The private real estate portfolio of the Church

[JustAnAustralian]

2 hours ago, rockpond said:

about half of the market value of the Church's real estate portfolio is church buildings.

When you drill into the data there is a "religious" category which is a subset of special use. It's still over 8B though. So yes, it goes right back to what everyone should already know if they start paying attention to then church and not the dollar signs. The church has a lot of religious buildings on land. They have value.

A real good analysis for someone with a lot of spare time on their hands would be to find out when the church acquired each bit of land and for how much they paid for it when they bought it several decades or more ago.

 

 

[Calm]

14 hours ago, bluebell said:

wouldn't personally think that the topic of this thread would count since there is no evidence of wrongdoing and it's not really showing much that wasn't already assumed.

I think the best way to measure would be how much of their material was talked about more than a week or two and in more than a few areanas that specialize in that kind of stuff.  I only remember a handful of notables.

[Calm]

14 hours ago, bluebell said:

It's interesting that with so many people willing to fund Dehlin, few would fund these guys. 

I would like to see a donations timeline and match it with their releases to see the level of correlation to interest.

[Calm]

13 hours ago, JustAnAustralian said:

When you drill into the data there is a "religious" category which is a subset of special use. It's still over 8B though. So yes, it goes right back to what everyone should already know if they start paying attention to then church and not the dollar signs. The church has a lot of religious buildings on land. They have value.

A real good analysis for someone with a lot of spare time on their hands would be to find out when the church acquired each bit of land and for how much they paid for it when they bought it several decades or more ago.

Also how much land is liquid…not needed for actual church operation.  A house is part of one’s wealth, but if one gives it up for a nice chunk of change, that money has to be spent on finding something else that provides shelter, etc.  I tend to look on wealth as how much ‘free’ money one had.  For example, a significant part of my family’s income goes to medical expenses.  Like food, we don’t have to buy as much as we do or as good of quality, but to maintain a decent life, to stop deterioration of medical issues as much as possible we choose to spend that much. In order to function effectively, the Church needs so much land and buildings and an effective way to communicate.  It is what is leftover that leaders can choose to invest in programs, humanitarian efforts, investments, etc that I see as ‘wealth’. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Calm

[SwedishLDS]

From what I have seen the church invests its money responsibly almost always. We have a lot of expenses, but we also need to plan for far in the future, and acquiring land is important for that. We also have to remember how much of the church is done by volunteers.

What needs will the church have in 50 years? 100 years? 200years?

[Judd]

19 hours ago, bluebell said:

I found the quote below to be really interesting. 

Interesting because it shows a tiny bit of commonality between what Dodge was going through and what the leadership of the church goes through, in dealing with criticism that is personally aimed.  There is a bit of equity in it.  Trying to make a living exposing information by opening it up to public criticism and then having to deal with that in your own life.  Especially criticism that you don't believe is fair. 

Anyone who sets out, with sincere intentions, to do that to someone else would probably benefit from experiencing it themselves.  So that they better understand the power they are wielding and its consequences to others.  I think it could help them to wield the power more responsibly. 

Too many want to have that kind of power but also want to risk nothing by using it.  That doesn't often end well.

This was what I thought was an interesting irony/parallel back 10 years or so ago with Dehlin, when he was attempting to stop the Greg Smith essay from being published. I believe at that time he had been swinging back to staying in the church and was meeting with his SP, and at least his superficial explanation was that he wasn’t concerned about being attacked personally, but was rather more concerned about the methodology employed and it being damaging to the church to be associated with doing something he perceived as wrong/counterproductive. Whether that was sincere or not (I don’t doubt that both motives were at play, just a question of how much each contributed can be debated), it seemed obvious that, in a way, he now found himself in a situation that he had long criticized the actions of others who found themselves in similar scenarios. For some people, this can be an eye-opening experience as they go through it and can allow them to have more sympathy with others when perhaps previously they couldn’t. It didn’t seem that Dehlin’s emotions ever even let him acknowledge that irony and it seemed his insight and ability to self-reflect in the issue and it’s irony was no different.

