The modern Mormon understanding of tithing is rooted in D&C 119. According to Joseph Smith’s revelation, after the Saints contributed all of their surplus property to the bishop, they were to pay one-tenth of their “interest” annually.

And what does “interest” mean for tithing purposes? It turns out that, whatever we thought it was, we were wrong. We have new information that gives us a better idea of the original intent, and the kind folks over at Juvenile Instructor invited me to write about it over there. If you’re interested, check it out!

Note that this isn’t the Book of Mormon the debtor got to keep

I was walking through the mailroom at work today and, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the word “Mormon” in newspaper headline. Mormonism doesn’t come up much in the news around here, so I took a second look. On the front page—in fact, above the fold—of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, a legal newspaper here, was the headline “Debtor can keep rare Book of Mormon.”[fn1]

Now, I’m not a bankruptcy person,[fn2] but the story is too good to pass up, so here goes:

Anna Robinson is an employee at a library in Anna, IL, a (really) small town in the southwest corner of the state. She is also a lifelong Mormon. In 2003, her employer charged her with clearing old and damaged books from the library storeroom.

While she was cleaning it out, she discovered a first edition Book of Mormon. The library let her keep it, and, although it was missing the title page and had some other damage, she had it authenticated, and it was appraised at a value of at least $10,000.[fn3]

Robinson naturally doesn’t use the Book of Mormon. Rather, she keeps it in a Ziploc bag,[fn4] and occasionally pulls it out to show to her kids and to other church members.

At some point, Robinson filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Chapter 7 provides for the sale of most of the debtor’s property, with the proceeds going to pay creditors. As a policy matter, though, we don’t want all of a debtor’s property to be sold—even bankrupt debtors need clothes to wear, a place to live, and some other assets; otherwise, the state would ultimately end up supporting her.

As a result, some property is treated as exempt; debtors get to keep that property, and creditors don’t get their hands on it. And, although the bankruptcy law is a federal law, it provides that debtors can choose between federal and state exemptions.

Illinois law provides that exempt property includes, among a handful of other things:

The necessary wearing apparel, bible, school books, and family pictures of the debtor and the debtor’s dependents.

Interestingly enough, the bankruptcy trustee didn’t argue that the word “bible” would exclude the Book of Mormon; apparently, “bible” in this context means “a religious text.” The trustee did argue that the statute only exempted one bible, though, and Robinson conceded that she had fifteen other copies of the Book of Mormon (including on her iPhone and iPad). The purpose of the exemption for bibles, the trustee argued, was to allow a debtor to keep a bible for devotional purposes. Any of her other fifteen copies would work just as well, the trustee argued.

Actually, the trustee argued that any of her other fifteen copies would work better. She conceded that she didn’t use the first edition Book of Mormon for devotional purposes. It was fragile, and she rarely took it out of its Ziploc home. It should be sold, the trustee argued, so that the proceeds could go to her creditors.

The bankruptcy court agreed, but, on appeal, the district court did not. Neither did the Seventh Circuit. The Seventh Circuit said that the language of the exemption statute was clear: debtors could exclude a bible from their bankruptcy estate. Even if it was meant to preserve debtors’ ability to read devotionally, that’s not what the statute said. And the statute did not place a maximum value on an exempt bible.

And, as a result, Robinson will be able to keep her first edition copy of the Book of Mormon.

—

[fn1] Technically, the story appeared about two weeks ago, but I just saw it today.—

[fn2] (though I did do well in my bankruptcy class back when I was in law school!)

[fn3] A little bit from my world here: if she got a book worth $10,000 from her employer, it would be income to her, and she would need to pay taxes on that $10,000. Did she? No idea; it doesn’t seem to have been of any interest to the bankruptcy court; even if it had been, as long as she filed her tax return for 2003 in a timely fashion, the statute of limitations would have run.

[fn4] For all of our antique books people out there, does that make you cringe? or are Ziploc bags a standard storage device?

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: actually, still no.

Context: 

On Wednesday, Mitt Romney called Donald Trump out for not releasing his tax returns.[fn1] At the GOP debate last night, Trump explained that he wasn’t releasing his tax returns because he’s currently under audit. But his post-debate explanation of why he might be under audit is what piqued my interest (and motivated this post): he said the IRS may have targeted him

maybe because of religion, maybe because I’m doing something else, maybe because I’m doing this, although this is just recently.

