My wife cannot believe that the church uses tithing money to finance its corporate enterprises. Can anyone point me to the evidence?

In June of 2012, the church changed its tithing and offerings slips and receipts to reflect that any moneys given to the church could be used at its discretion and not use as directed on previous slips by the giver (options included humanitarian aid, temple construction, perpetual education fund, ward or general missionary among others).

Here is an article about the change.

http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/blogsfaithblog/54371289-180/church-font-tithing-mormon.html.csp

The City Creek Mall which cost an estimated $5 billion and owned by the church, opened a few months before the change.

Now, a TBM will say that the $5B came from investments the church has made over the years. So many diverse investments. And how did those come to be purchased? Where did the money come from for the first investment? What other income could any church have BEFORE they invested their excess?

From the donations of its members. There's no other answer.

From the article you linked to the LDS church spokesman said -
"We feel a sacred obligation to make sure that tithing and other donations made to the church are used prudently and wisely,"

In other words, "we know how to spend your money more wisely than YOU do, so you can check anything on that slip that will help you believe that it's all going to your favorite cause, but we just gave ourselves the right to totally ignore it."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2016 01:51AM by seekyr.

Plus, there is no public accounting of the money. In Canada and Great Britain, the members have at least some idea of where their money is going. In the U.S., that is not the case.

There is only tithing and dividends from tithing..hence its all tithing.
Cant split hairs on that!

Some members give Extra donations of land, stocks, etc.

Yes, and I would lump that in with "tithing and donations".

I feel awful for the seniors who get duped into giving their estates

There is a need for transparency.

Sooner or later, the lack of transparency is the very appearance of evil, and will be quite harmful to LDS Inc.

Tithing was also used to finance Kimball's bizarre fantasies and Hinckley's unlimited ego. I think that's a far more serious issue.

"Kimballs bizare fantisies" what was that? I thought Lee, Smith, Kimball, Benson, (all the hard core GOP presidents) tried to save the money.

Hinckley spent a double ton of money of money on McTemples.

I thought Kimball was financing the archeological expeditions to discovery BOM evidence.

First of all, the mass building of temples really started under Kimball. Hinckley just decided to make them more cheaply.

By bizarre fantasies, I meant the whole "Lengthen Your Stride" campaign and his supposed visions about armies of Lamanite missionaries converting the US and then going through Iceland and Scandinavia to Europe and the Middle East...it was childish, ignorant, bizarre, and universes away from any kind of reality.

Any organization I'm involved with has complete financial transparency -- no secrets. This is standard practice.

The members of the cojcolds will eventually demand the same from their leaders, but will it ever happen?

The fact that they are tax-exempt and refusing to reveal their financials should be a crime.

Lots of criminal enterprises invest money in legit companies and can "go straight", but from where does the seed money come>?>?

Heavenly protection money.

There were several articles written by some of the larger financial magazines that was published when Romney was running for president.

Here are a couple that I was able to dig up:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-mormons-idUSBRE87B05W20120812

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money

I think the Bloomberg (then Businessweek) article is the more detailed of the two... It's worth reading both.

Hope this helps!

There is no evidence, and I would say that it is highly doubtful that ANY tithing money has EVER been used to finance the Church's corporate empire.

There will always be bitter exmos who say things like, "Well, it had to start from something and that something was tithing, so it is all related to tithing." But that is not really the case. From the early beginnings of Mormonism when Martin Harris gave Joseph Smith $50 in silver "to do the Lord's work", and then later mortgaged his property for money to print the Book of Mormon, donations of all kinds have poured into the Church outside of tithing.

Now-a-days, there is even an arm of the church that has been set up to encourage members to include the church in it's estate planning. This type of "gift giving" again is beyond tithing - https://www.ldsphilanthropies.org/gift-planning.html

By the time my father's estate is drained, he will have donated millions of dollars to the church outside of the tithing he paid during his lifetime. I doubt he is the only member of the church who has done so. In fact...I know a few of his wealthy friends who have done so as well.

