Not Tithing Funds (ii)

[smac97]

53 minutes ago, Danzo said:

If the church said that it spent funds from one category and not another category (tithing vs investment), and they are not just making things up, I would assume that internally they have different fund accounts that use to segregate their assets.  If they didn't have a funds accounting system, the statement wouldn't mean anything.  (How would you know the source of an expenditure if you didn't have a system of keeping track of these things?)

Good points, these.

53 minutes ago, Danzo said:

I think the church keeps track of its revenue sources and categorizes them as donations, offerings, investments income, service fee income (revenue from church magazines, temple cafeteria, etc.), revenue from businesses that they own and other sources.

I think this is reflected in Pres. Hinckley's 2003 statement.  It becomes pretty difficult, then, for Huntsman and Analytics to argue that tithing is indistinguishable from these others revenue sources.  And yet they are trying anyway because Huntsman's lawsuit only works if he can persuade a judge to pound a round peg (Huntsman's idiosyncratic and ad hoc redefinition of "tithing") into a square hole (Pres. Hinckley's remark, which forms the basis for the fraud claim).

53 minutes ago, Danzo said:

Money from from investments and church business probably goes on their bookkeeping system as a separate fund.  When they make money from investments, the investment fund goes up. When they write a check for the  the city mall, the money in the bank account goes down and the money available in the investments fund goes down.  They probably have some sort of fund for ecclesiastically  activities like building a temple, that fund goes up when tithing comes in and when they write a check to build a temple, that fund balance goes down.  

In either case, the city mall check or the temple check, the money could come from the same bank account, but internally it is recorded differently.

Makes sense.

Thanks,

-Smac

[bluebell]

1 minute ago, Danzo said:

I think you, like most people didn't think about it much and when they did think about it they probably don't really care.  Most people think all the money goes in one pot and all the money comes out of one pot.

While these things are important to accountants, government officials and lawyers, they are not on most peoples radar.

 

I can definitely understand why someone would think that Investment income from tithing is the same as tithing, but to someone who was intimately involved in non profit financing (Like Pres Hinkley must have been, having been involved in church government for so long)  "tithing funds" would have a very distinct meaning that may have been lost on people without an accounting background. 

 

Agreed.  A lot of members probably assume that talking about tithing funds is just another way to say tithing money, since funds and money can be interchangeable. People say stuff like "I don't have the funds for that..." all the time. 

The idea of a fund as an accounting tool that is used to organize money into different "folders" all stored in the same "filing cabinet" is not where most people's minds go when the word is used. 

Mine certainly doesn't.

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, Danzo said:

Most people think all the money goes in one pot and all the money comes out of one pot.

I have talked to a few members who hadn’t realized the Church had for profit businesses even though they had shopped at or at least heard of Deseretbook.  Just hadn’t bothered to connect the dots.  They had a category for “church” in their head and one for “business” and they did not think of them as overlapping (kind of like how some people see science and religion it seems  ) until it became necessary for them to process the idea.

Edited May 8, 2024 by Calm

[rongo]

2 minutes ago, Danzo said:

I agree, Rongo's statement was probably oversimplified.  

I think what Bishop Burton meant was that the various deposit accounts (Zion's Bank, BofA, Wells Fargo, Dresdner Bank, or whatever) all sweep into the Church's account. And vice versa --- the checking accounts all sweep from the one Church account. 

His explanation made a lot of sense to me. The Church doesn't have zillions of employees constantly transferring money back and forth between innumerable local and international accounts. These accounts all sweep into or out of the Church's checking account. 

Elder Anderson has said one of the big holdups to the Church getting into China (formally) is a CCP requirement that no Chinese donations leave the country. 

[Danzo]

9 minutes ago, smac97 said:

This is my sense as well.  I also think this would hold for most conversant and observant Latter-day Saints. 

Analytics, however, wants us to believe that many of us conflate tithing with other sources of income.  I find this claim contrived, ad hoc, and plainly incorrect.

Thanks,

-Smac

I would disagree, most non accounting people, in my experience don't understand separation of funds, restricted accounts and funds based accounting in general. I believe this because I constantly have to explain to my clients the differences.