[Scott Lloyd]

On 4/5/2022 at 6:54 PM, Amulek said:

Well, they won by attrition.

Unable to raise the funds necessary to mount a legal defense, it was cheaper for them to settle and put the whole thing behind them. 

Honestly, I don't care for this kind of behavior. I am grateful the Church wasn't the one employing this as a tactic. 

Note to antis: be sure to set up shop in states with more robust anti-SLAPP statutes. 

 

I can’t fault the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society for taking steps to protect its intellectual property. It is up to those who base an enterprise on legally questionable behavior to ensure that they have fortified themselves enough to withstand likely legal challenges. 

[Amulek]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I can’t fault the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society for taking steps to protect its intellectual property.

If that's what they were legitimately doing then I wouldn't fault them either.

I honestly don't know enough about the case to form an opinion one way or the other, but my first impression is that it certainly sounds a bit like lawfare to me. YMMV.

 

[mfbukowski]

On 4/5/2022 at 1:55 PM, JAHS said:

LDS Church has Most Valuable Private Real Estate Portfolio in the US, Evidence Suggests
Interactive map shows the real estate holdings of the church. Very impressive (and not even complete).
 

Oh come on!

Define "private"!  As opposed to what?

Catholics gotta have more!  And how do you assess the value of a cathedral?  How many parishes and hospitals and who knows what do they have? And their art portfolio?

Ever tried to sell a church?  I have.  Best wishes.  The whole idea is ridiculous.

Since when is a 501-C3 "private"?

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Catholics gotta have more! 

Worldwide I am guessing tons more. In the US?  Do they go in for big ranches and such?  

Plus my understanding is the different dioceses operate separately. There is not one organization that owns all the property, but each diocese owns its own. I could be very wrong as it was something I read once in an article discussing liability issues for the Church (RCC).

But if I am right, then technically we most likely beat any particular diocese even if we might not beat them combined. 

There are 17,000 parishes, which means I assume 17,000 churches. Are cathedrals substitute for a normal church in a parish or are they in addition to.

There are over 31,000 Latter-day Saint congregations in the US, but I am thinking there is a lot of doubling up, so maybe Catholics have us beat in church buildings even if we have more congregations because they are smaller in number. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Calm

[Scott Lloyd]

38 minutes ago, Amulek said:

If that's what they were legitimately doing then I wouldn't fault them either.

I honestly don't know enough about the case to form an opinion one way or the other, but my first impression is that it certainly sounds a bit like lawfare to me. YMMV.

 

What is it about efforts to protect one’s intellectual property that might warrant the disparaging epithet “lawfare”?

Edited April 7, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[Calm]

I found a dotted map for Catholic holdings. !!!!  

More sensible sizing of dots, imo. Can’t copy/paste it though. Might do a screen shot when in my tablet. Looks a bit messy on phone with a bunch of stuff covering it. So use the link to compare and remember their dots are smaller when land size is comparable…not that it really matters, in either case the dots cover way more than the actual land at the original setting, so it would be nonsense to use the dots to guesstimate which has more land. Not bad for seeing where each has most their holdings though if you pull in a bit on the LDS one so the dots aren’t all overlapping.  

https://archive.curbed.com/2017/10/18/16483194/catholic-church-gis-goodlands-esri-molly-burhans

Quote

With more than 1 billion adherents, the Catholic Church is one of the largest, if not the largest, nongovernmental landowners in the world. One estimate puts the church’s holdings close to 177 million acres, or 277,000 square miles. If those properties were grouped together and placed on a list of the world’s countries by land area, it would fall within the top 50, higher than both France and Spain. (Plus, it is unclear whether or not the 177 million acre figure includes land owned by affiliated institutions, such as Catholic schools and hospitals, which number in the hundreds of thousands—if not millions—worldwide.)

 

[Calm]

21 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

What is it about efforts to protect one’s intellectual property that might warrant the disparaging epithet “lawfare”?

