Posted on 08/13/2012 4:11:37 PM PDT by greyfoxx39
SAN FRANCISCO -- If the Mormon church were a business, wealthy adherents like Mitt Romney would count as its dominant revenue stream.
Its investment strategy would be viewed as risk-averse.
It would also likely attract corporate gadflies protesting a lack of transparency. They would call for less spending on real estate and more on charitable causes to improve membership growth -- the Mormons' return on investment.
Those are a few of the conclusions that can be drawn from an analysis of the church's finances by Reuters and University of Tampa sociologist Ryan Cragun.
Relying heavily on church records in countries that require far more disclosure than the United States, Cragun and Reuters estimate that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints brings in some $7 billion annually in tithes and other donations.
It owns about $35 billion worth of temples and meeting houses around the world, and controls farms, ranches, shopping malls and other commercial ventures worth many billions more.
The church claims 14 million members around the world, more than half outside the United States. All are supposed to tithe, or give 10 percent, of their income, which Mormons frequently interpret as pre-tax earnings. But only about 40 percent of Mormons counted by the church actually attend weekly services in the United States and Canada, and in many countries, including Mexico and Brazil, only a quarter of nominal members are active, according to Cumorah, an independent research group headed by a devoted, active Mormon.
These active members are most likely to tithe, and the result is that from a financial standpoint at least, the church remains largely a venture of active American members, said Cragun, who adds that U.S. Mormon men tend to be wealthier than the average U.S. male.
"Most of the revenue of the religion is from the U.S., and a large percentage comes from an elite cadre of wealthy donors, like Mitt Romney," said Cragun. "(It) is a religion that appeals to economically successful men by rewarding their financial acuity with respect and positions of prestige within the religion."
The church is full of successful businessmen, including chemical billionaire Jon Huntsman Sr., the father of the former presidential candidate, J.W. "Bill" Marriott Jr. and his hotel-owning family, and even entertainer Donny Osmond.
Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, gave $4.1 million to the church over the past two years (amounting to 9.7 percent of his gross adjusted income, according to the two years' worth of tax returns he has released). He would tithe on his IRA, valued at as much as $102 million, only when he withdraws from it and pays taxes.
Crunching the numbers
Several countries around the world require religious groups and charities to file financial reports, including Canada. The country has only 185,000 Mormon members but a wealth of statistics on them. Taking total reported Canadian donations and dividing by the estimated number of active Mormons and family financial data from the World Bank indicates that active Canadian Mormons give slightly less than 8 percent of their income to the church.
Assuming that active U.S. Mormons give at a similar rate and adjusting for higher U.S. income, total U.S. tithing would amount to more than $6 billion, or about $6.5 billion annually between the United States and Canada.
Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, which also require financial disclosures, all have sharply lower donation rates than Canada. Based on data from those countries, tithing outside the United States and Canada totals several hundred million dollars, taking global total donations to about $7 billion.
Canada also requires the church to disclose the value of its assets and spending. Using those figures as a basis suggests the total value of church buildings, including temples and meeting houses, would be about $35 billion globally.
Church spokesman Michael Purdy declined to comment specifically on the estimates but said that the church was different from a corporation.
"Other projections are speculative and do not reflect an understanding of how the church uses its income to bless the lives of people," he added, saying the church was financed primarily from member tithing and offerings.
Focus on business and buildings
Concerned or disgruntled current and former Mormons complain that the church spends too much on real estate and for-profit ventures, neglecting charity work.
The Mormon church has no hospitals and only a handful of primary schools. Its university system is limited to widely respected Brigham Young, which has campuses in Utah, Idaho and Hawaii, and LDS Business College. Seminaries and institutes for high school students and single adults offer religious studies for hundreds of thousands.
It counts more than 55,000 in its missionary forces, primarily youths focused on converting new members but also seniors who volunteer for its nonprofits, such as the Polynesian Cultural Center, which bills itself as Hawaii's No. 1 tourist attraction, and for-profit businesses owned by the church.
