They seem to build temples where there are close ones not used. Do they do this to move money from the coffers, or to funnel money to contractors and workers? Otherwise why?

Yes

No.

If that were the goal, they could build enough chapels along the Morridor to put every ward into its own building. They clearly are NOT doing that. They double and triple and even rarely quadruple-up wards every chance they get.

I think the church builds temple to maintain the perception that the church is growing. If the church is growing then the church must be *true*. Indeed, the church has learned that placing pressure on members to maintain a temple recommend is the best way to collect tithing.

I've long suspected this is the case. In the Land of Mordom, appearances are *everything*. And the temples the most visible sign of the one twue church. The Hinkster took it to a batscat crazy level.

If you build it, they will come.

More temples, more sessions, more full tith payers.

Empty temple's used to guilt more at local level.. SP's tell bishop to tell members more temple... for.... more... blessings, rain, prosperity, make Jesus come faster... etc.

Also possible temple construction to launder and conceal money further and deeper, lest the day comes that tax free status goes the way of the book of abraham....

How and why does one launder money that is already tax-free?

And hell will freeze over before churches lose their tax free status in the US.

I agree that it is basically about tithing. Temples are also essentially branding billboards, advertising that the church formerly known as Mormon is rich and is here.

I think this is more realistic. If the temples were REALLY about making money for connected friends and family in the construction business, they would simply build more chapels to accommodate more wards instead of trying to cram them all into one.

New temples give Mormons Morgasms.

There could be more reasons but I think with the decrease in real membership growth, temples are what give the impression of growth and success for Mormons now and they are a great gimmick to keep members active and paying their tithes.

The big finale of General Conference is the new temple announcements. But it’s on,y a matter of time before this hits diminishing returns. Too many temples will cheapen the experience and the temple will become a chore and burden instead of a holy place you go to every so often.

It’s hard to predict the future, but I think that point of diminished enthusiasm will come in about 1980.

;)

HAHA! +1

This is officially the wittiest thing I've read today. :)


On a stream of conscious note, my daughters and I are going to see the Back to the Future trilogy at a drive in theater tonight! In an odd parallel, the "future" date was back in 2015, and an even more futuristic homage apparently was to 2020, which has also passed (I forget the details on that one, but I'll keep my eyes peeled).

What fortuity!

I always thought that if he were a Mormon, Biff would become an AP!

They say they want people going to their temples almost as much as they go to church. So it makes sense to me that they are going to facilitate this with their billions. They want them like their Stake Centers is what I heard a long time ago.

The members are going to get temple burnout. The temple has all the charm of an assembly line. If it was a nice quiet spiritual sanctuary where you could just quietly sit and reflect on things that would be different. Maybe that’s what they will become.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The members are going to get temple burnout. The
> temple has all the charm of an assembly line. If
> it was a nice quiet spiritual sanctuary where you
> could just quietly sit and reflect on things that
> would be different. Maybe that’s what they will
> become.

That's what I thought about going for the first time to take out my endowment. I truly believed that one could quietly sit and meditate. Like others, I found out that you couldn't sit ANYWHERE in the temple without being harassed by temple workers. It wasn't just a one time experience with a set of cranky workers. It was the same experience at every temple I visited. The chairs in the celestial room were not to be used.

And it was the same for youth temple trips. We were crammed into that annoying "visitor" room where a looped video of ugly Mohana and her cows (Johnny Lingo) played at an insane volume until it your group got a slot to access the font. Then it was a race to the dressing rooms to don those god awful polyester jumpsuits that fitted tightly against your butt. After the dunkings you were rushed back to the changing rooms then corralled in another room to wait for the adult chaperones to do their session.

It was never a spirtual place to me.

The temple worker would tell the youth or at least they did it when I was going on youth temple trips "when you take your wet baptism suit off make sure to put it right side out and zip it up with the zipper. After that fold it in the hamper. That will safe us later so much time". Our young women's presidency was all about checking the hamper if the wet baptism suits were folded corretly.