I think the concept becomes clear to people after explaining it to people, but most people operate their lives without segregating interest from principle.

 

We must remember that Present Hinkley had spend the previous four decades in church leadership and was likely intimately involved in directed a funds base accounting organization.  For him to say no tithing funds were used meant something specific to him because discussion of this fund or that fund was probably part of his daily activities for so long.   Often when we deal with something so specialized for so long we can forget that others may not understand the specialized language used. To the extent that people misunderstood his language, it may have had been largely to do with his using a language that they weren't familiar with.  When I read his words, I understand what he was talking about down to the imagining of the actual bank transactions and how they would be recorded on the books.  

I don't think others may have understood it in the same way.

This doesn't mean that any fraud was involved,. The way Pres Hinkley made his statement was actually correct from a legal and accounting point of view.  To the extent that people misunderstood him, they misunderstood the concept of a tithing, or fast offering or investment fund itself. 

Many people on this board still don't believe in such concepts and I understand.  They are foreign to their personal experiences. 

[smac97]

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

On another thread, @smac97 accused me of "wildly mischaracterized the position of a large number of Latter-day Saints on this board (regarding what they understand is, and is not, "tithing"). 

That accusation seems really odd to me, because as far as I know, I have never said anything about what Latter-day Saints on this board or elsewhere understand tithing to be or not to be. I have claimed to understand how many Latter-day Saints on this board interpreted various statements about tithing funds not being used, but I’m completely unaware of any controversy about what the word “tithing" actually means to Latter-day Saints.

You apparently are not paying attention to the Huntsman lawsuit, then.  I thought you were.  The meaning of "tithing" is very much a point in dispute.

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

I’ve been told I’m not a reliable source of interpreting what people have said on this forum. I think @smac97 isn't reliable, because he wants to rewrite history in support of his preferred legal arguments in contemporary after-the-fact legal cases. If I’m wrong, please disabuse me.

I have quoted Latter-day Saints verbatim when referencing what they understand "tithing" to mean.  You have not.

You have a long track record of being an unreliable guide when it comes to characterizing the Latter-day Saints, our doctrines, beliefs, practices, etc.

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

In 2015, @Stone holm asked the following question:

Quote

Another thread got locked before I could ask a question, so will ask it now. One frequently hears the statement that tithing funds were not used for such and such an investment. And while I like to think that is true, I have to pause and think...if not tithing then what funds were used? Surely not Fast Offerings, too many those are even more sacred as to their dedicated use, and surely not missionary funds. So, what are these mysterious "not tithing" funds?

We now know that funds from Ensign Peak Advisors were used, and we know that Ensign Peak Advisors got its money because every year, the Church sent excess tithing revenue to it.

Kinda hard, then, to justify a fraud claim.

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

But how did Saints answer Stone holm’s question then? And why did he ask the question in the first place?

I think @The Nehor’s answer was typical. He said:

Income from church owned businesses and sometimes from direct donations from members for a specific purpose.

Note that he did not say anything about investment income on unspent tithing.

No, but you did.  You and Huntsman want to conflate tithing with other sources of revenue so you can justify the notion that - as you put it - "using tithing to generate interest to build a mall was still using tithing to build a mall."

If I take out a loan for $1,000, and thereafter invest it and generate a profit of $200, the loan amount remains $1,000, not $1,200.  The $200 was not part of the loan, and it would be contrived and absurd to suggest otherwise.  But that is what you are suggesting.

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

@Brian 2.0follow-up question:

Are these church owned businesses started via tithing? Is interest earned from tithing dollars considered "not tithing"? 

@Robert F. Smith answered Brian's question thusly:

Quote

There a great many original non-tithing sources of funds, beginning with Martin Harris mortgaging his farm to get the Book of Mormon printed.  The revolving Perpetual Emigration Fund used to get people into the Valley, and now the Perpetual Education Fund.  Huge donations and loans of that kind have always been available.  It used to be that local members were assessed for building contributions (ward & stake meeting houses, temples), though that isn't done anymore.  However, members can still choose to contribute to temple, fast offerings, and humanitarian aid funds (they have separate boxes in the tithing slip and are not tithing contributions).  When I was financial clerk I noticed that some members gave substantial contributions to these funds without being asked, and LDS members donate far more per captia to charity than members of other religions.