The church has plowed resources into a multi-billion-dollar global network of for-profit enterprises: it is the largest rancher in the United States, a church official told Nebraska's Lincoln Journal Star in 2004, with other ranches and farms in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and Great Britain, according to financial documents reviewed by Reuters.
Ranching and farm industry sources say they are well-run operations.
It also has a small media empire, an investment fund, and is developing a mall across from its Salt Lake City headquarters, which it calls an attempt to help revitalize the city rather than to make money. These enterprises are also part of a vast nest egg for tough times. The church expects wars and natural disasters before Christ returns to Earth in the Second Coming, and members are encouraged to prepare by laying in stores of food. Farms and ranches are part of the church's own preparation.
"The church teaches its members to live within their means and put a little money aside for life's unexpected events. As a church, we live by the same principle," Purdy said. The rainy-day fund and operating budget rarely mix, officials say.
Cost-cutting is a top priority, church documents show. It has even laid off janitors and called on members to clean temples and meeting houses, but the buildout of temples continues, including one under construction in Rome.
Those temples take a lot of money to operate, Purdy points out, and many of the grand church buildings are short on congregants, says David Stewart, a physician who leads the research group Cumorah.
"I have been to beautiful church buildings in Hungary and Ukraine, and Latvia and other places, and there are these huge buildings and 35 people there, and you say, how can this work financially? The math - it just doesn't work."
In contrast, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which had about 17 million members a year ago, appears to be getting a better return on investment: It builds smaller meeting houses and lots of schools and hospitals, and its numbers are swelling faster than the Mormons', said Stewart. The Adventists claim a million new members join annually, compared with every three years or so for the Mormons.
"The Seventh-day Adventists clearly have a much more expansive humanitarian project in terms of building hospitals and medical schools and schools and universities and long-term developmental infrastructure around the world," said Stewart. "It's paid off for them."
The Mormon church, meanwhile, appears to be decreasing transparency and member control of donations. New tithing slips give fewer donation options and come with an expanded disclaimer saying the church has sole discretion over spending, even though it will make "reasonable efforts" to follow donors' wishes.
"Hey, where's the slot of 'shopping malls'?" a poster said of the new slips on exmormonforums.com, one of several dissident sites.
Many faithful have no such issues. On chat boards and in private conversations, they emphasize that volunteering for the church and giving to it are worthy deeds in and of themselves.
"The funds are used to build and maintain temples and meeting houses, as well as take care of the many expenses associated with helping the work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ roll forth. I love to pay tithing," Carl Ames said on one church site.
Purdy did offer a list of spending priorities: building houses of worship, supporting Brigham Young University and a seminary system, operating nearly 140 temples and the world's largest genealogy research program, and humanitarian aid for both members and non-members.
Since 1985 the church has spent a total of $1.4 billion on relief for disasters such as Japan's earthquake and Ethiopian famine, and it operates 129 "bishops' storehouses" with food and household items for the needy.
“Wait till they start on the mormon race history!”
When you cover that, be sure to point out the Mormons’ early belief in abolition of slavery.
It was one of the factors which made them unpopular in Missouri.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War
And that Joseph Smith opposed slavery in his 1844 candidacy for Potus, whereby he proposed abolishing slavery by 1850, using sale of public lands to compensate slaveholders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith#Life_in_Nauvoo.2C_Illinois_.281839.E2.80.9344.29
It is worth looking at both sides of issues, don’t you agree?
This is a conservative site, if you notice, even the members who are going to vote for Romney, profess to despise him and his liberalism.
You can imagine the feelings toward him of the conservatives that refuse to vote for him.
This is not a republican site, it is a conservative site, so we don’t require everyone to line up behind the failed, left-wing governor of Massachusetts.
I think the average person will be interested in what Mitt was taught from 1947 to 1965, from his religion, and what he was teaching about the inferiority of blacks in his religion from 1965 to 1978 as a Priest.