Notice that they are building housing around the temples too. Housing near a temple is highly sought after by Mormons so it’s always above market value. You can’t buy a house near a temple unless you’re a temple recommend holder. They just won’t sell to you. Maybe they’re just catering to that upscale market niche.

Do you have a source for any of these claims?

The only one I’ve ever heard of was apartments or condos around the proposed Tooele temple, and that fell apart over neighborhood opposition.

Well, the Draper Temple land quadrupled when the church announced it's plans. They, (Their real estate arm) bought up all the surrounding land Before the announcement) and mormon developers and builders planned and made a fortune off of home sales. Read up and learn about the recent Tooele temple debacle. They bought the land and planned a huge suburban housing development. That brought out the pitchforks from the rural landowners and home owners that moved there to get away from high density. Most of those opposed are LDS. The church didn't scale back and just build the temple, they moved the complete development plan 10 miles away. People would've been happy with just the temple, but not the high density housing. The church passed and moved elsewhere where they could make money.

I did read about the Erda (Tooele) situation. I have not read about any others, which is why I asked for a source. It may have happened, but it would be news to me.

If word got out that a temple was going into a place like Draper, yes, I would expect land speculation. I would be surprised if LDS Inc would buy land itself in advance. I think the case in Erda was that they had to buy more land than they wanted, so they decided to put apartments on the extra property.

Not directly on point, but I saw the Winnipeg temple last year, and it is situated on a huge island on a divided roadway in SW Winnipeg. Two sides of the teardrop shaped block the temple is on are strip malls with medical clinics, a gas station and a provincial liquor mart. The other two sides are townhomes and apartments.

It is a brand spanking new, relatively upscale neighborhood, but not the sort of neighborhood Utah Mormons would expect for a temple. They are not a real estate draw outside of MormonLand.

(search "bridgwater medical Centre, winnipeg" if you want to see the site. The temple is kitty-corner from the medical centre)

Nonsense. There are highly enforced laws regarding housing discrimination.

I'm guessing that is actually illegal to do.

That said, I wouldn't doubt if they tried to sell to LDS people in more subtle, "wink, wink" ways. I don't know who does what and what kind of communications are given but it's not that difficult to know who is Mormon and who isn't and they could easily discriminate in a less overt way that wouldn't get them in trouble.

More likely is that they just want wealthy people living in that area so that the temple is "beautified" by it's surroundings and not "defaced" by poor families or homeless people living around the temple. Just like when they built the high end mall and condos next to the temple and than bought up some of the land and at least one of the streets in the effort to avoid "urban blight" downtown where Temple Square is and the center of the church.

Everything is about image for the church. They always build temples in the nicest areas where wealthy or upper middle class people live. They don't want it tainted by the less desirables.

So very Christ-like.

The CULT of Joseph’s MYTH of DoomsDay MORmONs Inc. is really a real estate investment trust. It’s like a dog going around pissing on all the trees in your yard to mark it as his territory. When Jesus returns they’re going to have a huge $100 billion party and orgies in every temple. Yes Wall Street and banks will still be fully operational. Only Jesus will own the printing presses printing out those fat stacks of cash bitches!!!! Dolla, dolla, dolla!!!

He will need to buy a football team. Maybe the Saints?

I think the church is cashing out it’s equities and using the money to build temples. At least they have a physical asset instead of losing money the next time the stock market bubble pops. This also fulfills the prophecy of temples dotting the earth. In short, the church currently can afford to build them. In the 60’s and 70’s the church could not build temples like this. David O McKay had concerns about building the Provo and Ogden temples due to the church budget. Those temples were built on the cheap trying to keep costs as low as possible but still be acceptable as temples.

IIRC, most of the announced temples have no timeline for actually being built. Some do not even have land. They are vaporware.

Rusty wants to be important. He has waited to long to have power. So he keeps making changes, keeps talking about the Second Coming, and needs to beat Hinckley's temple numbers.

