of ownership. Then, for the next four years, it will typically lose roughly ten percent of its value each year. This means that a new car can be worth as little as forty percent of its original purchase price after only five years. And we’ll say nothing about the risk of accidents, and so forth.
By contrast, if Russell’s reasoning with regard to Acme Consolidated Megahuge Corporation is sound, at the end of five years he will have had steady income from his shares and, upon their sale, will have achieved signfiicant capital gains. Unlike Trevor’s purchase, his purchase will leave him financially better off, with more money to use for whatever purposes he chooses.
To spend money on consumer goods — whether daily excursions to Starbucks or the latest electronic gadgets — is very different than spending money on investments.
This is a key point to keep in mind when considering the investments made by “LDS Inc.”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/12/lds-inc-part-two.html
LDS Inc. - part 1
(By Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
An attack on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that is very popular among a certain segment of critics runs along these lines:
The so-called “Church,” which, in this context, many of them like to call “LDS Inc” or “the Corporation,” isn’t really about religious faith, isn’t really a church, at all. Rather, it is a business. It’s much more concerned about money than it is about souls.
As a prime piece of evidence to support this contention, they will often point to the huge mixed-use development in Salt Lake City (which includes an upscale open-air shopping center as well as office and residential buildings) known as the City Creek Center. City Creek is a joint undertaking of Property Reserve, Inc. (the commercial real estate division of the Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and the real estate investment trust Taubman Centers, Inc.
And they love to point to the late President Thomas S. Monson cutting the ribbon for the shopping space at City Creek and saying “One, two, three. . . Let’s go shopping!” Is it not true, some will point out, that Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles have sometimes even dedicated banks? Banks! They have prayed at the opening of banks!
These critics are evidently not disturbed by accounts of Jesus using his divine powers to provide food for large events (at Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 15:32-39, Mark 6:31-44, Mark 8:1-9, Luke 9:12-17, John 6:1-14, and Matthew 15:32-39) and advising Galilean fisherman on how to increase their harvest of tilapia (as at Luke 5:1-11 and John 21:1-14).
Presumably, Semitic peasants catching fish for a living are spiritual in a way that middle class gringos selling shoes or iPhones can never hope to be.
Catholic priests in foreign countries praying over the fishing fleet at the opening of the season are quaint and cute. General Authorities praying over a bank, though, are offensive and gross. Why? Perhaps because, from the standpoint of alienated middle class American ex-Latter-day Saints, banks and retail stores aren’t sufficiently exotic. Scriptural flocks and fields, though? They’re far away in time and place and, thus, presumably acceptable:
Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks. Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening. . . . Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them. Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase. (Alma 34:20-21, 24-25)
The Church, complain some of its critics, spends far more money on malls and stocks than on humanitarian assistance to the needy.
But this complaint, it seems to me, rests on a fallacy of equivocation as well as on a basic misunderstanding of finance and economics.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/11/lds-inc-part-one.html
An attack on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that is very popular among a certain segment of critics runs along these lines:
The so-called “Church,” which, in this context, many of them like to call “LDS Inc” or “the Corporation,” isn’t really about religious faith, isn’t really a church, at all. Rather, it is a business. It’s much more concerned about money than it is about souls.
As a prime piece of evidence to support this contention, they will often point to the huge mixed-use development in Salt Lake City (which includes an upscale open-air shopping center as well as office and residential buildings) known as the City Creek Center. City Creek is a joint undertaking of Property Reserve, Inc. (the commercial real estate division of the Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and the real estate investment trust Taubman Centers, Inc.
And they love to point to the late President Thomas S. Monson cutting the ribbon for the shopping space at City Creek and saying “One, two, three. . . Let’s go shopping!” Is it not true, some will point out, that Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles have sometimes even dedicated banks? Banks! They have prayed at the opening of banks!
These critics are evidently not disturbed by accounts of Jesus using his divine powers to provide food for large events (at Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 15:32-39, Mark 6:31-44, Mark 8:1-9, Luke 9:12-17, John 6:1-14, and Matthew 15:32-39) and advising Galilean fisherman on how to increase their harvest of tilapia (as at Luke 5:1-11 and John 21:1-14).
Presumably, Semitic peasants catching fish for a living are spiritual in a way that middle class gringos selling shoes or iPhones can never hope to be.
