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I think it’s obvious. If you do this you’ll be part of a powerful dynasty. You’ll be a king. You’ll be a god!

I don’t know what “the historical or religious question” is. The topic of this thread is secret non-monogamy, the way people rationalize their secret non-monogamy, and whether British Psychotherapists specifically and society in general should facilitate people rationalizing and normalizing this behavior. Joseph Smith made a sacred vow to cleave unto his wife Emma and unto none else. He broke that vow. You think this is categorically different than other people who broke the same vow, because Joseph’s motivation was sincere religious belief and not lust. If we want to categorize Joseph’s secret non-monogamous relationships, the category they best fit in is sexual abuse in cultic circumstances, as described by Hava Dayan in her paper “Sexual Abuse and Charismatic Cults,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 41 (2018): 25–31. DOI: 10.1016/j.avb.2018.04.004. Let me know if you’d like me to provide a sample list of religious leaders who convinced sincere believers that God wanted them to have secret non-monogamous relationships with them. The secret non-monogamy of the leaders of new religious movements fits into the broader category of secret non-monogamy in general. Some people rationalize this behavior as coming from God. Others rationalize it because, in the words of Atlantic Starr: Secret lovers, yeah That's what we are Trying so hard to hide the way we feel 'Cause we both belong to someone else But we can't let it go 'Cause what we feel Is also real Personally, if a British Psychoterapist is going to give a moral pass to somebody who breaks their marital vows because they are trying to obey God, I don’t know why she shouldn’t also give a moral pass to somebody who does it because the love they feel for their secret lover “is also real." If anything, having a secret non-monogamous relationship motivated by sincere religious conviction with the leader of your New Religious Movement is worse, because it is less consensual. The question isn’t whether the girls sincerely believed God wanted them to do what they did. The question is were they able to freely consent? “God commanded me to marry you. If you do, your family is guaranteed salvation. If you don’t, an angel will kill me with a flaming sword. It’s your free choice though.” That type of manipulation is sick, regardless of their sincerity and regardless of whether God really was sending angels with flaming swords.

Hold on. Let’s get our terms straight here. “Marriage” is a socially recognized union between two people that establishes a set of mutual rights, obligations, and expectations. This social recognition can come from law, customs, or even religion. But two people can’t call their secret affair a “marriage”--there has to be a recognized status that creates some durable social, legal, religious, or communal rights and obligations. Even if the marriage isn’t disclosed to the general public, some sort of Church or legal authority needs to recognize it and the spouses need to undertake genuine marital duties and obligations. When a secret marriage violates the laws of church and its main covenant is lying to everybody about its very existence, the marriage isn’t a real marriage in any real sense. If one of the marital obligations is “the single promise at the heart of every wedding, to forsake all others,” and one of spouses breaks that single promise, it is called adultery. Now, somebody could try to renegotiate the terms of their marriage so that it becomes some sort of open marriage or whatever. That’s between them. But when somebody secretly breaks those vows, it is adultery. Full stop. With this understanding of these terms, it is abusing the language to call Joseph Smith’s actions the “practice of plural marriage.” His actions weren’t a type of marriage. They were a type of adultery. Calling it a type of marriage is a misnomer. Semantic inversion. Orwillian doublespeak. Newspeak. According to D&C 132, it is about lust, or at least about “desire." "if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another...” (D&C 132:61) The full verse says: "And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else." How many of Joseph Smith’s plural “marriages” satisfied all of these conditions? How many were virgins, had vowed to no other man, and were entered into with the full consent of Emma? His behavior wasn’t nearly as tightly controlled as you are trying to imagine. Jospeh Smith’s secret non-monogamy is a case study in secret non-monogamy, and people who are saying it is categorically different than other examples of secret non-monogamy are being very selective in their judgmentalism.

Rationalizing infidelity is exactly what you are doing, isn't it? You believe that if God commands you to break your wedding vows, which according to your beliefs He does from time to time, you should obey God, right? The only question you are unsure about is whether you should tell your spouse about how you sincerely believe God commanded you to do this.