Unfortunately for him, the church is shrinking. So, announcing temples that he would maybe like to build one day is the only thing he can do. I imagine that the bean counters roll their eyes, but he is the boss.

Well, I suppose if he REALLY wanted to make a difference he could spend a hundred billion dollars on doing good. But that won't happen.

A couple of observations.

Location: It is situated far away from the main highway thru town. This runs counter to the previous declaration that a temple should be highly visible as a "beacon to the world." It is situated on a medium density road, with a railroad track across the street. BTW, there are several sites of open land available along the freeway, but the church must have purchased the obscure location due to price. The lot was still being used to grow hay.

Construction: The plans call for an 8 ft cement/masonry wall to surround the entire temple grounds. The artist's rendering shows vines and flowering plants to cover the exterior of this wall. The temple will have a raised foundation as to be very visible from the street. The parking area will not be as visible from the road.

Local Approval: The church was required to present an impact statement as part of receiving permits to build a church in a mostly residential zoned area. It stated that it would have minimal impact to morning/afternoon traffic because it will be open 3-4 days per week and closed Sun-Tues.

My thoughts about this temple: The church sought a parcel of land that was obtained on the cheap. There are no other open tracts around it so it does nothing to add to the existing value of homes in the area. The building of walls will make the temple look like a religious compound. The church apparently has agreed to allow local zoning laws to dictate the hours and days when the temple can be open.

I think the church (outside of the mormon corridor) is embarrassed that its vast temple parking lots are empty most of the time. People driving by will quickly notice that there are rarely cars parked at the temple. I think a temple with walls will keep observant eyes from noticing that the temple is underutilized.

I also pass by the stake center and two other meetinghouses in my area. Lately, I have noticed similar models of vehicles parked in front. I believe that these are missionary vehicles and that they largely do there "virtual" proselytizing from the comfort/safety of the church buildings. My point is that church parking lots in meetinghouses/stake centers are rarely full, save for Sundays. And even then the church schedules several wards/branches to have overlapping meeting times to save on utility bills. It also gives the appearance that the mormon church is the place to be on Sunday. Ha-ha-ha

So, obviously the reason for building more temples (and renovating old ones) is NOT the stated reason. There is no spiritual experience, and the "theology" undergirding it all is baloney, right? So it has to be something else.

I think it's also important to note that there is probably no single "the" reason either. There is probably a combined set of reasons that, in the aggregate, makes it in the morgue's interest to keep building them.

For 150 years, the second coming used to always be "right around the corner." That's not the case any more. Whether they acknowledge it publicly or not, the morg is playing a long game now. About the same time, the MBA generation morphed a long running fraud into a financial powerhouse (frankly, not hard to do when you have a steady stream of other people's money, stop accounting for its use, and stop using it for what it's intended for).

To the notion of money laundering, no, technically it's not, because as far as we know their monies have not been obtained illegally ("just" unethically, IMO). But there is a strong parallel. For example, the practical purpose for money laundering is to clean dirty money so that it can be spent. Criminals will pump money through "legit" businesses, pay taxes on it, essentially settling for less as long as they can then use it.

Likewise, although the morg is sitting on billions, they can't just spend it. One way to get their mits on it is to route it through other entities and "legit" operations in order to have access to it. To that extent, rewarding insiders and royalty with building contracts is one way that building temples pays off for whomever is chosen.

Anyway, building temples is a leaky bucket sort of operation. Human nature is such that when a bunch of people have shared incentives (to acquire other people's money), and the ability to influence the related activities and consequences (directly or indirectly), then the bucket is going to leak as much as possible. And the well-connected insiders will be the beneficiaries.

Building chapels could have the same effect, as noted, but they'd largely sit empty, which would be embarrassing (and potentially have a net negative effect). Temples, on the other hand, encourage the existing morgbots to keep their shoulder to the wheel, paying tithing so that they can attend (another puzzle piece). It fits the carrots and sticks model. Building chapels does not (anyone can go to a chapel, for free even).