When pressed on what he meant by saying he may have been targeted because of his religion, he elaborated:

Well maybe because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it. And maybe there’s a bias,” Trump said, adding, “You see what’s happened. I mean, you have many religious groups have been complaining about that. They’ve been complaining about it for a long time.[fn2]

If Trump’s Christianity[fn3] led to his audit, presumably we, as Mormons, should be concerned, too. The American public views Mormons less warmly than other Christian religions.

Fortunately, religious affiliation doesn’t appear to affect the likelihood of audit. My friend and sometime coauthor David Herzig has a great explanation of why not here. I want to reiterate one of his points, and add a couple more.

The one I want to reiterate is this: audits are really, really rare. The IRS is underfunded, and Congress cuts their funding every year. In fact, in 2015, the individual audit rate hovered somewhere below 1 percent. That means, on average, one out of every 100 tax returns were audited.

But for individuals making more than $1 million, the audit rate was ten times higher. One in ten of these high-income individuals faced an audit in 2015. So on its face, Trump’s audit was probably triggered by his income, not his religious affiliation.[fn4]

Those numbers also tell us that Christianity is a tremendously unlikely trigger. Per Pew, 70.6% of Americans identify as Christian. Christian  affiliation, then, would be a really, really blunt instrument to use to figure out who to audit.

And frankly, it’s really hard to tell religious affiliation from tax returns. If you’re one of the 30 percent or so of Americans who itemize deductions, and pay tithing to the church, you’ll include the name of the church on your tax return. But figuring out who to audit by looking through 147 million returns and trying to find particular religious donations seems like a really inefficient way to target delinquent taxpayers, especially because, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no correlation between religious affiliation and cheating on taxes.

Which is to say, you can rest easy that your religious affiliation isn’t going to increase your likelihood of audit. (Though if you’re really worried about it, you might want to make sure you don’t earn more than $1 million in any given year.)

—

[fn1] (Side note: candidates’ releasing their tax returns has a long and storied history, going back at least to Nixon in 1952. In fact, if you want to see past presidential tax returns, as well as the returns of several former presidential candidates, you can look here.)

[fn2] You can watch the video of his explanation here if you want.

[fn3] By the way, any comments debating Trump’s assertion that he is a Christian will be immediately and unceremoniously deleted. For purposes of this post, his religiousity is only relevant to the extent it did or did not motivate an IRS audit.

[fn4] As a side note, he’s not completely clear about who the IRS is auditing. He’s presumably a partner in several partnerships, and the owner of several corporations, and it’s certainly possible that he’s conflating audits of his various entities

This month, I’m guest-blogging over at PrawfsBlawg, a law professor blog. Most of what I blog there will be tax law-oriented, without any connection to religion, but occasionally there will be a religious angle. Like today, where I talk a little about the prohibition on churches’ (and other tax-exempt organizations’) endorsing or opposing candidates for office. If you’re interested, pop on over and tell me what you think.

I remember once, as a teenager, asking my dad how he stayed in the church back when the church wouldn’t allow black members to hold the priesthood or attend the temple. I was probably 16 or 17, because I’m pretty sure I was driving. I don’t think I was asking an accusatory question, though I was 16 or 17, so who knows. And I don’t remember how my dad responded.

I do remember, though, that his response was complicated, both a bearing of testimony and an acknowledgement that the pre-1978 racial policies of the church were bad. It was messier than the black and white world a teenager craves.

Fast forward to today; I’m slightly younger than my dad was when I asked him that question. And the church has introduced a set of new discriminatory policies, policies that I unequivocally oppose. (Here I’m talking about the limitations on baptizing the children of LGBT couples, of course, but I’m also talking about the categorization of same-sex marriage as apostasy.) And yet I’ve stayed in the church, active and believing. Why?

My answer lies in two main directions, one inward- and the other outward-facing. I don’t present these as normative; they are, instead, deeply personal and deeply descriptive. In the end, though, in my complex balancing act, participation outweighs non-participation.