If it falls under fair use, but they don’t want it available to the public for whatever reason even if legal for it to be publicized in that way, I could see that being a case of lawfare, though not sure that is the appropriate term as I thought it was taking legal action to hurt an organization rather than to control one’s own property.  Was the purpose to drive the organization out of business or to prevent the publication?

This seems less an issue to control intellectual property as this wasn’t going to get published by the JW Church though. It was about wanting to keep information private.   Why would they need to copyright this material?  This is more whistleblowing. 
 

Quote

Today, the new group has published dozens of pages of documents related to sexual assault allegations within the Jehovah’s Witness Church, documents which are presumably part of a database that church officials have refused to relinquish in an unrelated sexual molestation trial, resulting in a one and a half year legal battle and millions of dollars in fines.

The 69 pages of documents detail how Jehovah’s Witnesses authorities and church officials handled allegations of repeated sexual assault by one of its local leaders. The interviews and detailed notes compiled by church authorities about molestation and rape allegations are horrific. The 33 documents also provide a staggering play-by-play of how the Watchtower Tract and Bible Society—the parent corporation and governing body for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, often simply referred to as “the Watchtower”—handled the case internally over the course of nearly a decade—playing therapist, prosecutor, jury, and judge—and the lengths to which they went to keep these accusations away from the “worldly court of law.”

https://gizmodo.com/new-whistleblower-site-faithleaks-releases-confidential-1821799936

Edited April 7, 2022 by Calm

[mfbukowski]

33 minutes ago, Calm said:

Worldwide I am guessing tons more. In the US?  Do they go in for big ranches and such?  

Plus my understanding is the different dioceses operate separately. There is not one organization that owns all the property, but each diocese owns its own. I could be very wrong as it was something I read once in an article discussing liability issues for the Church (RCC).

But if I am right, then technically we most likely beat any particular diocese even if we might not beat them combined. 

There are 17,000 parishes, which means I assume 17,000 churches. Are cathedrals substitute for a normal church in a parish or are they in addition to.

There are over 31,000 Latter-day Saint congregations in the US, but I am thinking there is a lot of doubling up, so maybe Catholics have us beat in church buildings even if we have more congregations because they are smaller in number. 

Yep, those are all valid issues! But that's not even the beginning!

Ever appraised a property?

Churches are worth zilch as a church, so it's about land value, zoning and location location location.

In appraising a portfolio all that should be considered, so I really think the article has virtually no credibility.

Think about it.

You now own your ward building and all the land!

It's zoned for churches.  What else can you do with it? Residential? Build houses? How much will you profit?

Yet another ward is on a main street, next to a Walmart.

How much is that worth per square foot?  And what kind of entity owns it?

Is it a "private" organization? What does that mean? Should it even be classified as "private" when there are so many ways religious organizations can be classified?

What does that word mean in this context??

It's tons of apples, oranges. Cherries, rutabagas carrots, bananas etc etc all in one package by the ton!! What's the value of what you own, based on what?

That's my simple point.

The article is excellent... for lining your trash can!

 

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

If it falls under fair use, but they don’t want it available to the public for whatever reason even if legal for it to be publicized in that way, I could see that being a case of lawfare, though not sure that is the appropriate term as I thought it was taking legal action to hurt an organization rather than to control one’s own property.  Was the purpose to drive the organization out of business or to prevent the publication?

This seems less an issue to control intellectual property as this wasn’t going to get published by the JW Church though. It was about wanting to keep information private.   Why would they need to copyright this material?  This is more whistleblowing. 
 

https://gizmodo.com/new-whistleblower-site-faithleaks-releases-confidential-1821799936

Like Amulek, I’m not acquainted with the case, and I don’t condone efforts to escape accountability for wrongdoing. 
 

However, in a broad, theoretical sense, I do believe a desire to maintain privacy is reason enough for an entity to vigorously protect its intellectual property. 

[ksfisher]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Ever tried to sell a church?  I have. 

The entire church organization or just one building?