I think it's a multi-tiered operation. Why do you think there are so many temples in Utah, many within 10 miles of each other? Because the church leaders pick an undeveloped area, years before the new temple announcement, quietly buy up the surrounding land that was fairly cheap. Announce a new temple and watch those land prices soar. They sell their land at a 400% profit to their home building arm that then builds $200K-300K quality homes and sell them for 2-3 times that. This only works in Utah, AZ and ID. Not enough mormons in BFE Texas to buy overinflated land and homes by a temple that they don't belong to, or want. So, they build temples, show invoices with 2-3 times the real costs and profit from that and in taxes. Remember, much of the church building is by For Profit arms of the church. Their contracting companies and supplier companies get rich and there's a ton of free floating cash to go back to SLC.

Yes, I think they are well aware of the secondary impact and indirect consequences of their actions. People in-the-know can exploit advance knowledge. It's little different than the legislator who knows in advance where future interstate highways will be constructed, and takes advantage of that knowledge, either personally and/or with tips to friends. Many of these sorts of transactions make use of holding companies and so forth.

For example, a "larger than life" and now deceased Senator is purported to have purchased all sorts of property between my hometown and the next town over before the interstate highway was built between the two cities (at least that's the legend in my hometown). FWIW, he wasn't Mormon.

A larger than life golf club in my hometown quietly bought up everything they could on the edges of their original property in order to expand the club, and, again, they did it with a variety of holding companies. In this case, they hid their identity and motives, to avoid huge price spikes, and accomplished their goal over a long period of time.

Again, the morg has an eye on the long game.

I think people in Utah have a hard time grasping how small some of these temples are. Oh, they can make them look grand in the close up photos or paintings, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you can drive right past them and miss them. The Memphis temple, which was rebuilt and opened last year is way smaller than the stake center and was just built in a corner of the stake center parking lot. There are many surrounding houses that are bigger and it’s not exactly in a ritzy neighborhood. I took people to the open house and if there were more than 20 people in the building at a time it felt crowded. The couple of hallways are very small. You never see more than a handful of cars in the parking lot close to the temple. I’m sure having it there generates WAY more income through guilt and shame than it ever cost to build and maintain.

I always wondered if having fancy temples helped attract/retain wealthier members. Seems like really rich folks would be a little embarrassed with the "modesty" of the ward meetinghouses.

Maybe one function of lavish temples allow the corporation to "show a little bit of leg" so to speak and give a small clue that they're not a poor organization.

The key of course is to not overdo it. It's a delicate balance. We've all seen what happens when people find out how ridiculously rich TSCC is.

I think Christians who "get" the basic nature of things have no problem austerity. After all, the Bible addresses this sort of thing quite a bit. I've known some incredibly wealthy people who attend rather modest churches.

Conversely, I think if people are concerned about the appearances of the org's they join, then it really depends more on where they are. If they're in the Moridor, then TSCC is the logical place. Outside the Moridor, not so much.

Let them build temples.
I love to see near empty temples.

No, they build temple to store money (money stores).

They build vans, ships, and planes to move money.

Mormonism is cash rich and spirit poor.

It's speculation.

I think the church is planning ahead. They are hoping that in the future, mormonism will be popular again. It's like dropping fishing nets in to the water, long before the fish start coming because you know that they will come. The Mormon church wants to turn the whole world in to Utah. When all is said and done, they want their revenue generation tools (the temples) to be well entrenched. The temples will fund ward and stake houses easily when the time comes. They don't want to build extra ward and stake houses now because those buildings would just sit empty now. They don't care if the temples sit reletively empty for now because most non-members will not notice or care.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2021 10:16PM by azsteve.

In reading Exmo-generated posts here, there, and everywhere, the Temple experience seems to be a hard sell to people who didn't grow up mormon, and thus weren't imprinted with the notion that Temple = Normal, and that appearing to be flummoxed after the first time makes you look bad to your mormon family.

So even with the changes to try to remove the 'weird' from it, converts are going still going to have a problem making sense of the performance.

