Posted on 03/04/2014 10:46:18 AM PST by greyfoxx39
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a religious organisation registered as a private unlimited company in the UK, was told in 2005 that it was not exempt from paying business tax on its temple in Preston, Lancashire.
Because the public were not allowed access to the temple, which was reserved for the most devout Mormons, the High Court dismissed their appeal in July 2008.
However, the church refused to accept the decision, claiming that it amounted to discrimination on religious grounds and taking their battle all the way to Strasbourg.
Now the European Court of Human Rights has upheld the ruling of the British courts.
-SNIP-
Only the most devout members of the church, who hold a "recommend" status, are entitled to enter the temples.
The House of Lords ruled that the Preston temple was not qualified as a "place of public religious worship" since access was restricted to this select group.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
If you’re going to criticize the Mormons for cooperating with the Nazis in Germany (I have no idea how accurate the criticism is), you’re going to have to spread it out to just about all other Christian groups.
Some Quakers, Catholics and Protestants individually refused to support Hitler, but AFAIK only one group refused to do so, AS A GROUP.
That was the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Even more interesting is the fact that the Jewish Temple was located in Israel, not in the UK.
Only pray for yours alone,
In quiet and subtle tones,
Seeking simply that higher power,
That only you have known.
In the time period that the Fraud Act of 2006 has been in effect, the total tithing paid by Mormon citizens of the UK to the Mormon Church has amounted to approximately $300 million. This constitutes a financial gain to the Mormon Church. Included in that Mormon Church income figure is tax relief upwards of $60 million. The Mormon Church would not have received that financial gain if its members had not been induced to give tithing to the Mormon Church based on false claims made by the Mormon Church.
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So in the UK the Mormons exhorted about $40 MILLION a year in tithes...alone...
that’s not counting the fasting offerings the Mormons members have to pay that is actually collected at their own homes ..
and the offerings strong armed for “relief” for various world crisis..
Haiti for instance..
and the other ways the Mormons exhort their members..
I'm not Mormon, I don't agree with Mormonism, but this is really sad.
And the Mormon church has re-sewn the curtain once rent from top to bottom.
Who set you (or me) up to decide on the validity of a religious organization's doctrine?
Man, thank goodness for freedom of religion here in America. Can you imagine what the secularists could do to churches if they had this power?
...no...what is REALLY sad is the 80,000 mormon missionaries who go about the world daily, 24/7 proclaiming to Christians that their Christian faith is false and the only way to salvation is through arcane rituals in mormon temples...and 10% of their income is demanded in order to take part in these arcane rituals.
THAT is sad!
“Saved that up for today, did you?”
I almost never post on religion forum threads anymore. I find the vitriol in the religion forum to be a poor witness to anyone about near anything. This thread uses a news article, and I did not check to see if someone posted tax news in the religion forum.
For the record, I never knew any Mormon converted to Christianity thru heated attacks.
The Mormon corp is a business, not a church.
Yeah, there are Baptists around here that are the same. Con men in the pulpit fleecing the flock. Would sure like them to lose there tax-free scam, but in America they have a right do their flim-flam under the guise of religion.
I have no problem with the UK enforcing its own laws, though I suspect the Mormon Church is at least as much deserving of tax-exemption as numerous mosques and Hindu sects that probably get it without question.
I find extremely disturbing the claim that Mormonism itself, not just their claim to tax exemption at the Temple, is fraudulent, and so therefore all donations are fraudulent and criminal insofar as they are partially tax-deductible. Is it really necessary to point out how dangerous such a precedent is?
The claims that Joseph Smith’s religious claims are objectively false and therefore his entire religion is fraudulent is also extremely dangerous?
Anybody care to apply an equivalent secular, supposedly scientific yardstick to various orthodox Christian doctrines: immortality of the soul, resurrection of the body, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth of Christ, even the existence of God?
“Even more interesting is the fact that the Jewish Temple was located in Israel, not in the UK.”
The principle remains. After all, if this is ONLY about the UK, those of us in America can ignore it. However, when Ginsberg is in search of international law to inform her on how to interpret the US Constitution, I’m sure she’ll notice this.