[Amulek]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

What is it about efforts to protect one’s intellectual property that might warrant the disparaging epithet “lawfare”?

@Calmalready hit on it, but if they knew the documents were covered by fair use then, even if it were technically arguable that they weren't, filing suit in order to force them to spend money defending themselves - well, that sounds more like a move to silence speech that is disliked than it is to really protect IP.

As I said before though, I didn't really follow the story when it came out, so I've got no idea whether or not they were sincerely trying to safeguard their property, but the broad strokes are enough to set my skeptic-senses tingling.

 

[mfbukowski]

31 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

The entire church organization or just one building?

Oh yeah. I tried to sell the whole church, but Marriott was the only bidder.  Oh yeah and the Methodists.

JUST KIDDING!!!

But I did take a listing once on a small Evangelical church building and nobody made an offer.

All the potential buyers wanted to demolish the building and build something else, and thought it was over priced.  

It's hard to evaluate buildings with so many emotional ties.

"But I LOVE that building..." vs "Yeah, I'll buy it.... just so I can burn it down!!"

No seriously the problem is usually zoning. Lotsa times they are in residential areas and finding comparable properties which have sold is VERY hard, unless they have commercial zoning.

[ksfisher]

8 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Oh yeah. I tried to sell the whole church, but Marriott was the only bidder.  Oh yeah and the Methodists.

Imagine one day waking up to find that Warren Buffet had bought the church and President Nelson had retired to a private island off the coast of Greece. 

There's got to be a good joke in that somewhere.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Amulek said:

they were sincerely trying to safeguard their property, but the broad strokes are enough to set my skeptic-senses tingling.

Oh, I think they were sincerely trying to safeguard their property, but not for particularly admirable reasons, just 35 million of them.  Just reading the Gizmodo summary, they deserved to be sued and it is understandable why they were refusing to turn the documents over even when court ordered.  I am a bit surprised that Mormonleaks wasn’t able to get funding to fight for exposing sex abuse cases (oops, it was for educational videos, but Watchtower used the suit to pull down the sexual abuse info), but maybe they anticipated it going over a hundred thousand and possibly for years.

But what I want to know is why the documents were sent to ML instead of to the lawyers or court that were requiring them from the Jehovah Witnesses.

If a whistleblower turns over documents the court has ordered to be turned over but a defendant has refused to do so, can the documents be used in the lawsuit?  And are such documents then in the public record or are they only available to those involved in the lawsuit?

Added:  I wonder if the whistleblower was worried about the court ruling for clergy confidentiality (given that they did).  I am assuming that would cause any records to be suppressed.

wiki:  

Quote

In 2018, a jury in Thompson Falls, Montana, awarded $35 million to a victim of sexual abuse, claiming that the Jehovah's Witnesses church failed to protect her. The case was reportedly focused on the 'two witness rule' and the failure of congregation elders to turn the information over to secular authorities.^[125] The Watchtower Society argued that elders had no legal obligation to report abuse cases in Montana^[126] and appealed the ruling.^[127] In January 2020, the supreme court of Montana reversed and remanded the judgement in favor of Jehovah's Witnesses holding that the confidential communication elders received is specifically exempt under mandatory reporting statute.^[128]

Surprisingly no mention of the leak.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

Interesting story about the stolen documents and leaks in the Atlantic, kind of a cliffhanger though:

Quote

Mark and Wynne, nervous about trafficking in stolen documents, wanted to create another layer of protection for Judas and themselves. So Wynne approached Ryan McKnight, the proprietor of MormonLeaks.io, a site dedicated to transparency in the Mormon Church. They shared the Palmer documents with McKnight, who used them as the inaugural posts for a new site, FaithLeaks.org, and worked with a reporter from Gizmodo to independently confirm the story. Mark and Wynne never shared any details about Judas’s identity with McKnight, so that he could honestly say he didn’t know who had stolen the letters.