Note that he didn’t directly say whether or not he thought interest earned from tithing dollars was considered tithing, but he did give a seemingly plausible explanation for how the Church could have funded the mall without relying on tithing or on interest earned from unspent tithing.

Robert was pretty clear on the subject elsewhere:

Quote

When someone at Church HQ says that no tithing funds were used, it is very likely true.

And here:

Quote

If the Church leaders say that no tithing funds were used, I think we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt.  There are plenty of for-profit funds available, which are subject to taxation, by the way.  The IRS knows how to distinguish types of funds from each other.

And here:

Quote

You and the Newby apparently don't understand fungibility: "The state of being interchangeable. For example, money has fungibility because there is no difference between one dollar and another dollar."  In other words, all the money can be pooled, but it is spent according to budget from particular accounts.  The budgeted accounts are in turn specifically tied to donations of particular types.  Thus, tithing, humanitarian, and fast-offering donations may not be used in for-profit operations, and each must be separately accounted for -- and later audited.  Just because all greenbacks look alike, and can be spent alike, doesn't mean that the donation accounts cannot be distinguished.  For an accountant, that is child's play, and for the IRS feloniously serious stuff.

Thus, even if Martin Harris had taken that mortgage money he obtained on his farm in order to print the 1830 Book of Mormon and placed it a pool of money including tithing, it would not therefore become tithing money.  Only accounting for the spending of that amount of money (which was donated for a specific purpose) later tells us the source and use of the funds, which did not include tithing.  The same applies to United Firm/ United Order contributions via deed.  The idea that everything is tithing is absurd.

 

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

Robert F. Smith answered Bluebell’s question thusly: "Not at all.  If the Church leaders say that no tithing funds were used, I think we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt.  There are plenty of for-profit funds available, which are subject to taxation, by the way.  The IRS knows how to distinguish types of funds from each other."

Notice that he is talking about “funds” and is comparing “tithing funds” with “for-profit funds.” Also note that Ensign Peak Advisors is a non-profit fund.

Notice also that Robert said

• "When someone at Church HQ says that no tithing funds were used, it is very likely true."
• "If the Church leaders say that no tithing funds were used, I think we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt."
• "The IRS knows how to distinguish types of funds from each other."
• "The idea that everything is tithing is absurd."

These seem fundamentally incompatible with your and Huntsman's notion that "using tithing to generate interest to build a mall was still using tithing to build a mall."

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

Those responses are typical of how apologists answered the question. One thing they have in common is that to various degrees, they are all unaware of Ensign Peak Advisors.

The first post that head the nail on the head showed up on page 3, about 44 posts into the topic. @Stone holm said:

"Given that during the Presidency of Lorenzo Snow, the Church was essentially broke, I think we could probably discount the idea that the source of the funds predates that. I suspect we could argue that the funds came from the days when the Church lived the Order of Enoch, but that raises a whole host of other questions. Then again, we might argue that it is really money from special donations like the Marriot Center or Nauvoo. But I suspect the most coherent assertion is we are not considering interest on tithing as tithing. BTW I don't have a problem with slum removal which is what the mall was really about, just feel a little uncomfortable with the no tithing claim."

Note the following three things:

1. Stone holm was exactly right
2. Stone holm said at the time this was an explanation that “we are not considering"
3. Stone holm’s post got zero upvotes

(to be continued...)

 

So you say Stone holm was "exactly right" when he said that "we are not considering interest on tithing as tithing."

You are also advancing the notion that "using tithing to generate interest to build a mall was still using tithing to build a mall."

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

30 minutes ago, bluebell said:

In my very limited experience, a lot of members do initially lump tithing and the investments from tithing, etc. all into the tithing category.  I've heard that expressed more than once. 

I think most Latter-day Saints construe "tithing" in its normative, Sunday School sense, and either don't given any thought to whether investment revenue is "tithing," or else they consider and reject the notion out-of-hand.  

30 minutes ago, bluebell said:

But usually, when you talk it out for a bit and talk about it in terms of how interest and investments work in their own lives, they change their thinking on it because it becomes pretty obvious how the interest or the return on investment does not become the principle.  The principle is a separate thing.