As another analogy - do they tax mosques in the UK because women are not given total access? Do they tax the percentage of a Baptist church occupied by a baptistry because only converts are allowed to be baptized? Does a church of sincere believers - even if misguided believers - have the right to set policies and still be granted religious freedom? Or is America the ONLY hope for religious freedom left?
Nahh. What is really sad is that Christians don’t launch a comparable outreach.
Christians are instructed to love their neighbor as themselves. Many believe those who don’t become Christians will burn for eternity in hell.
Their (general) response to this extreme peril for their neighbors (who they love as themselves) is to spend a couple of hours in church each week, and possibly to donate up to 10% of their income to that church. A great deal of which goes to maintaining the church’s infrastructure, and in some I’ve attended recently, to staging a Broadway-style show every week.
Does nobody else see a disconnect between the injunction to love, the peril of the neighbor, and the rather anemic attempt to rescue him?
Mormons have attacked Christianity from the very beginning and do so today when they proclaim they are the "one and only true church" and have the "restored gospel."
Snapshot of Joseph Smith’s Slanderous Invectives vs. Christian Sects |
Mormon Source[Note: Most of these are Mormon ‘scriptures'. In fact, First three rows below are Lds 'scripture' & therefore cannot be rug-swept any more than a Jew might try to take three commandments off of the very tablets of stone Moses brought down from the mountain] |
| “...which of all the sects was right… must join NONE of them, for they were ALL WRONG… those professors were ALL CORRUPT…” | Joseph Smith – History vv. 18-19. – Lds "scripture" Pearl of Great Price |
| ...“which of all the sects was right…ALL their CREEDS were an ABOMINATION in his sight…they teach for doctrines the commandments of MEN…” | Joseph Smith – History vv. 18-19. – Lds "scripture" Pearl of Great Price |
| Mormon church the only ‘Christ-sanctioned’ church on earth: “…the foundation of this [Mormon] church…the ONLY true and living church on the face of the whole earth” [Obvious ‘scorched earth’ implication: All other churches are false and dead] | Lds “scripture” Doctrines & Covenants 1:30 |
| Direct question asked of Joseph Smith: 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons?" Answer from Lds "prophet" Joseph Smith: 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." | Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119 [Not “scripture” – but still publicly spoken by the Mormon ‘living prophet’ and published by a later Mormon ‘living prophet,’ Joseph Fielding Smith – via a publisher owned by the Mormon church – Deseret News Press, 1938] |
| “In 1952…the first official proselyting plan was sent to missionaries throughout the world…It included seven missionary discussions that emphasized…[four topics, one of them being]…THE APOSTASY and Restoration…” [This makes it 60 years that Mormon church missionaries, now numbering 55,000, have formally emphasized in its training & door to door saturation a priority in bashing the worldwide Christian church as “apostates” (100% AWOL)] | Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints p. 116, 1996 |
Or Orthodox synagogues?
“Even more interesting is the fact that the Jewish Temple was located in Israel, not in the UK.”
Actually, of course, the Temple was not located in “Israel,” which did not exist at the time, it was located in the Roman province of Judea. As the Romans pointed our very forcefully in 70 AD.
For the record, I never knew any Mormon converted to Christianity thru heated attacks.
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well here are records in the Bible of Jews converting to Christianity thru heated attacks ...
It seems Jesus preached that way a lot..
“It seems Jesus preached that way a lot..”
Not to anyone that converted, that I recall. And my own experience remains: I spent years as a Baptist in Utah and saw no one converted thru arguments such as ‘the mormon church has too much money’...
“For the record, I never knew any Mormon converted to Christianity thru heated attacks.”
I don’t know of anyone who converted to Christianity thru heated attacks.
the Mormon Church is at least as much deserving of tax-exemption as numerous mosques and Hindu sects that probably get it without question.
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but that’s just it..
the Mormon religion got tax breaks without question..
for SEVEN YEARS...
they raked in AT LEAST $300 MILLION in those seven years..
but now they are being questioned about those seven years..
do you have a problem with that ???
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