Catholic priests in foreign countries praying over the fishing fleet at the opening of the season are quaint and cute. General Authorities praying over a bank, though, are offensive and gross. Why? Perhaps because, from the standpoint of alienated middle class American ex-Latter-day Saints, banks and retail stores aren’t sufficiently exotic. Scriptural flocks and fields, though? They’re far away in time and place and, thus, presumably acceptable:
Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks. Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening. . . . Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them. Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase. (Alma 34:20-21, 24-25)
The Church, complain some of its critics, spends far more money on malls and stocks than on humanitarian assistance to the needy.
But this complaint, it seems to me, rests on a fallacy of equivocation as well as on a basic misunderstanding of finance and economics.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/11/lds-inc-part-one.html
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
The Brass Plates Version of Genesis
Abstract: The Book of Mormon peoples repeatedly indicated that they were descendants of Joseph, the son of Jacob who was sold into Egypt by his brothers. The plates of brass that they took with them from Jerusalem c. 600 bce provided them with a version of many Old Testament books and others not included in our Hebrew Bible. Sometime after publishing his translation of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith undertook an inspired revision of the Bible. The opening chapters of his version of Genesis contain a lot of material not included in the Hebrew Bible. But intriguingly, distinctive phraseology in those chapters, as now published in Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses, also show up in the Book of Mormon text. This paper presents a systematic examination of those repeated phrases and finds strong evidence for the conclusion that the version of Genesis used by the Nephite prophets must have been closely similar to Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses.
https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-brass-plates-version-of-genesis/
https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-brass-plates-version-of-genesis/
What Joseph Smith's Neighbors Thought of Him, Even When They Disagreed with His Religion
(by Daniel Peterson ldsliving.com 11-9-19)
A slightly younger contemporary of Joseph Smith known to us only as “Mrs. Palmer” grew up on property not far from his family’s farm near Palmyra, New York. She never accepted his prophetic claims but has nonetheless left us valuable eyewitness testimony concerning his character. “My parents,” she would later recall, “were friends of the Smith family, which was one of the best in that locality — honest, religious and industrious, but poor.” She herself first became really aware of Joseph when she was 6 years old:
“I remember going into the field on an afternoon to play in the corn rows while my brothers worked. When evening came, I was too tired to walk home and cried because my brothers refused to carry me. Joseph lifted me to his shoulder, and with his arm thrown across my feet to steady me, and my arm about his neck, he carried me to our home.” She remembered the “excitement” that followed upon Joseph’s First Vision. Even when a leader from their church visited their home to complain about her father’s friendship with the Smith family, he dismissed the vision as “only the sweet dream of a pure minded boy.” Why? “My father loved young Joseph Smith,” she explained, “and often hired him to work with his boys.” He told the man that “Joseph was the best help he had ever found.” Mrs. Palmer’s reminiscences appear in the notebook of Martha Cox that are in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ archives and are quoted here from “They Knew the Prophet: Personal Accounts From Over 100 People Who Knew Joseph Smith” by Helen Mae Andrus and Hyrum L. Andrus, published by Covenant Communications in 2002.
This high valuation of Joseph as a laborer was shared by others who knew him. For instance, the slightly younger Joseph Knight Jr. knew Joseph Smith from an early age and reported in his autobiographical sketch that Joseph was “the best hand (my father) ever hired.” The Knights were among the earliest converts to the message of the Restoration. Not so for Mrs. Palmer’s family. The Book of Mormon, with its tangible plates and multiple witnesses and insistent claims, could no longer be indulgently brushed aside as “only the sweet dream of a pure minded boy.”