Inward-Facing

In the first instance, Mormonism is the religious language I speak. Yes, I have twinges of jealousy about other faith traditions, and I’ll try occasionally to adopt aspects of other religious practices. But in the end, Mormonism is the way I know how to approach God; it feels natural and it feels good. Moreover, I believe that my Mormonism helps me be a better person, and helps my family be better.

That’s not to say that I believe today’s Mormonism is a Panglossian best of all possible worlds. But I suspect that if I keep away from all institutions, including all religions, that aren’t the best of all possible worlds, I’ll be forced to huddle alone in a corner somewhere. No institution—not even the church—is perfect; moreover, none will be until at least the establishment of Zion (whatever that means), and probably until sometime after that.

In the meantime, we need to learn to navigate imperfect institutions, and, ideally, to leave them better for our having been a part. Which leads me to:

Outward-Facing

I believe that I can do more good as part of the church than as separate from it. And I don’t believe it solely in an abstract improve-the-church-from-the-bottom-up way (though I do believe it in that way, too). I believe I can do actual good in the lives of real-life people as a member of the church.

Which isn’t to say I can’t do good outside of the church. A couple weeks ago I went with my daughter to the Greater Chicago Food Depository’s monthly Kids Day to help repack food for those who need it. We went with her school; there was also a Girl Scout Troop and a couple other groups there.

But there is real tangible good I can do in the church, too, that people who stay are uniquely positioned to do, good for my LGBT brothers and sisters.

A little over 2 percent of the U.S. population self-identifies as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. While I don’t have any numbers specific to Mormonism, I assume our numbers are roughly the same. Some significant portion of our our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters leave the church, of course: it can be an inhospitable place for them. Still, not all do—at least some weigh good of the Mormon church in their lives outweighing the bad.

Moreover, some portion of our LGBT brothers and sisters are younger than 18, living at home. Presumably, a significant portion of them attend church with their families, some because they love church, some because their parents say they have to go, and some under different personal or social pressures. Some are out of the closet; others not. Imagine a world where everybody disquieted by the church’s treatment of LGBT members left. That, I suspect, would be a remarkably uncomfortable place to be.

I’m lucky on both my outward- and inward-facing reasons: my ward is, while imperfect, tremendously sensitive to the struggles our LGBT brothers and sisters face, and is, I suspect, among the more welcoming in the church. My public opposition to these policies doesn’t put me outside the mainstream of where I live.

Moreover, I’m a straight, married man; when I say that, on net, the church is religiously valuable to me, it doesn’t hurt that the policies don’t affect me directly.

All that said, though, I live in an imperfect world, one where I navigate between suboptimal choices all the time. And even if the church isn’t perfect, I believe that, like us, it can improve. I also believe that those improvements sometimes come in fits and starts.

Ultimately, though, I believe that my continued membership and participation both makes me better and makes the church better. And thus I stay.

Christian Harrison was generous enough to respond to this post.

Back when I was in high school, I was warned not to guess if I didn’t know the answer to an SAT question. It’s been years, so my memory may be off, but I believe the test awarded points for correct answers, no points for blank answers, and took away points for wrong answers. If you weren’t at least reasonably certain that you were right, not answering the question was better than risking choosing a wrong answer, and losing points.[fn1]

As of last month, apparently, that changed: wrong answers still won’t get students points, but they also won’t cost students points. Where before, students had a strong incentive to refrain from participating, now the incentives have changed. 

In his Sunday talk, Elder Holland assures us that the Gospel is more like the new SAT than the old SAT. With the “gift of the Atonement and the strength of heaven to help us,” Elder Holland says, we don’t have to worry about picking the wrong answer, because “the great thing about the gospel is we get credit for trying, even if we don’t always succeed.”

Credit for trying. That’s even more generous than the SAT. All we have to do is try—even if we fail, even if we fail repeatedly—and God will credit our sincere attempt. And that ideal that we often speak of at church? The one often reflected in the talks we hear at Conference? They’re “intended to give hope and inspiration, not discouragement.”