Meaning that next they'll change the Temple clothing: When they finally swap out the Baker's Hat for a white baseball cap with a big "J" logo, they might be able to gain comfortable acceptance.

The crucial question will be, what font to use for the "J"... Luckily they'll be able to do a survey~~

I'd venture that the temple ceremony is as shocking, or nearly so, for BIC Mormons as for converts.

It surely was for me. We new initiates were not trained for that degree of baroque ritual, the residual hints of violence, and the suppression of individuality. The experience was as atavistic and disturbing to us with modern sensibilities as it must have been to early Mormons, who had been taught to abhor the pomp and pretensions of Catholicism.

The modern church would never have made such an elementary mistake. But of course Joseph didn't have the sophisticated PR consultants and opinion pollsters that relay God's intentions to the Q15 today.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2021 01:54PM by Lot's Wife.

in short, most likely yes.

They use legal entities, bankers, suitcases, wired funds, and investment and tons of offshore accounts to move money around.

Nobody uses suitcases except dumb drug dealers. You can’t carry all that much cash in a suitcase, and it would be spotted at customs when the bag is x-rayed/searched. If you didn’t declare it, it then gets confiscated.

Real money gets wired.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nobody uses suitcases except dumb drug dealers.>

Mormonism must have had a lot of dumb, drug dealing, dopey LDS men in the 80$: suitcases, briefcases, Justin cases...

> Real money gets wired.>

Fake money does too

Wire Taps & Tap Dancing

Tithing money is washed, baptised, praised, honored, beloved, worshipped and elevated...

It's sacrament!

Turned into bread and water, which is then broken and poored, it is passed around, hoping to attract more hunger and thirst, and LOTS MORE cash in weekly envelopes.

Mormon Money is Mocked by the Members Mastering Momentary starvation (for some truth, wisdom, pith, SOMETHING!).

Members throw money at tscc and tscc throws shade at the members.

> ... washed ...


Yes, real money is laundered.

The context was nobody carries around suitcases full of cash, except drug dealers. Most money does not exist as actual cash. It is just ledger entries on bank statements.

Try to buy a new car, or even worse, a house, using actual physical cash, and see how many red flags you raise.

A friend owns a construction business and people offer cash to him all the time, mostly in hopes of a discount. But while he'll take cash, he won't give a discount, and his excuse is that his bank, Wells Fargo, only lets him deposit a small amount of cash per month. Above that figure, they charge him a small percentage because 'cash' is a hassle for them to handle.


Cash... how gross!

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The context was nobody carries around suitcases
> full of cash, except drug dealers. Most money does
> not exist as actual cash. It is just ledger
> entries on bank statements.

Drug dealers with suitcases full of cash might be *your* context, but not *the* context.
I only said that real money is laundered. Btw, drug dealers can launder their money. Suitcases are optional.

Mormonism will do anything for money... To Get It (from the people, stealing from God's secret guilty stash) OR To Spend It (on itself, throwing it away on Great And Spacious Buildings...)

It will bend over backward in it's attempt to show opulence, legitimacy and importance, just to scratch its own back... and to pat itself on the back.

Mormonism is hogwash. You could clean a pig with it too.

wondering Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They seem to build temples [near others which are not currently in use]. Do they do this [as a form of money laundering]...? >

A temple IS NOT necessary.

FOOLING the people To Get More Money [to build more templetons {temple skeletons}] is THE NAME OF THE GAME.

∆ It's a pyramid ∆

~ The People At The Bottom Support The People At The Top ~

• The People At The Top Don't Care About The People In The Middle or On Bottom BUT To Get Their Money (to build [their own names and] wealth) •

A temple is a$ good a place a$ any to place a little bit of that cash: real estate, services, embezzled, cons, contracters, lawyers, vendors, and many other workers and/ or players get a(nother) job for a few hours, days, weeks or millions.