People know exactly what the devoted Mitt Romney was teaching, he is no rebel, he is a devout, exceptional, Mormon.
The response from Mormons that they had the real truth, and were practicing it while we were watching Animal house and Star Wars, and then that God reversed himself in a revelation to the Holy Mormon Prophet in 1978, will make the average person even more disturbed.
Both your church and your husbands church, clearly state that Mormonism is not a Christian religion, yet the Mormons will swear to your children that they are, to try and get them into the cult.
This isn’t some kind of game.
Yeah. Sounds like the a lot of American missionaries like the Tebows who come to the Philippines quoting scripture to prove Catholics aren't Christians but evil pagans who are going to hell.
a lot of them hate Catholics more than they love Jesus...
My church is also incorporated. It’s a legal nicety, one that does not make us a business.
Please give us a source for your claim that Tim Tebow preaches against Catholics.
You are lying about the Tebows, and I don’t why you would do that, a person who tried such a thing probably isn’t interested much in Christianity, except to hate it.
You also left us in the dark about what you disagreed with in my post.
The person that I was posting said she is Southern Baptist, and that her husband is Catholic, both of those Christian denominations clearly state that Mormonism is a non-Christian religion made up by Joseph Smith. I also pointed out that the Mormon recruiters will swear up and down that they are Christians also, and that it is how they recruit innocents into their cult.
Saturday, August 11, 2012 10:57:08 PM · 209 of 272 roylene to MHGinTN After further thought I am saddened , it has appeared you have abandoned Christ for Romney. Of course that is your choice, good bye dear FR friend and relish in your new found comfort, it appears it rests no longer in Christ but in Romney.
Well, that took a lot of work on your part to show that I was talking about principles and priorities.
If you actually think I can know a person’s heart, you give me way more credit than I deserve.
I used the word “appears” for a reason, I did not say I knew their heart.
Nice try.
However anyone, who claims to be a conservative and abandons their principles that they claim rest in Christ do in fact appear to have abandoned their priorities in Christ to Romney as far as I am concerned.
I stand by that.
Only God knows a person’s heart, whether a person goes to heaven or not rest solely with them.
Bearing false witness on devoted Christians dedicating their lives to missionary work is pretty bad.
It is one thing to be atheist or whatever you are, but to hate Christians so much as to try to create an internet lie about named individuals.
heh. Since I am a Catholic and an ex missionary, and still live overseas where I have to hear anti Catholic sermons every time my “evangelical” relatives hold a party and invite their “pastor” to give us a small “blessing” (which usually turns out to be a half hour sermon), did it ever occur to you that I was speaking from experience?
No, what you are doing is lying and bearing false witness against Christian missionaries by name, a popular name here, shared by their son, who is a Christian inspiration to millions.
I think that you are doing a nasty little piece of anti-Christian evil, by using the internet to spread this lie about that family.
You do that in service to Mormonism on a Mormon thread, while loudly announcing that you are a Catholic.
The Philippines, a country comprised of over 7,100 islands, has historically been an area of abuse and conquest. Of the 86 million Filipinos, we estimate that over 65 million have never once heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our PLAN is to preach the Gospel in every village in the Philippines in the next few years. The task is great, but God specializes and delights in doing the impossible! We intend to increase our staff of national evangelists to 60. By dividing the country into theaters of operation, with each evangelist assigned to a specific area, and working extremely hard, we intend to preach the Gospel in every village. The plan includes providing theological training and guidance to help national pastors to conduct the best possible follow-up.
Yeah....big white Americans will teach all those poor Pinoys how to be Christian...and notice he doesn't seem to notice there are other Protestant Churches in the Philippines....they don't count, I guess...
The church “earns” the money? That may not be the correct word. “demands”, “extorts”, “bills” “receives”, “requires” would all work. A church doesn’t “earn” money.
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