Elder Holland’s framing here underlines an important point: the church isn’t a sanctuary for the perfect; rather, it’s a school for those of us who aren’t perfect. Or, as Elder Holland puts it, “We take some solace in the fact that if God were to reward only the perfectly faithful, He wouldn’t have much of a distribution list.”

Of course, it is not only me who is imperfect, and who deserves the right to try and to fail. We need to recognize that our neighbors—the people in the pew across from us who don’t do their home and visiting teaching, who haven’t prepared their lessons, even the ones who hurt and offend us—are in our same position. We need to show them the same charity we hope and need them to show us. If we’re blessed for our desire to do good, “we must make certain we don’t deny [those blessings] to others.”

Elder Holland’s focus here—both on my right to fail and my neighbor’s—strikes me as incredibly important, both on the personal level and the community level. On the personal level, if I’m not willing to go outside of my comfort zone, not willing to stretch a little, I’m not going to be able to grow. But I don’t know in advance how I’ll do outside of my comfort zone; if I’m afraid God will punish me if I fail, I have every incentive to just keep doing those things I already know I know how to do. I don’t risk punishment, but I also don’t have the opportunity for growth.

And, as a community, if we demand perfection and exclude those who don’t meet our personal standards, we are and impoverished body of Christ; He didn’t demand that we cut off the lame leg, but instead that we heal it. If we won’t let the lame leg join with us, though, it loses the chance at healing, and we lose the chance to act for Christ and heal those who need His (and our) healing touch.

And why is God so generous, so new- rather than old-SAT? In what I find perhaps the most powerful section of a powerful talk, Elder Holland explained:

Brothers and sisters, the first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all our heart, might, mind and strength, but the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind and strength. That love is the foundation stone of eternity and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life. Indeed it is only with that reassurance burning in our soul that we can have the confidence to keep believing, to keep trying to improve, to keep seeking forgiveness for our sins, and to keep extending that grace to our neighbor.

A God who loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength isn’t there to keep us out, but to invite us in. And Elder Holland makes clear that He does invite us in.

Note: if, for some reason, you’d rather get this information in the style of a morning newscast rather than read it, I’ve got a link for you at the end of the post.

You’ve probably heard by now about the Panama Papers leak: basically, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got 40 years of documents (about 11 million documents, or 2.6 terabytes of data) from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Mossack Fonseca apparently specializes in creating offshore entities and otherwise providing the tools people need to hide their money. (Note that the law firm claims it didn’t do anything wrong, and that there are non-illegal and -immoral reasons for putting money offshore.)

Even though there’s nothing Mormon about the leak, it’s a big enough thing that Mormons (and, frankly, everybody else) should know something about it. In Q&A format.

What’s the Scope of Offshore Money?

It’s naturally hard to nail down (because it is, almost by definition, hidden), but Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics estimates that there is about $7.6 trillion in tax havens. His is neither the highest nor the lowest estimate, but his methodology is relatively convincing.

Why Do People Put Their Money Offshore?

There are plenty of reasons, most of which involve hiding it. Many of the reasons we’d consider bad: hiding money from creditors, from a spouse, or from taxing authorities. Some, though, aren’t. In countries with unstable or corrupt governments (think, for example, Syria), there could be reasons to have money out of the reach or knowledge of the government.

But Not Everybody’s Hiding Their Money Offshore

That’s right. Apple, for example, has about $181 billion offshore. That money isn’t hidden; there may be issues with their keeping so much cash overseas, but there’s nothing secretive about it, and it’s not what the Panama Papers are getting at.

What If I Have Money Offshore?

Look, there is nothing inherently wrong with having money offshore. But if you have more than $10,000 in offshore bank accounts, mutual funds, or certain other kinds of accounts, you have to file an FBAR with the IRS. Every year. (Also, if you own a foreign corporation, you may be subject to all kinds of complicated tax requirements.)

Fine. But What If I Have Money Offshore and I Don’t Want to Pay Taxes?

Our one Mormon-specific response: if you don’t pay your taxes, you’re in “direct conflict” with the teachings of the church. On the other hand, if you’re looking to put your money offshore to avoid paying taxes, that direct conflict’s probably not going to stop you.