I agree that this is the prevailing sentiment.

30 minutes ago, bluebell said:

But a lot of members never do really get to discuss it or consider different angles so in those cases, the idea that tithing is the same as investments from tithing probably lingers.

I have never seen it coherently explained.  It has only arisen because Huntsman is using the claim to salvage his lawsuit.

Thanks,

-Smac

[mfbukowski]

23 hours ago, Analytics said:

I’ve been told I’m not a reliable source of interpreting what people have said on this forum. I think @smac97 isn't reliable, because he wants to rewrite history in support of his preferred legal arguments in contemporary after-the-fact legal cases. If I’m wrong, please disabuse me.

You can BOTH be wrong in different ways.  Have a nice day.  😁

[smac97]

14 minutes ago, Danzo said:

I would disagree, most non accounting people, in my experience don't understand separation of funds, restricted accounts and funds based accounting in general. I believe this because I constantly have to explain to my clients the differences.

Fair enough.  But my point has more to do with the Latter-day Saints and their understanding of "tithing."  Most of us are not conversant with "funds based accounting," but nor do we consider all of the Church's sources of income to be considered as "tithing." 

If Deseret Book makes a profit on the sale of books and such, those funds are not "tithes" because the source of the money is from something other than a Latter-day Saint giving a tenth of their income to the Church?

14 minutes ago, Danzo said:

I think the concept becomes clear to people after explaining it to people, but most people operate their lives without segregating interest from principle.

Sure.  But I also that virtually all Latter-day Saints live their lives without conflating "tithes" donated by members to the Church with other sources of income the Church has.

14 minutes ago, Danzo said:

We must remember that Present Hinkley had spend the previous four decades in church leadership and was likely intimately involved in directed a funds base accounting organization.  For him to say no tithing funds were used meant something specific to him because discussion of this fund or that fund was probably part of his daily activities for so long.  Often when we deal with something so specialized for so long we can forget that others may not understand the specialized language used. To the extent that people misunderstood his language, it may have had been largely to do with his using a language that they weren't familiar with.  When I read his words, I understand what he was talking about down to the imagining of the actual bank transactions and how they would be recorded on the books.  

I don't think others may have understood it in the same way.

This doesn't mean that any fraud was involved,. The way Pres Hinkley made his statement was actually correct from a legal and accounting point of view.  To the extent that people misunderstood him, they misunderstood the concept of a tithing, or fast offering or investment fund itself. 

Many people on this board still don't believe in such concepts and I understand.  They are foreign to their personal experiences. 

Well, we could do a poll...

Thanks,

-Smac

[LoudmouthMormon]

I'm trying to think back to the first time I heard a bishop or other leader say "the church doesn't need your tithing", alluding to how well-off the church was.  It's probably been more than 25 years.  

Quote

 I knew the Church takes in billions of dollars in tithing every year, I knew they saved (probably 10-15% of its annual tithing revenue) for a rainy day. I also knew that the mathematical inevitability of that was a massive rainy day fund.

Words fail me at my attempt to express my appreciation for a church that walks it's talk, and talks prudence and savings.  It preaches self-reliance, and is self-reliant.  Especially when it comes to aspects like preparedness and funding your own retirement.  I miss the '70's and '80's when the church openly preached against the evils of "the dole" and government assistance in general.  It had done so since the '30's, and I've come to accept that it was a generational thing from folks who had survived the great depression.  Now government programs are a fact of life, forced on us whether we want it or not, and when bishops figure out fast offering help for folks, they factor in things like government aid.  My parent's generation worried for me, when all the deficit spending would come due.  But the nation and the world grew it's GDP so well, that I'll likely be fine, and I worry for my children, when all the 100x deficit spending comes due.  In this matter, the church is doing better than me.  My social security and medicare is a core component of my retirement planning.  The church's plans don't rely on the govt for anything other than protection of religious liberty.

In short, it's beyond cool that the church has a massive "rainy day" fund.   I look forward to it being drawn upon to fund and maintain more and more temples in low-GDP nations that couldn't hope to fund one themselves. 

