Hacker News Reader

Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

"Given you claim to represent the will of God and act as a special witness of Jesus, the Mormon church should be doing more to help the world and its members with its wealth."

We should hold all organized religions accountable like that. That would make it a lot more difficult to start a cult or leech money off your followers.

View on HN

Just as an FYI, almost all leadership of the Church is lay ministry run by volunteers, the top leaders of the Church receive a small living stipend[0] as they do their work full-time, but beyond that the rest is all volunteers.

0. It is between 95-112k a year, which when you consider the current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a world-renown cardiologist it is less than peanuts.

From your replies, it seems you may be a Mormon, and I want to ask you a question in good faith. What's the point of keeping all that wealth?

From what I can tell, it's not like the leaders are using it as their piggy bank. Is there a plan to run a state welfare, become an independent country, or what?

So I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that is an excellent question.

It is all being stockpiled to build a giant spaceship called the Nauvoo to take us to the stars! I am totally joking of course, there is a really great article about the Church and it's finances that can be found at this link https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-fina... that explains it a lot better than I can I'd recommend checking it out if you are interested.

I love the church’s http://familysearch.org non profit genealogy site btw. It’s totally unexpected how good it is from a UX perspective for a property built by a religious organization, and it goes toe to toe against for profit sites like Family Tree and Ancestory. Thank you Mormons!

https://www.familysearch.org/en/about/

I have also wondered this question, as I have relatives who always pay their tithe to the church but are middle class and have over $100k in debt at retirement age. It's seams unnecessary to require such a thing of a "saint" given they do a lot of stock piling.

The space ship is outrageous but conception without sperm is totally believable.

Two additional points: the top leaders are working full time (harder than I work tbh) to keep the Church running. There's millions of dollars each year being spent on humanitarian efforts, and that's not counting the non-cash goods that the Church collects/farms/manufactures and distributes.

Second, these stipends come out of some investments or for-profit entities that the Church owns. (E.g. the Church has at least one large cattle ranch.) None of this comes from the donations of the members of the Church.

For what purpose does the church have for-profit entities and investments?

So that the whole organization can sustain in the long run. Universities generally do the same, they have endowments and they invest them for profit. For example, Harvard's endowment was valued at $53.2 billion as of June 2021. [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harvard_Universit...

I’m asking specifically about the Mormon church. What is the purpose and what do they do with the money?

"None of this comes from the donations of the members of the Church."

So it comes from returns on assets the church bought with past donations?

Seems like a distinction without a difference.

Just as an FYI, a few years ago the Mormon Church spent tens of millions of dollars libeling gays as part of its massive Prop 8 campaign.

So as you can see, they're spending money on their core mission, rather than wasting it on cushy salaried positions.

It's quite disturbing that spreading hate is considered an acceptable core mission for a religious institution with tens of millions of members.

Protecting the children from degeneracy, a most noble cause, serving the Mormon ambition of breeding as many descendants as possible, to become subordinates in Heaven's eternal patriarchy.

Priests and doctors have plummeted in social standing because the of the greed and molestation (or defense of), your guy is a double whammy.

While I understand what you are saying, knowing the billionaire class of America, it is entirely possible that Bill Green is trying to get some positive Coverage out of it and there is something in it that makes it rather not profitable for him. Billionaire class in America is all in it for themselves. And why is he suddenly donating to LGBTQ community? Those two things (church not doing more for the world) and LGBTQ cause are separate. There is more good to the world that is to be done than LGBTQ welfare unless you are in it for some positive coverage.

I think he is just doing it for a positive spin on his image.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. There's a feedback loop at work whereby more open-minded people tend to self-select out of organized religion over time because of wariness over issues of dogma. This of course means that those who remain are more inclined to seek dogma as a source of stability, hence the many problems we see in religion today--e.g. the religion of peace having violent tendencies, or evangelical Christianity being downright unchristian in its treatment of marginalized groups (of whom Christ tended to be unconditionally accepting).

The problem is that critique from the outside of a group seems counterproductive--there's a raft of psychological evidence that it tends to entrench sides. In national or international politics, it's at least possible--though not always pragmatic--to exert pressure via power (boycotts, protests, laws, sanctions, force, etc.), but when it comes to critiquing a religion (e.g. Christianity), I wonder if there's any better pragmatic solution than evangelizing a more progressive (and christian) form of Christianity.

Who should hold them accountable?

If they pay their taxes then it is between them and their followers. Everyone is free to do what they want with their money.

Are you saying it's never between churches and their followers, given churches don't pay taxes?

No, sorry for not having been clear.

I am saying that if the churches pay their taxes from their commercial activities, without trying to hide their income (using their completely unfair tax-free position for non-commercial activities) - in other words do not fraud, then the fact that their followers give them money is irrelevant.

This is an individual choice to give your money to whoever you want. For style this is Wikipedia or science, for others this is a church.

My comment about taxes was just because we hear about churches that hide commercial activities behind the facade of non-profit ones b that are not taxed.

Otherwise how they legally get their money is their program and choice.

Aren't the religious some kind of protected class, though?

Billionaires, on the other hand, are fair game.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com