So now we’re getting to the heart of the Panama Papers. Here’s the deal: the US taxpaying system is a voluntary system. That doesn’t mean you can choose whether or not to pay your taxes, of course. (Or, rather, you can, but you can’t avoid the consequences of not paying.) What voluntary means here is, you tell the IRS how much you earn. I mean, the IRS has ways to check, but it can’t check on all types of income you earn. If you have money offshore and don’t file your FBAR, the IRS may never find out you have it.

So You’re Saying I Should Hide Money Offshore and Not Tell the IRS?

Absolutely not. I said the IRS may never find out about your money.

But it probably will.

The US passed a law called FATCA, which puts significant pressure on foreign banks and financial institutions to disclose the identities of their US account holders. And, with that law in the background, the US has entered into agreements with about 112 other governments to exchange that kind of information automatically. And non-US governments are replicating these types of information exchange agreements with each other.

Even without FATCA, though, the Panama Papers aren’t the first tax haven leak; a couple years ago, the ICIJ published Luxembourg leaks. And before that, a Swiss banker offered to sell Swiss bank data to Germany. The US Department of Justice is already looking at the leaks (as are various other governments). Wherever you hid your money could easily be next.

And US taxpayers are legitimately scared. Since 2009, the IRS has provided a number of opportunities for taxpayers with hidden offshore accounts to come forward and disclose them. Along with the disclosure, taxpayers have to pay back taxes, interest, and enormous penalties on the accounts, but the government agreed to waive criminal penalties. And more than 45,000 people have come forward, paying more than $6.5 billion in taxes, interest, and penalties.

Okay, That’s Well and Good. Except My Eyes Glazed Over. Is There Any Way You Could Say It In a Morning News Show Format?

You’re in luck. This morning I was on Good Day Chicago talking about this very thing. You can watch it here if you want.

Also, the stories are going to be fascinating; you really should follow @ICIJorg on Twitter, or periodically look for #panamapapers and #PanamaLeaks.

Last week, as I waited in the car to pick my daughter up from school, I heard an All Things Considered review of the recently-released album from Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. And, as these things do, it got me thinking about my mission.

When I got my call to the Brazil São Paulo East mission, I knew three things about Brazil: first, it was in South America. Second, they spoke Portuguese there. And third, it was the home of Bossa Nova. 

Today, I assume that when kids get their mission calls, the immediately go to Google and Wikipedia to learn everything they can about the place they’re going. And, if it’s a foreign country, I expect (or at least hope) they eventually get to Spotify to get familiar with the local music.

But back in the dark ages of my call (1995), there was no Google or Wikipedia or Spotify.[fn1] I mean, I went to the library and checked books out. But musically, until I went to Brazil, I basically knew Stan Getz.[fn2]

Once there, my world of Brazilian music exploded.[fn3] Samba, pagode, axé. Roberto Carlos, Skank, Mamonas Assassinas. Though the music was rarely front and center, this musical mélange was continually in the background of my mission.

Which eventually led to Caetano. In one of my areas, we started visiting an inactive member, her 4-year-old daughter, and her husband who was not Mormon. They welcomed us in, and we loved to visit with them. One visit, the husband pulled out a guitar, and he played and sang “Sampa.”

“Sampa” is a love song to the city of São Paulo, the story of coming to one of the biggest cities in the world. It is beautiful and poetic and frank and amazing, and I fell in love with it as soon as our friend performed it for us. I memorized the name and, the next time p-day took us to the center of the city, I bought a (probably bootlegged) copy of a Caetano Veloso greatest hits album.

It wasn’t until I got home and listened that I encountered the avant-garde Tropicalismo movement and learned that he’d been exiled to London by Brazil’s military dictatorship during the late 60s and early 70s. I didn’t understand how influential he’d been, musically, artistically, and politically. (And it wasn’t until my Portuguese minor that I started to get his allusions and artistic references.)

Even with all of the additional information and music, though, “Sampa” remains one of my favorite songs. It is, in fact, sacred to me, a love song to a place I spent two years preaching the Gospel, and a gift from a Brazilian friend.

—

[fn1] In fact, my freshman year at BYU was the first time I’d seen the internet. And we didn’t even have graphic web access in 1994-1995; we used the University of Washington’s Pine, which basically looked like DOS prompts, and really screwed up my future interneting. Because on Pine (at least back then), if you entered your password wrong, you couldn’t delete and fix it. You had to start all over.

