I'm sure many of you have heard this before, but I decided to look a bit more in depth for myself. Go to the bottom of this if you don't care about how I got my conclusions but its interesting!

LDS tithing numbers just plain don't add up. Lately when I get into conversations with people about the LDS church, one of the big points is that 'even if it isn't true, it still does so much good in the world, I mean look at all the charity they provide'.

I decided to look at all of the charity the LDS church provides for the world again. From this report: http://www.providentliving.org/welfare/pdf/WelfareFactSheet.pdf The church gave $327 million in cash and $885 million in goods from 1985 to 2009. This amounts to roughly 1.2 billion over 25 years. Sounds impressive right? It boils down to 1.2bil/25y = 50 million each year.

From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_membership_history there were roughly 5 million members at the start of this period and 13 million at the end. Averaging yields 9 million members, I will assume only 1/3rd were active and paid tithing, so 3 million tithe payers. This means 50/3 = ~$17 per tithe paying member per year. Wow.

From here: http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Mormon/A-Portrait-of-Mormons-in-the-US.aspx I found that average LDS income is probably around $50,000 a year. I will consider that they do not pay off of this gross sum and that there are probably many unreported low incomes. So lets assume average tithed income was $20,000 and they gave 10%. $20K*.1 = $2000. So roughly $1983 from each tithe payer is going directly into church pockets.

Over the period of 25 years then, the church acquired $2000*3e6*25 = 150 Billion dollars, of which less than 1% was given to charity. Average member tithing given to charity was about 17$ per year.

I no longer consider the church a truly charitable institution. From all of they money they are recieving, so little goes to outside help that it is astounding.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2012 04:19PM by student.

I would imagine when the cult announces what they 'gave' to help the needy they don't mention that it was probably just fast offering money being given back to the poor. They give the impression that tithing goes to help the poor but I'd bet the golden plates that ZERO tithing gets used that way.

If you pay into the fast offering fund the cult gets to take that money and do what ever they want with it(zero accountability) and what ever portion they pass back to help the poor they get to advertise as 'good works'.

And the argument that the cult does so much good so you should pray, pay and obey even thought its based on a lie is complete bologna. If your primary interest it to help the needy then there are legitimate non-mall-building organizations that do tremendous amounts of good with full financial disclosure and without ridiculous Nephi myths......the Red Cross for example.

“How do you tell a real charity from a fake charity? The real charities don’t build castles.” - - Bill Maher