Such a thing of beauty.  The church should be able to keep this exponential, beautifully logarithmic growth going for a lot of years:

Edited May 8, 2024 by LoudmouthMormon

[smac97]

4 hours ago, bluebell said:

I've been trying to figure out how to respond to this thread, since I was tagged in it, but I haven't been very successful. 

That other thread that my quote was taken from is almost 10 years old.  I have no idea what else I posted in it, or whether or not my feelings about the issue have changed much.  My quote on this thread doesn't really shed any light on what my feelings on the issues back then were exactly.

I just came across this comment from you in August 2021 (responding to Analytics) :

Quote

Quote

 

I agree. If A causes B and B causes C, then A causes C. Basic logic.

Likewise, if tithing funds were used to create investment earnings and investment earnings were used for a mall, then tithing funds were used for a mall. 

From the article, Michael Austin, a Latter-day Saint educator in Indiana, is not as bothered as others about the mall, he says. “I don’t see any moral difference between a shopping mall and a mutual fund.”

To this, Smac97 replied, "Yep."

But Hinckley implies there is a significant difference. According to Hinckley, tithing principal may be used to buy mutual funds, but it may not be used to buy malls.

Why is that?

 

But this fails to account for the actual definition of tithing, which is 10% of someone's income, donated to the church.  B is not 10% of anyone's income, therefore, B by definition isn't tithing.  It's something different.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Analytics claimed that some portion of Latter-day Saints interpreted Pres. Hinckley's remarks in such a way as to justify the notion that "using tithing to generate interest to build a mall was still using tithing to build a mall." 

Why do you think Craig Paxton said, "I hate that believers get so defensive at the very suggestion that tithing funds were used...or even that the investment income from tithing funds were used...good greif....chill out”?

If you want to have a good-faith discussion, please answer that question. 

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

IOW, that "tithing" refers to both (A) and (B) above.

No, that is not what I’m saying in other words.

The word “tithing” can be a noun or an adjective. As I have demonstrated, some Latter-day Saints did in fact interpret the phrase “tithing fund” as a fund that was sacred because it contained tithing. Thinking that a “tithing fund” refers to a fund that contains tithing doesn’t tell us whether or not the same fund also includes investment income. 

This way of looking at it would explain why Deborah, for example, responded to Craig’s question by saying,

"Because the First Presidency has said they weren't and you are calling them liars. Shouldn't be that hard to figure out." 

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Huntsman's lawsuit is, in my view, on life support.  The only way it can survive is if the courts are willing to re-define "tithing" for the purposes of interpreting Pres. Hinckley's 2003 statement, and to re-define it to conflate "tithes" with other sources of income, such as interest and/or investments ("using tithing to generate interest to build a mall was still using tithing to build a mall").  

I disagree. Some members of the Church were quite offended by the suggestion that "investment income from tithing funds were used.” Craig Paxton said he thought that’s what the Church did, and Deborah, Selek1, and thesometimesaint thought that was tantamount to calling the first presidency liars. The courts don’t need to redefine tithing to mean anything. They merely need to decide that using the vernacular of the faith community, Deborah, Selek1, thesometimesaint, and James Huntsman interpreted Hinckley in the way that Hinckley intended to be understood.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

I have elsewhere commented on Huntsman's and Analytics' novel definition of "tithing" here:

I do not have a novel definition of tithing. I simply understand how some people understood Hinckley’s remarks at the time. 

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

If I take out a loan for $1,000, and thereafter invest it and generate a profit of $200, the loan amount remains $1,000, not $1,200.  The $200 was not part of the loan, and it would be contrived and absurd to suggest otherwise.

This has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever thought or said.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

I think the vast majority of conversant and observant Latter-day Saints will find Analytics re-definition to be flawed, to be ad hoc, contrived, and nonsensical.

Again, I’m not redefining anything.

Why do you think Craig Paxton said, "I hate that believers get so defensive at the very suggestion that tithing funds were used...or even that the investment income from tithing funds were used...good greif....chill out”?

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

The Latter-day Saints differentiate what Huntsman and Analytics want to conflate.  If I am wrong about that, I would like to see it.