[fn2] On further reflection, my dad had a bunch of Sérgio Mendes records that I’d listen to growing up. So I guess I knew two bossa nova musicians.

[fn3] Yes, I know, missionaries don’t listen to music. And I was a tremendously obedient missionary. But music infused the urban landscape—you couldn’t miss it if you tried. I remember one day knocking on doors up and down a street, the whole time hearing an album being blared from one of the homes on the street. Over the course of the hour or so we knocked that street, we were able (or, perhaps, forced—I don’t remember what the album was or whether I liked it) listen to the whole thing.

Brigham Young, c. 1870

Most years (at least when I remember), I like to do a Tax Day post.[fn1] (And yes, I get that Tax Day statutorily falls on April 15 for calendar year taxpayers, and I get that April 15 was Friday. But Friday was also the observation of Emancipation Day in D.C., which pushed Tax Day to today. Except in Massachusetts and Maine, where today is apparently Patriots’ Day, which means Tax Day is tomorrow.)

For this year’s Mormon-y Tax Day celebration, we’re going back to the Civil War-era income tax. It only lasted a decade, from 1861-1871, but, in that time, it managed to ensnare itself with the Mormons out in Utah. 

In 1870, the New York Times reported that John Taggart had assessed an income tax of $39,559 against the church, as well as an additional penalty of $19,779.50. (That would be about $1 million in 2016 dollars.)

The church argued that (a) its revenue came from tithing, which amounted to voluntary offerings, and was therefore not taxable, and (b) the law exempted the income of every “five persons living in religious communities holding property in common.”

The Bureau of Internal Revenue agreed with Taggart and against the church (though it did eliminate the penalties). I haven’t run down all (or, really, any) of the details, so I’m not sure about the specific arguments, but the idea of an exemption for communitarian religious individuals piqued my interest. And I was able to partly run that down.

Brigham Young was referring to section 8 of the Revenue Act of 1870.[fn2] And this is what section 8 says (with some relevant language bolded):

And be it further enacted, That . . . the sum of two thousand dollars of the gains, profits, and income of any person[] shall be exempt from said income tax, in the manner hereinafter provided. Only one deduction of two thousand dollars shall be made from the aggregate income of all the members of any family composed of one or both parents and one or more minor children, or of husband and wife . . . . For the purpose of allowing said deduction from the income of any religious or social community holding all their property and the income therefrom jointly and in common, each five of the persons composing such society, and any remaining fractional number of such persons less than five over such groups of five, shall be held to constitute a family, and a deduction of two thousand dollars shall be allowed for each of said families.

I’m not exactly sure what Brigham Young was arguing as he invoked section 8. Section 8 basically gave every nuclear family an exemption amount of $2,000 (meaning, basically, that a family could earn up to $2,000 without owing any income tax). It also provided that communitarian religious groups would use any five-person unit in lieu of a family for purposes of the exemption.[fn3]

I’m not sure how Brigham Young read that to exempt the Mormon church from paying taxes (though, in all fairness, it was a secondary argument—I suspect he believed he’d win on the first. And, in all likelihood, absent the Eastern suspicion of all things Mormon, he probably would have). However he got where he did, though, in the end, the church was on the hook for a significant tax bill.

—

[fn1] I haven’t asked the Mormon Lectionary Project folks if they’re interested in adding Tax Day to their liturgical calendar yet, but little by little, maybe I’ll build my case for its inclusion.

[fn2] 16 Stat. 256, 258 if you’re interested.

[fn3] I suspect that this was intended to provide some sort of fair treatment to the Shakers, who believed in both holding all property in common and in celibacy and, therefore, would not likely have had husband, wife, and children.

So why a special provisions for the Shakers? Presumably, without nuclear families, each and every member of the Society of Friends United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing would be able to take the $2,000 exemption, meaning they would pay far less in taxes than groups that didn’t practice celibacy. (Of course, I haven’t (yet) done the legislative history research, so consider that a working hypothesis.)

John G. Turner, The Mormon Jesus: A Biography (Cambridge: Harvard UP 2016).