“Not until Joseph had had a second vision,” she recalled, “and begun to write a book which drew many of the best and brightest people of the churches away did my parents come to a realization of the fact that their friend, the churchman, had told them the truth. Then, my family cut off their friendship for all the Smiths, for all the family followed Joseph. Even the father, intelligent man that he was, could not discern the evil he was helping to promote. My parents then lent all the aid they could in helping to crush Joseph Smith; but it was too late. He had run his course too long. He could not be put down. There was never a truer, purer, nobler boy than Joseph Smith, before he was led away by superstition.” Theologically, it’s clear that Mrs. Palmer is not a friendly witness. Still, she’s likely an honest one, since her positive judgment of Joseph’s character goes against her evaluation of his religious doctrine. Some others weren’t so fair, though, and it seems plain that much of the later criticism of the Smiths in general and of Joseph in particular was generated by his prophetic claims and their challenge to conventional, accepted religious opinion. Joseph’s brother William, for instance, seems to echo the idea that young Joseph Smith was regarded as an honest, reliable, hard worker. More to the point, though, he also comments rather wryly on the criticism that came the family’s way, pointing out that negative comments about Joseph’s character arose only after reports of his visions began to circulate:
“We never heard of such a thing until after Joseph told his vision, and not then, by our friends. Whenever the neighbors wanted a good day’s work done they knew where they could get a good hand and they were not particular to take any of the other boys before Joseph either. ... Joseph did his share of the work with the rest of the boys. We never knew we were bad folks until Joseph told his vision” (see “Joseph Smith,” by Robert V. Remini, published by Viking Books in 2002). It’s difficult, in this case, not to recall the words of Jesus as they are recorded at Mark 6:4: “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country.” Their neighbors seem to have considered the Smiths as poor but respectable — until Joseph began to claim revelation. Then it all changed.
---------------
http://www.ldsliving.com/What-Joseph-Smith-s-Neighbors-Thought-of-Him-Even-When-They-Disagreed-with-His-Religion/s/91887
A slightly younger contemporary of Joseph Smith known to us only as “Mrs. Palmer” grew up on property not far from his family’s farm near Palmyra, New York. She never accepted his prophetic claims but has nonetheless left us valuable eyewitness testimony concerning his character. “My parents,” she would later recall, “were friends of the Smith family, which was one of the best in that locality — honest, religious and industrious, but poor.” She herself first became really aware of Joseph when she was 6 years old:
“I remember going into the field on an afternoon to play in the corn rows while my brothers worked. When evening came, I was too tired to walk home and cried because my brothers refused to carry me. Joseph lifted me to his shoulder, and with his arm thrown across my feet to steady me, and my arm about his neck, he carried me to our home.” She remembered the “excitement” that followed upon Joseph’s First Vision. Even when a leader from their church visited their home to complain about her father’s friendship with the Smith family, he dismissed the vision as “only the sweet dream of a pure minded boy.” Why? “My father loved young Joseph Smith,” she explained, “and often hired him to work with his boys.” He told the man that “Joseph was the best help he had ever found.” Mrs. Palmer’s reminiscences appear in the notebook of Martha Cox that are in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ archives and are quoted here from “They Knew the Prophet: Personal Accounts From Over 100 People Who Knew Joseph Smith” by Helen Mae Andrus and Hyrum L. Andrus, published by Covenant Communications in 2002.
This high valuation of Joseph as a laborer was shared by others who knew him. For instance, the slightly younger Joseph Knight Jr. knew Joseph Smith from an early age and reported in his autobiographical sketch that Joseph was “the best hand (my father) ever hired.” The Knights were among the earliest converts to the message of the Restoration. Not so for Mrs. Palmer’s family. The Book of Mormon, with its tangible plates and multiple witnesses and insistent claims, could no longer be indulgently brushed aside as “only the sweet dream of a pure minded boy.”
“Not until Joseph had had a second vision,” she recalled, “and begun to write a book which drew many of the best and brightest people of the churches away did my parents come to a realization of the fact that their friend, the churchman, had told them the truth. Then, my family cut off their friendship for all the Smiths, for all the family followed Joseph. Even the father, intelligent man that he was, could not discern the evil he was helping to promote. My parents then lent all the aid they could in helping to crush Joseph Smith; but it was too late. He had run his course too long. He could not be put down. There was never a truer, purer, nobler boy than Joseph Smith, before he was led away by superstition.” Theologically, it’s clear that Mrs. Palmer is not a friendly witness. Still, she’s likely an honest one, since her positive judgment of Joseph’s character goes against her evaluation of his religious doctrine. Some others weren’t so fair, though, and it seems plain that much of the later criticism of the Smiths in general and of Joseph in particular was generated by his prophetic claims and their challenge to conventional, accepted religious opinion. Joseph’s brother William, for instance, seems to echo the idea that young Joseph Smith was regarded as an honest, reliable, hard worker. More to the point, though, he also comments rather wryly on the criticism that came the family’s way, pointing out that negative comments about Joseph’s character arose only after reports of his visions began to circulate:
“We never heard of such a thing until after Joseph told his vision, and not then, by our friends. Whenever the neighbors wanted a good day’s work done they knew where they could get a good hand and they were not particular to take any of the other boys before Joseph either. ... Joseph did his share of the work with the rest of the boys. We never knew we were bad folks until Joseph told his vision” (see “Joseph Smith,” by Robert V. Remini, published by Viking Books in 2002). It’s difficult, in this case, not to recall the words of Jesus as they are recorded at Mark 6:4: “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country.” Their neighbors seem to have considered the Smiths as poor but respectable — until Joseph began to claim revelation. Then it all changed.