In 2012, the faithful participants of this board were struggling with a huge mystery. The question was this:

Quote

 

When people accuse the Church of using sacred tithing money to fund things like the building of the City Creek mall, the obvious answer is of course that tithing money is not used; rather money from the for-profit arm of the church is used that was obtained through business investments over the years.

But then of course critics ask the next question; "Where do you think the church got the money to buy the businesses in the first place?"

And they conclude that It must have started with tithing money donated by early church members. So in an indirect way the City Creek mall was made possible by sacred tithing money donated by members 150 years ago; money that is supposed to be dedicated to building God's church and helping the poor; not for building shopping malls. How does one respond to this?

 

Why do you think that question needed to be asked? 

Craig Paxton suggested the following answer: Tithing in Excess of Current Needs is Invested, generating a return, and this return on investments was then reinvested into City Creek Mall.

How many members said that Craig was correct?

How many members said that what Craig says was plausible?

How many got offended by that suggestion because it called into question the integrity of the Church?

Why did Craig Paxton then say,  "I hate that believers get so defensive at the very suggestion that tithing funds were used...or even that the investment income from tithing funds were used...good greif....chill out”?

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Analytics, however, wants us to believe that many of us conflate tithing with other sources of income.  I find this claim contrived, ad hoc, and plainly incorrect.

I do not want you to believe that. Stop saying lies about me.

[Calm]

13 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Why do you think Craig Paxton said, "I hate that believers get so defensive at the very suggestion that tithing funds were used...or even that the investment income from tithing funds were used...good greif....chill out”?

Because Paxton and his other aliases was a drama queen…

Thankfully not many critics on the board play his games, imo.

Given how he misrepresented my own and others’ reactions (intentionally or unintentionally, I don’t know), I don’t trust his descriptions or analysis of others’ positions.

Edited May 8, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Craig Paxton said he thought that’s what the Church did

Craig Paxton used the term “disingenuous” which is a synonym for lying.

Quote

Deborah, Selek1, and thesometimesaint thought that was tantamount to calling the first presidency liars. 

 

[Calm]

35 minutes ago, Analytics said:

How many members said that Craig was correct?

How many members said that what Craig says was plausible?

How many got offended by that suggestion because it called into question the integrity of the Church?

Why

Are you sure they weren’t protesting his use of disingenuous, money laundering, dishonesty?

Or that he was stating things as facts that were at the time speculation (even if reasonable speculation)?

Quote

 

It is disingenuous for the church to claim that no tithing funds were used to fund the City Creek Mall. Member Pays Tithing  àTithing in Excess of Current Needs is Invested à Investments Earn Return à $$$ From This Return on Investments is Reinvested in the City Creek Mall…. Classic Money Laundering...So can the Church really claim that they didn’t use tithing funds to fund the City Creek mall? Ummm I suppose so…but is it really an honest statement to claim such or is the church just being disingenuous?

 

Edited May 8, 2024 by Calm

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, Danzo said:

I would disagree, most non accounting people, in my experience don't understand separation of funds, restricted accounts and funds based accounting in general. I believe this because I constantly have to explain to my clients the differences.

I think the concept becomes clear to people after explaining it to people, but most people operate their lives without segregating interest from principle.

 

We must remember that Present Hinkley had spend the previous four decades in church leadership and was likely intimately involved in directed a funds base accounting organization.  For him to say no tithing funds were used meant something specific to him because discussion of this fund or that fund was probably part of his daily activities for so long.   Often when we deal with something so specialized for so long we can forget that others may not understand the specialized language used. To the extent that people misunderstood his language, it may have had been largely to do with his using a language that they weren't familiar with.  When I read his words, I understand what he was talking about down to the imagining of the actual bank transactions and how they would be recorded on the books.  

I don't think others may have understood it in the same way.

This doesn't mean that any fraud was involved,. The way Pres Hinkley made his statement was actually correct from a legal and accounting point of view.  To the extent that people misunderstood him, they misunderstood the concept of a tithing, or fast offering or investment fund itself. 

Many people on this board still don't believe in such concepts and I understand.  They are foreign to their personal experiences. 

Pres Hinckley was great about giving interviews about the church, I can't recall many of the prophets doing so. But one interview didn't sit well with me when he was asked about the church's financial transparency and he said that tithing information belongs to those who made the contribution, not the public. Is this another misunderstanding?