Every situation is unique. I presume the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy's position is more nuanced than you give it credit for. My assessment of Joseph Smith is that he was guilty of "Secret non-monogamy"--of repeatedly breaking "the single promise at the heart of every wedding: to forsake all others." I think Hale's effort to rationalize Joseph Smith's behavior is a lot like using an "affirming lens" to rationalize behavior that lacked integrity. There are many reasons for "secret nonmonogamy." Maybe you feel you deeply love the other woman. Maybe you are bored. Maybe you just feel you really need sex with somebody different. Maybe for money? Self esteem? Fantasy? Clinging to youth? Or maybe you think an angel with a flaming sword is coercing you to do it. Jospeh Smith's rationalizations, as imagined by you and Hales, is certainly a creative excuse to engage in behavior that lacks integrity in any other context. But ultimately it is just selectively applying a self-serving "affirming lens" to rationalize behavior that lacks integrity. Yes, secret nonmongamy tends to do that. The question is whether we are going to rationalize the behavior of the person causing the pain and look at their destructive behavior through an "affirming lens." Do you think Joseph Smith keeping his promise to Emma to forsake all others would have been as "equally valid" as the choice he made to engage in secret nonmonagamy?

Someone who reveres him as a prophet and believes Section 132 is from God. Right. We should look at Joseph Smith's infidelity through an "affirming lens" because he was just doing what God told him to do. But beyond Joseph Smith and people being unfaithful to their spouses under Joseph's guidance, nobody else should be granted an affirming lens.

I might as well say it: it is extraordinarily ironic to hear a disciple of Joseph Smith categorically condemn “secret non-monogamy.” Mormonism’s founding prophet practiced what any ordinary English speaker would call exactly that—secretly, behind his real wife's back, repeatedly, and sometimes with other men’s wives.

I've been listening to a fascinating Great Courses series, The Pagan World: Ancient Religions before Christianity, by Hans-Friedrich Mueller, and it's changed how I think about the Old Testament. My impression is that early Israelite religion wasn't originally categorically different from the surrounding Canaanite/Semitic religions. Instead, the Israelites seem to have gradually become a people defined by an exclusive covenant with Jehovah, and only later did that develop into the explicit monotheism we associate with Judaism. Through that lens, stories like Elijah's don't read to me as arguments over whether only one God existed. They read more like arguments over whether Israel would remain faithful to its covenant with Jehovah or seek the blessings of the other gods that everyone around them also believed in. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but I find that way of looking at it makes the Old Testament feel much more like it's taking place in a real ancient Near Eastern world instead of in a religious vacuum.

I think it is an interesting case study. I apologize for the way I said that. I meant to imply that tithing is a commandment, and the Church doesn't meet generally accepted transparency standards. I appreciate your efforts with this and for telling us about it.

All the bolded statements are statements of belief, right? They are subjective and are largely informed by your personal feelings about the church and interpretations of the doctrines it teaches rather than being supported by evidence. They seem like examples of belief bias, which are hard to square with your earlier statements about how your personal biases are not impacting your conclusions on this topic. It is an objective fact that the Church doesn't provide members with financial statements that allow them to see how their donations are or would be put to use. It is an objective fact that the Church says paying tithing is a commandment. It is an objective fact that the Church says they should pay tithing even though they aren't given any real information on what the Church does with its donations. It's a value judgement that you should evaluate how organizations spend money before donating, but it is a widely held one. For example:

A couple of points. First, to the extent that any of the dollars in Ensign Peak are actual tithing dollars, I would think that per D&C 120, their disposition continues to fall under the purview of that Council. As it is, the actual mechanics of this emphasize my point that accumulating money is functionally the Church's highest priority. Think about how this works. The top leaders of the Church first decide that the full $15 billion of investment earnings will be reinvested to turn the $200 billion reserve fund in the beginning of the year into a $215 billion reserve fund by the end of the year. This is mathematically equivalent to saying "we never expend more than what we estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings." That is the most sacred ground rule of the entire thing. And these top leaders might peel off a layer of tithing to be added to that, so it becomes a $216 billion reserve fund by the end of the year. After that, they go to the full Council on the Disposition of tithes and say the budget for the year is $8 billion of the $9 billion of tithing that is expected to come in. At that point, if Elder U wants to increase the missionary program's budget by $1 million, he can argue that the million can come from reducing the genealogy department's budget by a million, or the temple construction budget or the education budget or the humanitarian budget. In principle it can come from anywhere except from the $16 billion that the higher-ups have already decided must be invested in growing the reserve fund. Functionally, this process makes it clear that growing the reserve fund is the most sacred allocation. If it worked the way I'm suggesting, Elder U would be able to argue that the million dollars he wants for the missionary program could come from the increase of the reserves rather than another Church mission, and that the Church would be okay if its year-end reserve was only $215.999 billion rather than a full $216 billion. Ultimately I don't really care. I'm just trying to answer your questions and explain to you why accumulating money sure appears like it is the First Presidency's and Presiding Bishopric's everlasting goal. And this seems to illustrate a point made by the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability, which requires under it standards that "Every organization shall provide a copy of its current financial statements upon written request [to anybody who asks to see them]." When explaining why, they say: Of course you aren't bound by this, but it does illustrate the general principles I'm talking about. More to the point, they seem downright prophetic in their claim that organizations without transparency are at risk of having reserves that are too large. Can you clarify? Are you asking me to provide references that tithing is a commandment, or are you asking me to provide references that the Church isn't transparent?

First, it should redefine as "what it takes in" to include investment income and not merely tithes and offerings. If it said it aimed to always deploy 90% of its total income--including investment income--I'd have no problem with it. Beyond that, there is a wide variety of things it could do, but it should be done strategically and not in compliance with a simplistic "fixed principle" that mathematically forces the majority of its income to go towards exponentially increasing the size of a bloated reserve fund, and is done in a way that allows its own fiduciaries the information necessary to fulfill their responsibilities in a responsible way. But what's the point of having such a tool if it comes with a rule that it may never be used? In any event, you can have faith in whatever you want to, and there are worse things you could do with your money than give it to an organization that by any objective measure is going to hoard it. If that's what you want to do, knock yourself out. But don't be surprised when a ton of members eventually realize that they needed the money more than the Church did, and resent being manipulated into donating, and become bitter critics as a result. The emphasis here should be on prudent reserves. Grossly excessive reserves don't do anything to support those things. I thought the Lord commanded that "We never expend more than what we estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings." If the real mission somehow involves deploying the vast majority of its annual income on growing its reserves so that someday it can completely change course and do it on a scale order of magnitudes greater than what it's doing now, it should clarify that. This line of thought contradicts your bottleneck hypothesis in a huge way, but if this were the real goal, they should be transparent about it.