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http://www.ldsliving.com/What-Joseph-Smith-s-Neighbors-Thought-of-Him-Even-When-They-Disagreed-with-His-Religion/s/91887
Is Islam really a religion?
People write to me from time to time insisting that Islam isn’t actually a religion at all. It’s really, they say, a totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion. Accordingly, it doesn’t really deserve protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
When I’m told such things, I immediately think of those who deny that my church — my “so-called church,” they would say — is really a religion. Rather, they say, it’s a business — “LD$ Inc.” — run for the financial benefit of its greedy and power-hungry leaders. We who loyally “pay, pray, and obey” are merely “sheeple,” “Mor(m)ons,” and, in many cases, “Utards.” It’s all about malls and farms and land-holdings, not about anything spiritual. Even our temples, they allege, are merely “profit centers,” intended as tools to induce us dupes to fork over our tithes.
But, whenever I’m told such things, I’m also reminded of Parson Thwackum, a character in Henry Fielding’s classic 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:
“When I mention religion,” declares Parson Thwackum, “I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.”
It’s time to trot out, yet again, one of my three or four all-time favorite religious jokes. It’s by Emo Philips, but I’ve modified it very, very slightly for stylistic reasons:
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump.
I said, “Don’t do it!”
He said, “Nobody loves me.”
I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?”
He said, “A Christian.”
I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me, too! What denomination?”
He said, “Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”
I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
When I’m told such things, I immediately think of those who deny that my church — my “so-called church,” they would say — is really a religion. Rather, they say, it’s a business — “LD$ Inc.” — run for the financial benefit of its greedy and power-hungry leaders. We who loyally “pay, pray, and obey” are merely “sheeple,” “Mor(m)ons,” and, in many cases, “Utards.” It’s all about malls and farms and land-holdings, not about anything spiritual. Even our temples, they allege, are merely “profit centers,” intended as tools to induce us dupes to fork over our tithes.
But, whenever I’m told such things, I’m also reminded of Parson Thwackum, a character in Henry Fielding’s classic 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:
“When I mention religion,” declares Parson Thwackum, “I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.”
It’s time to trot out, yet again, one of my three or four all-time favorite religious jokes. It’s by Emo Philips, but I’ve modified it very, very slightly for stylistic reasons:
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump.
I said, “Don’t do it!”
He said, “Nobody loves me.”
I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?”
He said, “A Christian.”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me, too! What denomination?”
He said, “Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”
I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
Dismissing Witness Testimony
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/11/dismissing-witness-testimony.html
For some reason, my little post on “Running with the golden plates” has inflamed a certain tiny sector of the web that I like to watch, and they’ve been pulling out the big guns (e.g., even the eminent American philosopher and historian Mark Twain; who ever saw that coming?) to demolish the testimony of the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon. They also don’t like the Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses film at all, having (of course) never seen it but pronouncing it, among other things, stupid, annoying, and dishonest. I’m absolutely shocked. I had so confidently expected their enthusiastic endorsement!
Anyhow, one of the angles of response particularly amused me, so I offer here a brief repurposing of its fundamental argument, in story form:
Laying out the State’s case against Mr. Robert Jones on charges of capital homicide, prosecutor Richard Anderson called eleven eyewitnesses, of solid reputation, undisputed sanity, and good character, who all testified under oath that they clearly saw the defendant, Mr. Jones, pump six revolver rounds into Mr. Chauncey Gardner while Mr. Gardner lay on the ground pleading for his life. They all also reporting hearing the defendant screaming “Die, Chauncey! Die!”