With all of the real estate holdings, stocks, businesses, etc. that the church owns, I have little doubt the "for profit" side of the church does quite well. I imagine that it is very easy for the church to make a statement such as, "No tithing funds were used for [insert whatever mall or business venture you choose]...", since tithing funds are more than likely just a "drop in the bucket" compared to what the church reaps corporately and from donations made outside of the members 10%.

I think you're missing the point. And saying things like "bitter exmo's" on a recovery board isn't going to help your case much.

The problem is that regardless of whether or not the donations were under the bucket labeled "tithing" or simply "gift giving", most people assume that they are donating to a church, not the for profit side of the organization.

Skimming over the website you provided, I see nothing about how your donation can be used to fund a mall... Yet the church managed to somehow build one... Where did those funds come from?

So while "all of the real estate holdings, stocks, businesses, etc. that the church owns" may not come directly from tithing, whether you like to admit it or not, most likely the funds to start the for-profit side of the church corp came from, at least in part, donations to a non-profit church that managed to make it's way over to the for-profit side of the organization.

From the Bloomberg Article I posted above:

"Besides having final say on major transactions, the church owns all of DMC’s shares. And each year the holding company, like all church businesses, donates 10 percent of its income to a church fund. In some cases money flows in the opposite direction, from the church’s treasury to the businesses. “From time to time, if there is a particular need, there would be some monies available, but fortunately over the years that has not been the case very often,” says McMullin. “If you have a particular reversal in an enterprise, you need to have some additional cash flow until you work through a difficult time. I’ll give you an example, we’re going through one right now: It’s called a recession.” McMullin declined to elaborate on whether the church has been bailing out subsidiaries."

Notes: DMC is Deseret Management Corporation. McMullin is Keith McMullin, at the time of the article was 2nd counselor in the church’s Presiding Bishopric and CEO of DMC.

In case you missed it... "In some cases money flows in the opposite direction" ... Personally, I think that's pretty damming right there.

Ignorance isn't bliss, it's Mr. Happy.

The church "invests" the tithing reciepts for a year. The accumulated interest, they remove and do what they want with and claim it's not tithing money.

God will not be stocked. Oh, wait, what just happened?

RICO has been around for a long time.

I've always wondered why LDS-Inc's real estate and raw land purchases have never triggered it.

LDS-Inc's non-transparent behavior with it's tithing $$$ exactly fits the RICO Act.

I hope "The Brethren" are squirming on this latest application of RICO and what it's implications are for a Real Estate Acquisition and Holding Company masquerading as a "Church" entity known as LDS-Inc.

Or so it seems to me...

###

Passed in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal law designed to combat organized crime in the United States. It allows prosecution and civil penalties for racketeering activity performed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. Such activity may include illegal gambling, bribery, kidnapping, murder, money laundering, counterfeiting, embezzlement, drug trafficking, slavery, and a host of other unsavory business practices.

To convict a defendant under RICO, the government must prove that the defendant engaged in two or more instances of racketeering activity and that the defendant directly invested in, maintained an interest in, or participated in a criminal enterprise affecting interstate or foreign commerce. The law has been used to prosecute members of the mafia, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, and Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group, among many others.

###

When we pointed these things out to TBM family, they didn't have a problem with it.... Anything to build the empire, and 'church knows best'.

Former Pastor Of Seattle Mega-Church SUED For Misappropriating FUNDS...

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1777965

I hope "The Brethren" are quaking in their BOOTS over THIS!!!

Or so it seems to me...

Or jiggling in their suits.

Well, that would be Holland. But all Monson can do at this point is wiggle his elephant ears.

Opaque financial dealings are always suspect. The fact that LDS, Inc. does not reveal their financial dealings, even to their own members, is one reason I stopped paying them any money several years ago. So many red flags. It just became overwhelmingly apparent that I needed to part ways with this organization!