It's an important principle of good corporate governorship. There is a ton of academic research into what makes an organization effective, and this research makes it into the real world in MBA (and SOA) curriculum. Why is it important that the people who deploy resources know what the resources are? GPT articulated the issue well: No. [What the church does] would not be considered best-practice board governance. A board can delegate investment management to a committee, but it should not create a two-tier board where most fiduciaries are intentionally denied knowledge of the organization’s material assets. BoardSource describes nonprofit boards as ultimately responsible for oversight, accountability, stewardship of entrusted resources, and legal/ethical compliance; that requires access to full, material financial information. (BoardSource) The resource-allocation rule is also poor practice. “Spend less than donations every year and save the rest” is not a mission-based capital policy; it is a mechanical accumulation policy. Best practice is to set reserves based on risk, obligations, liquidity needs, strategic plans, and mission opportunities—not simply to grow the fund forever. (National Council of Nonprofits) The life-tenured, elderly, insider-informed structure adds another problem: weak renewal and weak challenge. Good boards need informed oversight, independence of judgment, succession planning, and enough transparency inside the boardroom for real debate. This structure would tend to suppress all of that. My best reference that really explains the feel of it is Elder Bednar's conference address from Fall 2013: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2013/10/the-windows-of-heaven?lang=eng Other references to piece it together are Hinckley's comments, David Nielsen's insights, that 2020 Deseret News article, etc. Bednar said, "In that first council meeting I was impressed by the simplicity of the principles that guided our deliberations and decisions..." and later in the article he called this process, "the Lord's own way." I suppose in principle a young apostle could sat that they need to revisit this and that as an apostle on Disposition of Tithes committee, he felt that he really needed to understand the full picture of the Church's resources in order to fulfill his fiduciary duties, and that they should be open to spending more than that year's tithes and offerings if they felt confident could put it to good use. But really? I just can't imagine somebody questioning "the Lord's way" in front of 14 senior apostles and the Presiding Bishopric. I'm not advocating for any of that. I'm merely pointing out the fact that the Church's reserves are way too big by any objective measure of such things, that the Church is objectively guilty of hoarding, and that functionally, asset accumulation is the Church's dominant financial priority. That's my entire point. What should they do about it? I'd suggest four things: Be completely transparent with the apostles with their finances and show them complete consolidated financial statements of the entire Church. Be completely transparent with the general membership and show them the financial statements, too. Hire a consultant (Clayton Christensen?) to come in and give them best practices for setting the size of the reserves. Then figure out how to best deploy their resources for their mission. They don't have to do any of that, of course, but if they keep waiting for a revelation to tell them what to do then functionally, asset accumulation will continue to be their dominant financial priority. Probably. But from my point of view, that is off topic. What I'm talking about is how the apostles aren't allowed to know how much money the church has, aren't allowed to know what its investment income is, and how they "never expend more than what [they] estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings." Because they can't fulfill their fiduciary duties without that information. Not really. I think responsible individuals should weigh their own needs vs. the needs of the organization they are donating to before making donations. The Church refuses to give members the information they need in order to be good stewards of their resources that way, and instead claim that it is a commandment for them to donate blindly to them. Some people are okay with it. Some aren't. And others (e.g. Huntsman) will donate for a while, and will then figure out that their faith was misplaced. If the Church wants to avoid members feeling disillusioned and getting upset, they should be transparent with them in the first place.

Almost none of what you said above addresses my actual point, but one thing did. According to the 2020 article you quoted: “The church practices what it preaches in terms of setting aside and having budgets,” Bishop Davies said. “We never expend more than what we estimate will be coming in terms of tithes and offerings. And also by definition we set aside a certain amount every year in reserve for those times when there will be a need” It doesn't follow this rule because of a bottleneck in how hard it is to responsibly deploy resources to fulfill its mission. It does this because it is the "fixed principle" that was established last century. A fixed principle like this makes sense for an individual who is bound to become disabled, retire, and/or die, and needs funds for those events. But according to widely agreed upon best principles of organizational finance, it does not make sense for an institution that is existing into perpetuity. We know that on November 30, 2019, the Church had $122.86 Billion in reserves. I did a projection with the following assumptions. In 2020, tithing and offering revenue was $7 billion, and increases by 5% per year Every year they deposit $1 billion of of tithes and offerings into the reserve fund The portfolio earns 7.4% per year (this comes from the portfolio's historical performance) With those assumptions, in 2025 the Reserve fund hit $200 billion. It did all of the wonderful things you've been talking about with $8 billion of tithes and offerings, and put an additional $14 billion into EPA, meaning 66% of its revenue went to grow the size of its investment portfolio. Assuming it continues to abide by the fixed principle, they maintain their commitment to never expend more than what they estimate will be coming in in tithes and offerings, and the investment portfolio continues to generate a relatively modest 7.4% investment return, in 2048 they will hit $1.068 trillion in assets, with a total income of $101 Billion, 74% of which will go to grow the size of their reserve fund. Then in 2057, something that is easily within our lifetimes, it will grow to $2.042 trillion. When that happens, its total income will be $183 billion, 77% of which will be going to increase the size of the Reserve fund. So yes. Trillions. You can assume that the Church will need this money for some pending emergency and that when the time comes it will become capable of successfully deploying it. But the fact remains that according to well-established principles for churches and non-profits, this is objectively called over-accumulation, under-deployment, and hoarding. If the Church's main mission is to accumulate a massive investment portfolio, this is success. But if the Church's main mission has something to do with perfecting the saints, redeeming the dead, spreading the gospel, and charity, then this is failure.