Just this month, Turner followed up his excellent biography of Brigham Young with something almost entirely different: an intellectual history of Mormonism’s approach to Jesus. And, just so that I don’t bury the lede here: you need to read this book.

Turner approaches the Mormon Jesus thematically and relatively comprehensively (or, at least, as comprehensively as he can in a 350-page book). He spends the bulk of his words on 19th-century Mormonism, but he touches on events as recent as Denver Snuffer’s claim to have seen and spoken with Jesus (83-84) and as ancient as Clement of Alexandria’s view in the late second century that “the gospel had abrogated polygamy, not monogamous marriage) (220). 

The beginning of Turner’s book will have little that surprises those familiar with Mormonism. I already knew the place of Jesus in the Book of Mormon (though he does situate the Book of Mormon’s Jesus in the context both of 19th-century American Christianity and 3rd-century theologians), and am largely acquainted with Joseph’s translation of the Bible.

As it progresses, though, the history he uncovers becomes less and less familiar, as Mormon belief and practice has evolved away from it. The shift from Joseph’s thus saith the Lord revelations to Brigham’s preference for not writing revelation is interesting, and other church leaders’ and members’ preference for written revelation (and Joseph’s revelations in particular) is fascinating, as is the evolution of Mormon thought on the Second Coming.

Like I said, the whole book is fascinating: Turner manages to expand and contextualize even the history I already knew. But, for my money, the last three chapters alone would be worth the cost of admission.

I loved the history of the Mormon identification of “Jehovah” with Jesus; early church members, even post-Nauvoo endowment, did not see Jehovah and Jesus as being the same. In fact, it seems to have been a development, not of temple liturgy, but of various church leaders, reasoning and speaking in Conference, that ended up providing that connection. That connection was not cemented, though, until 1915, in Talmage’s Jesus the Christ.

Next comes my favorite chapter: the evolution of Jesus’ marital status. Though Christians often saw Jesus as a bridegroom, for the most part, they thought of His marriage as symbolic, not as literal (though, of course, there were exceptions). By Nauvoo, though, Mormons saw Him as having actually been married and, not too much later, as having been a polygamist (from Salt Lake mayor Jedediah Grant: “The grand reasons of the burst of public sentiment in anathemas upon Christ and his disciples, causing his crucifixion was evidently based upon polygamy. We might almost think they were Mormon” (231).[fn1]).

Finally, and (upon reflection) also my favorite chapter: how Mormons saw Jesus. Not intellectually, but visually. Turner talks about both the American need to masculinize Jesus in the 20th century, the way Mormons grew to necessarily see Him as a white male, and the way Mormons portrayed Jesus in art.

Turner’s work is not polemical; he’s ultimately not interested in the question of whether Mormons qualify as Christians, or, for that matter, whether Jesus lived. He is interested in looking at how we see Jesus, how we saw him, and how our vision of Jesus has evolved over the years. And he has accomplished that in spades.

[fn1] Which suggests that the Mormonisation that Ben discusses has deep roots.

So, lds church for-profit companies implicated in Panama Papers stuff and disaffected Mormon internet is all up on that.

— Andrew S (@GASpriggs) May 10, 2016

Yesterday, the ICIJ released its searchable Panama Papers database. (For some background on the Panama Papers, you can look my BCC post or my Surly Subgroup post. Or the ICIJ’s site.) Some enterprising individual appears to have plugged Mormon-related words into the search bar, and came up with at least two hits: Bonneville International and Deseret Investment.

Now, this is exactly what we’re supposed to be doing with this database: searching for those who think they can use tax havens to avoid meeting their obligations. So should you be outraged that the church is doing this?

Short answer: no. But I’m a law professor, so the short answer is never enough.  

There are problems with looking at the data absent any context. In fact, the ICIJ expressly recognizes and warns about the problems with this disclaimer:

There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly. Many people and entities have the same or similar names. We suggest you confirm the identities of any individuals or entities located in the database based on addresses or other identifiable information.

What does this disclaimer mean for our purposes? Different things for each entity.

Bonneville International Limited

Bonneville International Limited almost certainly has no relationship to the church. I mean yes, I know that the for-profit media subsidiary of the church is named “Bonneville International.”