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

It becomes pretty difficult, then, for Huntsman and Analytics to argue that tithing is indistinguishable from these others revenue sources. 

I never said, implied, or thought that “tithing is indistinguishable” from any other revenue sources.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

And yet they are trying anyway....

No I’m not. Stop telling lies about me.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

...because Huntsman's lawsuit only works if he can persuade a judge to pound a round peg (Huntsman's idiosyncratic and ad hoc redefinition of "tithing") into a square hole (Pres. Hinckley's remark, which forms the basis for the fraud claim).

First of all, I am not Huntsman’s attorney. Nor am I his spokesman. I don’t really care if he wins or not--I’m just an outside observer.

What I am doing is pointing out the fact that on this very forum, multiple people interpreted Hinckley’s comments broadly and thought that investment earnings on unspent tithing is basically  as sacred as tithing, and that if it was problematic to directly use tithing to build a mall, it would also be problematic to use tithing money to buy stock in Apple and Microsoft, and then use investment returns from those sources to build a mall.

On March 22, 2012, @JAHS asked the following question:

When people accuse the Church of using sacred tithing money to fund things like the building of the City Creek mall, the obvious answer is of course that tithing money is not used; rather money from the for-profit arm of the church is used that was obtained through business investments over the years.

But then of course critics ask the next question; "Where do you think the church got the money to buy the businesses in the first place?"

And they conclude that It must have started with tithing money donated by early church members. So in an indirect way the City Creek mall was made possible by sacred tithing money donated by members 150 years ago; money that is supposed to be dedicated to building God's church and helping the poor; not for building shopping malls. How does one respond to this?

Why do you think that needed to be asked, if Hinckley’s comments were so accurate and clear?

[Analytics]

15 minutes ago, Calm said:

Because Paxton and his other aliases was a drama queen…

Thankfully not many critics on the board play his games, imo.

Given how he misrepresented my own and others’ reactions (intentionally or unintentionally, I don’t know), I don’t trust his descriptions or analysis of others’ positions.

Some of the reactions to Paxton were driven to his style and throwaway comments (e.g. “money laundering”), but some of it was driven by the content. If you look at JAHS’s original question, it’s clear from the question that it was problematic, or at least disturbing, to “indirectly” use “sacred tithing money” that is supposed to be dedicated to building God’s church and helping the poor; not for building shopping malls."

 

[Analytics]

14 minutes ago, Calm said:

Are you sure they weren’t protesting his use of disingenuous, money laundering, dishonesty?

Some of them were. I agree with you that the moderators must have been put off by the “money laundering” line.

But others weren’t. For example, @thesometimesaint was directly addressing the underlying substance of Paxton’s point in the following reply, because he restated it.

"The Church officers have publically stated that no tithing funds were used in the purchase of the mall. You are calling those Church officers liars. Provide proof of your claim or retract it."

Please remember the whole thread was about the word “indirect.” The topic of the conversation wasn’t about the definition of tithing. The conversation was about this observation about why the source of the funds matters. “[the critics claim that] in an indirect way the City Creek mall was made possible by sacred tithing money...money that is supposed to be dedicated to building God's church and helping the poor; not for building shopping malls. How does one respond to this?"

Using funds indirectly for something is still using funds for something, isn’t it? That was the very heart of the question. My assertion is that when Hinckley said sacred funds wouldn’t be used, a plurality of participants interpreted that broadly--tithing funds wouldn’t be used directly or indirectly. When Paxton said tithing funds actually were used indirectly, they thought he was calling Church officers liars.

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, Analytics said:

or at least disturbing

I don’t think it is wise to attach emotion to anyone unless they have stated it themselves.  I have seen way too many times I and others who I know are called troubled, disturbed, etc when when I and others are either enjoying the conversation or are neutral about it or frustration with how an idea is presented (such as repeating claims over and over without responding to substantive analysis and instead focusing on *** for tat or trivial stuff which is one of my worst triggers  ) is read as disturbed about the idea itself.  The times I was foolish enough to break this self imposed rule, I always got corrected.  I just don’t think this is a good medium for reading emotion.  Intensity may be about emotion, it may be about the ‘hunt’ so to speak, it may be about the crying baby or the sleepless night, or perhaps the poster simply got carried away by their own prose (never happens to me, of course).