When the jury returned a verdict of “Not guilty,” however, jurors explained to those who questioned them, first of all, that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and, secondly, that it was this particular paragraph from the closing statement of criminal defense attorney William Russell that convinced them to acquit Robert Jones:
“Perhaps one should not expect that the prosecutor’s case would be anything other than an attempt to strengthen the jury’s faith in the guilt of the defendant. The prosecutor’s argument will be convincing to those already certain that my client killed Mr. Gardner and that the State’s eleven witnesses saw him do it. And even detached observers will probably be convinced by the State’s contention that the witnesses were honest men and women who sincerely believe what they said and who have probably stuck consistently by their story. But Anderson is really trying to have us conclude more than this. He would have the jurors be convinced that, because these witnesses are honest and because they reaffirmed their testimony when asked to do so, they actually saw and heard my client in the supposed act of murdering Chauncey Gardner. I believe that Anderson — like his eleven witnesses — is an honest and sincere man when he declares: ‘Reason dictates that their testimonies, given under oath here before you, must be taken at face value.’ But I don’t believe that his argument by itself requires this conclusion. After all, spiritual truths such as ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’ must be spiritually verified.’ Believers — and, for that matter, witnesses — must make a ‘leap of faith,’ apprehending with their ‘spiritual eyes’ rather than with their ‘natural eyes.'”
Asked, after his release from jail, what he intended to do now, Mr. Jones, the former defendant, indicated that he was going to Disneyland. It was, he said, Chauncey Gardner’s dying wish for him.
For some reason, my little post on “Running with the golden plates” has inflamed a certain tiny sector of the web that I like to watch, and they’ve been pulling out the big guns (e.g., even the eminent American philosopher and historian Mark Twain; who ever saw that coming?) to demolish the testimony of the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon. They also don’t like the Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses film at all, having (of course) never seen it but pronouncing it, among other things, stupid, annoying, and dishonest. I’m absolutely shocked. I had so confidently expected their enthusiastic endorsement!
Anyhow, one of the angles of response particularly amused me, so I offer here a brief repurposing of its fundamental argument, in story form:
Laying out the State’s case against Mr. Robert Jones on charges of capital homicide, prosecutor Richard Anderson called eleven eyewitnesses, of solid reputation, undisputed sanity, and good character, who all testified under oath that they clearly saw the defendant, Mr. Jones, pump six revolver rounds into Mr. Chauncey Gardner while Mr. Gardner lay on the ground pleading for his life. They all also reporting hearing the defendant screaming “Die, Chauncey! Die!”
When the jury returned a verdict of “Not guilty,” however, jurors explained to those who questioned them, first of all, that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and, secondly, that it was this particular paragraph from the closing statement of criminal defense attorney William Russell that convinced them to acquit Robert Jones:
“Perhaps one should not expect that the prosecutor’s case would be anything other than an attempt to strengthen the jury’s faith in the guilt of the defendant. The prosecutor’s argument will be convincing to those already certain that my client killed Mr. Gardner and that the State’s eleven witnesses saw him do it. And even detached observers will probably be convinced by the State’s contention that the witnesses were honest men and women who sincerely believe what they said and who have probably stuck consistently by their story. But Anderson is really trying to have us conclude more than this. He would have the jurors be convinced that, because these witnesses are honest and because they reaffirmed their testimony when asked to do so, they actually saw and heard my client in the supposed act of murdering Chauncey Gardner. I believe that Anderson — like his eleven witnesses — is an honest and sincere man when he declares: ‘Reason dictates that their testimonies, given under oath here before you, must be taken at face value.’ But I don’t believe that his argument by itself requires this conclusion. After all, spiritual truths such as ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’ must be spiritually verified.’ Believers — and, for that matter, witnesses — must make a ‘leap of faith,’ apprehending with their ‘spiritual eyes’ rather than with their ‘natural eyes.'”
Asked, after his release from jail, what he intended to do now, Mr. Jones, the former defendant, indicated that he was going to Disneyland. It was, he said, Chauncey Gardner’s dying wish for him.
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