https://www.wsj.com/articles/mormon-church-temple-spending-spree-utah-e167977f

An interesting report on Church finances that also got its link on the Drudge Report.

Of note is that the Pocatello Temple cost 69M USD to build.

Now Pocatello is quite big, so lets go down in square footage to around 25k, which is one third Pocatello's size, and roughly the size of the temples going up in Latin America.

That's 23M per temple, give or take 5 million for materials, shipping, etc.

There's been 133 temples announced by President Nelson. At 23 million per temple, we could say that the Church is going to spend around 3 billion dollars on temples at minimum assuming no further temple announcements (they say they want to get to 500 temples by the end of the decade).

For once I agreed with Jana Riess in the article, in that she said that Jesus wouldn't be sitting on a billion Bennies when there were children around the world dying of hunger. The Church needs to be doing more charity work. Getting a billion dollars worth of charitable projects is pretty good in a year, but keep in mind there were 33 temple announcements over the past year too, which at 23 million a pop (on average, could be more or less depending on square footage and materials) would require an 800 million dollar investment.

800 million dollars for temples and 1 billion for charity. Estimated tithing receipts anywhere from 7 to 10 billion dollars in a given year.

I think the U.S. should treat the temples as England does -- more along the lines of a private club, and not eligible for tax considerations.

The prefab double-wide temples will be cheaper, and for a church whose net worth is north of $100B, the temple building spree is less than 3% of their net worth. Spread over ten years, it’s not much of a dent on their rainy day fund.

I’d like to know what the Temple Square seismic retrofit and general facelift is costing. Jacking up the SL Temple and installing a new foundation can’t be cheap.

Ah yes, but this new foundation will last until the Second Coming.

It was the only responsible thing to do.