[Danzo]

28 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Pres Hinckley was great about giving interviews about the church, I can't recall many of the prophets doing so. But one interview didn't sit well with me when he was asked about the church's financial transparency and he said that tithing information belongs to those who made the contribution, not the public. Is this another misunderstanding?

Can you provide a link or a transcript of the particular interview?

[Calm]

46 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Some of the reactions to Paxton were driven to his style and throwaway comments (e.g. “money laundering”), but some of it was driven by the content.

I have no doubt this is true.  I am just not sure you can divide the two because once pissed off by the accusations of dishonesty and criminal behaviour, my guess is some saw that as a reason to try and discredit his whole commentary where if I or bluebell had put up something referring to investment funds being used, response might have been calling for references (as they should have if not presented as speculation) but I doubt if anything else.

I think what many (not all of course) of those who rejected the claims originally or even got offended got offended was because it was implied or inferred that tithing and/or the interest earned from tithing investment was used for profit ventures when it was needed for pastoral projects, such as when the arguments were combined with complaints about having seniors volunteer so the Church didn’t have to find a salaried employee for the job or had members clean the chapels where before custodians took care of the buildings.  I admit I got annoyed when some critics refused to accept there may be other reasons, perhaps even more important to church leaders, why the Church was pushing for more member involvement*** besides saving money and making the Church wealthy.

PS:  I don’t know when I shifted from thinking tithing and any investments from tithing went to only pastoral related projects (teaching, devotional, humanitarian, etc) to understand investment income was likely going into more than just a savings account in a bank, but I know it had to be by the time I knew the Church received more in tithing then it needed to cover all its needs because it would be foolish to leave surplus tithing in low paying accounts so the bank could take the money and use it to make much more and then give us back a minor amount of what they had earned with the Church’s money.  It wouldn’t be wise to just leave the money in a vault until it was needed given inflation and even the very low possibility of theft or natural disaster and for me, whether it was the Church investing in stocks or real estate or the bank didn’t make a difference to sacredness.  I know I learned sometime around 2002 that the Church had a commitment to have enough funds on hand to cover the next three years’ commitment, so likely by then, but I may be mistaken in my reconstruction of my thought process.

***The health benefits of keeping seniors meaningfully employed in their communities are well known and are believed by many to contribute to the longer lives of Saints.  Also I remember seeing the pride and connection coming together to build chapels created in the adults around me back when there was not only a building fund with its fundraisers and service projects, but actual physical labour building the structures and my guess is having members clean the buildings is in part an attempt to recreate that sense of community or at least raise levels of individual commitment on the premise you love what you care for.

 

Edited May 8, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

4 minutes ago, Danzo said:

Can you provide a link or a transcript of the particular interview?

Perhaps this one?

http://www.mscbc.org/hinckley.htm

[Danzo]

6 minutes ago, Analytics said:

The conversation was about this observation about why the source of the funds matters. “[the critics claim that] in an indirect way the City Creek mall was made possible by sacred tithing money...money that is supposed to be dedicated to building God's church and helping the poor; not for building shopping malls. How does one respond to this?"

Any money not spent immediately is invested. The church could have bought treasury bonds, in that case they would have invested in the US Government, the church could put its money in the bank, in that case they would be investing in the bank. They could have put money in a REIT, then they would have invested money in real estate, they could have bought Pepsi stock, then they would have invested in Pepsi. 

In the case at hand, they invested in real estate development.  Moneywise, I am not sure it was a good investment or a bad investment, but I believe it was an investment.  

I personally think that any sacred money not immediately spent should be invested.

When people are concerned whether the money was spent on the poor or on the church they are really asking whether the church should Spend everything that they take in or should they save some. 

If they save some, then the money will invested (I don't think cash in the freezer is a good way to save money).  A good investment portfolio will be invested in a broad category of investments, including real estate and real estate development.  I don't think choosing to invest in a mall is, by itself a bad decision.  (Does anyone know if the church lost money on the project?)