My point is that "best practice is a reserve policy with a purpose, target range, board oversight, disclosure, and rules for use and replenishment—not endless accumulation by default." A "revelation" is whatever the president of the Church says is a revelation. Not exactly. My point is that when you look at total resources (tithing plus investment income), the Church has waayyyyy more resources than it knows what to do with. This situation isn't a temporary bottleneck. It is endemic to the structure and culture of the Church. That is the problem. Of course. Effectively deploying resources of this order of magnitude is incredibly tough. Would you agree with me that as a first step, the Church ought to tell the apostles how much money the church has? Or do you think it can better deal with this issue by keeping the apostles in the dark regarding the resources at the Church's disposal? I think the Church is using the vast majority of its resources to make the size of its investment portfolio bigger and that as it continues to do that, this problem will get exponentially worse. I think their councils work exactly the way Bednar suggested. The junior apostle comes in to the meeting about the deposition of tithes. Along with the other apostles, he isn't told how much money the Church has. He isn't told what their investment income is, either. He is instructed that they "simply" do what they have always done--they set and manage towards a budget based on their projected tithing revenue, send extra money to Ensign Peak Advisors, and are not allowed to see what happens to it. I believe they are instructed to have reverence to this process. I believe a fundamental part of their process is that regardless of how many wonderful ideas they have about how the Church should deploy its resources, at the end of the day they have a budget equal to 90% of that year's tithing projection, so if they want to increase funding for project X by a dollar, they must reduce funding for something else by a dollar. According to everything I've seen and heard about the Council of the Deposition of tithes, that is how they operate. And they aren't allowed to question the process. If you look at this from the perspective of an MBA, their process is fundamentally flawed. I think doing that is wonderful. But it doesn't change the fact that the Church uses the vast majority of its financial resources to grow the size of its investment portfolio, which makes the problems you are talking about exponentially more difficult. I think that is all wonderful. But it doesn't change the fact that the Church allocates the vast majority of its resources to growing the size of its investment portfolio rather than to these things. Q: The Church does some amazingly good things with the 30% of its annual income that it deploys towards its mission. Did you take that into account when analyzing its transparency, the size of its reserves, and its internal decision making processes? A: Yes. That matters, but it does not answer the whole governance question. Doing substantial good with the deployed 30% is highly relevant to mission effectiveness. It shows that the organization is not inert, fraudulent, or incapable of impact. But it does not by itself resolve questions about the remaining 70%, especially if that portion is repeatedly accumulated, not clearly tied to a reserve target or deployment plan, and not fully visible to relevant decision-makers or donors. Governance analysis looks at the whole system: impact, transparency, capital policy, oversight, opportunity cost, and whether donor resources are being used consistently with the organization’s mission and representations. So the fair conclusion would be: the good work should be credited, but it does not immunize the reserve policy or governance structure from scrutiny. I know effectively deploying resources is tough, but I don't have any expertise in that area. And this is a fundamentally different issue of whether the Church is being wise when it refuses to share its financial information with apostles, whether it is wise to have a "fixed principle" of always operating on less than that year's income, and whether its reserve fund is obscenely too high. Really? Do you think, for example, that the United Way should stop telling its board of directors how much money it has saved, and should start using 70% of its resources to increase the size of that fund regardless of how big it gets? Hmmm. I think that's great as far as it goes. But it doesn't address any of the concerns I've raised in this thread. I think those are totally valid issues, but it is ultimately a different question than the question of how big reserves should be, whether the Church's "fixed principle" is wise, and whether the church should be more transparent with the apostles, general membership, and society at large. I realize charitable endeavors are really difficult. Just like building a high-quality temple on-time and on-budget is difficult. Or choosing a new employee is difficult. Or just like anything else is difficult. And I also believe that the leaders of the Church are genuinely good guys who aren't making themselves personally rich off of the thing. In fact, for reasons I can't discuss I could be more confident about this than you are. What I do know about is how to think about reserve levels and how to evaluate whether the reserves are too small, too big, or broadly justifiable. And I do know some things about organizational governance and how groups should be structured to avoid predictable pitfalls such as groupthink, institutional inertia, deference to seniority, secrecy norms, and distorted incentives. My criticisms against the Church on these issues of structure, transparency, and fallacious principles. It isn't against the brethren as individuals.