On January 9, 2018, the documents went live on FaithLeaks, and Gizmodopublished its story. Other American outlets picked it up—as did media in the U.K., Finland, Spain, Lebanon, Hungary, Chile, and Bolivia. (The Palmer Congregation has never made any public comment on the abuse or cover-up allegations, and didn’t return a comment request for this story.)

A month after the documents appeared online, McKnight received an email from an officer with the Brimfield Police Department; the Palmer Congregation had reported the theft of its documents, and wanted the perpetrator brought to justice. The officer asked McKnight about the source of the letters he had published, but McKnight had no information to give.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/03/the-secret-jehovahs-witness-database-of-child-molesters/584311/

[Teancum]

12 hours ago, Calm said:

Also how much land is liquid…not needed for actual church operation.  A house is part of one’s wealth, but if one gives it up for a nice chunk of change, that money has to be spent on finding something else that provides shelter, etc.  I tend to look on wealth as how much ‘free’ money one had.  For example, a significant part of my family’s income goes to medical expenses.  Like food, we don’t have to buy as much as we do or as good of quality, but to maintain a decent life, to stop deterioration of medical issues as much as possible we choose to spend that much. In order to function effectively, the Church needs so much land and buildings and an effective way to communicate.  It is what is leftover that leaders can choose to invest in programs, humanitarian efforts, investments, etc that I see as ‘wealth’. 

Your definition of wealth is not the way anyone that is involved in financial activity would define wealth.  Wealth is all assets less all liabilities including assets that are not liquid. Dividing up between liquid and non liquid is fine. And even for a business or church further allocating to operating assets that cannot be readily disposed of vs non operating assets is fine as well.  But real estate has value and is part of wealth.  And real estate can be sold. Some property perhaps less easil than others.  FOr example I do not see the Church ever selling temples.  But they do sell chapels and they do sell storehouses, apartment buildings they own, agricultural property and so on.  

[Teancum]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Since when is a 501-C3 "private"?

It is sort of in between. It is not a publicly traded corporation but it is not privately owned.  In fact nobody really owns it. Most are run and directed by a board.

[Teancum]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Churches are worth zilch as a church, so it's about land value, zoning and location location location.

I disagree. I have seen a number of Church buildings purchased by other church's.  In fact the when we build a new meeting house stake center where I live the town I live in bought the old church to use for their town hall. Paid around $500k for it.  I have a client that bought a church and has rented it out to a non denominational congregation that does not have the funds to buy it.  I agree that selling such property is not always easy but they often do sell. 

[Calm]

Can’t tell if it was my tablet glitching or me….

Second half of the last post on Faithleaks….I finally reread the original press release, they had aimed for  $40,000 but had only managed $13,000.  I was too out of it and conflated two sets of leaks. They were being sued for copyright over videos of annual conventions, definitely a copyright violation imo and Watchtower had sworn to pursue anyone who published the stuff (read another article for that tidbit), so not exactly lawfare, but bet it was satisfying for Watchtower and very useful since it forced Faithleaks to pull not only the videos, but the sex abuse database leaks.  And I am still surprised given the volume of stated concern over clergy coverups of sex abuse in exmormon communities that they didn’t raise more or that a certain someone didn’t step in to share his donations with them.

I am also surprised I haven’t seen more about child abuse lawsuits against Watchtower and the other JW organizations.  They have this two witness rule which requires two witnesses before they will accept accusations as valid.  Since most cases of child abuse involve one witness, the victim, unless there are multiple victims, it appears there has been quite a bit of neglect including recommending a known abuser as a mentor for a boy.  They got in the same sort of trouble that the Boy Scouts did, records they kept of abuse over decades were leaked.  They were already getting sued and investigated all over the world before that. Quite a bombshell I would think. But in ten pages of google hits on “Jehovah witnesses” I saw only two references to lawsuits and investigations while I saw five references to Witnesses and the Holocaust.  It feels quite different to the reaction to the Catholic and Boy Scout scandal.  Is it just because I haven’t generally been paying much attention to news the past 5 years?

Edited April 7, 2022 by Calm