Sucking free-agency from, using, manipulating and annoying, lying to, and perverting members about "TITHING", while punishing them time and again with jobs/ "calls"/ busy work/ chores and infecting them with inane drivel is LDS docturine.

Mormonism can't do anything good with the money so it does the next best thing, NOTHING but built tilted and tiled tempelots.

As opposed to "necessary temples?"

If ChirchCo were to build more chapels in Morland, that would displace & displeasure many many residents most of whom are members / tithepayers.

Not a good idea.

Here's a thought: Of those people to whom the Prophet and the Apostles might listen, who would bad-mouth the temple building plan to them?

And based on what we know about how the missions are run, doesn't it make a bit of sense that temple presidents would mostly behave as do the MPs? You know, yelling and carrying on at the temple workers and their local SPs about getting more people into and through the temples... Is there a part of the church that isn't numbers-driven?

I still get a kick out of those stories about how ward clerks inflate the numbers attending Sac meetings and then the bishops inflate THAT number! And what are the odds that the SP also pumps some of their stats?

So the odds are that the best figures the church can crunch about how many active members there are, are moderate to grossly inflated.

I doubt that anyone who might have the ear of a prophet or an apostle is ever going to tell their good buddy that building temples really isn't all that urgent, at best, and an appalling waste of time, talent, and money, at worst.

There is no doubt that building temples has generated a ton of income for the church. The 100 billion didn't materialize over night. I think a good portion of it was cultivated over a 20 year period: 1985-2005.

Why do I place 1985 for this period of financial growth?

Because the church developed its 5 Missions of the Church program where it explicitly OUTLINES that it requires church leaders (stake presidents and bishops) to push priesthood holders to actively seek a temple recommend even if the members live too far away to "regularly" attend the temple.

Prior to 1985, the two main "spiritual" quorums in every ward were the Seventies and the High Priests. These were the ones who had the monthly competition to see how many endowment sessions each group could do.

Sorry, the elders were never part of this temple competition. They were the grunts that were called when someone's tree needed trimming or piano moved.

I am speculating (based on outward appearances in my ward) that only the EQ president had a TR prior to 1985. My Dad was the EQ secretary and was told that he needed to get paid up in tithing. The EQ presidency was such a motley looking crew at the time: full beards, wearing short sleeve shirts, colored shirts, no suit coats or vests. Heck even my Dad and another counselor wouldn't wear a neck-tie to church. All of that changed per stake president!

And I think that push, beginning in 1985, lead to the 1990 changes of the endowment rituals. The church started to get an earful that members were uncomfortable with the absurd penalties (yes, the whole temple experience is absurd). The church agreed to cut out the pantomiming to keep the money rolling in.

The growth of the Church has almost stopped or is, as a friend of mine who works for the Church in SLC said, stagnating. The most growth right now is obviously in the I-15 corridor and in Africa.
Keep having more kids means that some of them will stay active and have more kids, etc. etc.

I still have a few Church friends (those who didn't disown me when I stopped doing the Church thing) and a couple of them are pretty upset because their kids have stopped going to Church.

"What should I tell them to make them come back?" one of them asked me.

"You need to keep loving them and being supportive of their decision," is what I said. I don't think C.... liked that answer.

The Church started the three hour blocks in the late 70s early 80s to save money and to make it more convenient for the members. Why go to Church twice in one day?

Now they got rid of that to save money. For every hour less of use, they save money. Multiply that by 1000s of chapels and it's some pretty big $$$.

With temples I'd say that it's to give the appearance that the Church is strong and growing. There are places in the world where building a temple for maybe 5000 members is not really worth it, but it looks good.

PLUS, if you buy a house or property near a temple site, it will increase in value. In Argentina for example, people were so against buiding a temple outside of Buenos Aires. There wasn't much there but the people objected.

When it was built, the price of land and houses which were being built near it skyrocketed. Same thing has happened in Toronto, and Ghana where they announced a new temple.

Do any of the Church leaders own properties or bought nearby before the announcement was made public, I don't know that one, but it's a good investment.