But it’s not like we have exclusive use of the name. I mean, the first thing that pops into my mind when I hear Bonneville is Hugh Bonneville (and I don’t even watch Downton Abbey. Much, at least).[fn1]

Per the ICIJ, Bonneville International Limited is connected with BOS Trust Company (Jersey) Limited, a wealth planning entity associated with the Bank of Singapore. Those aren’t the kind of services the the church would use.

Moreover, Bonneville International Limited was found in the Panama Papers, which were leaked from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm. There’s not a lot of reason to believe the church would work with Mossack Fonseca.

Which is to say, the Bonneville thing probably relates to the second part of the ICIJ’s disclaimer.

Deseret Investment Inc.

Unlike “Bonneville,” “Deseret” is pretty much a Mormon word. And Deseret Investment Inc. is almost certainly related to the Deseret Trust Company, the church’s investment manager.

But didn’t I just say that there’s no reason to believe that the church has a relationship with Mossack Fonseca? Yes I did. So how did Deseret Investment Inc. get wrapped up in the Panama Papers?

It didn’t. This database is based on at least four leaks of information; Deseret Investment Inc. was in what they’re calling “Offshore Leaks”; its inclusion in the database predates the Panama Papers.

Still, it’s (probably) a church-owned entity in a tax haven. Isn’t that wrong?

I’m going to give a shortened version of the answer here. (If you’re interested, I’ve written in great detail about the history, reasons, policy, and problems with tax-exempts investing through tax havens in the Northwestern University Law Review.)

The church is exempt from tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Like other tax-exempt organizations, it generally doesn’t pay taxes on its income. There are a couple exceptions, though, where tax-exempts do pay ordinary income taxes. The big one is where they operate certain for-profit businesses; they must pay taxes on the income from those businesses.

They also have to pay taxes on investment income they earn where they borrowed to fund the investment.

Now, the church doesn’t borrow (much, at least) money. But investment partnerships like hedge funds and private equity funds do. And the tax law treats that borrowing as undertaken by the tax-exempts that invest in the partnerships. So if the church were to invest in a hedge fund that borrowed money, the church would have to pay taxes on a portion of its share of income from the fund.

The thing is, tax-exempts almost by definition aren’t supposed to pay taxes on income from investments. (I go into a lot of detail in my article, but this unrelated debt-financed income rule was initially enacted to combat tax evasion through sale-leaseback transactions.) But tax-exempt entities can avoid these rules by investing, instead, through a blocker corporation, generally incorporated in a tax haven jurisdiction.

Is this bad? I’ve argued that it is. But it’s not wrong like tax-exempts-shouldn’t-do-this wrong; rather, it’s wrong because the unrelated debt-financed income rules are unnecessary and poor tax policy. As long as they exist, though, tax-exempt organizations (including the church) can and should invest through offshore blockers, including through Deseret Investment Inc.

[fn1] That’s not to suggest that Bonneville International Limited is associated with Hugh Bonneville; if you’re trying to hide your assets offshore, I can’t think of much stupider than giving your holding company a name that can be easily traced back to you.

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So the first thing to do is admit that I don’t always get internet-speak. That said, is there any way that “LDS Inc.,” written in implicit (or explicit) disparagement of the church isn’t stupid?[fn]

I mean, I see it occasionally. And I kind of assume that its provenance is the Aug. 4, 1997, Time magazine cover.

The thing is that while contextually, the use of “LDS Inc.” is clearly meant as a criticism, I can’t figure out what is being critiqued. Saying “LDS Inc.” may make a (vaguely) factual assertion, but it makes no substantive moral or ethical assertion. 

As best as I can tell, saying “LDS Inc.” is meant to communicate one of three things: (a) churches shouldn’t be organized as corporations, (b) the church is too money-focused, or (c) the church is too bureaucratic. Let’s look at each of them.

Churches Shouldn’t Be Corporations

Look, religions weren’t the first groups to incorporate. (It looks, from a quick search, like municipalities or other political subdivisions were.) But they incorporated early on.

Why? Largely for property reasons. A corporation is a legal person. As such, it has the ability to own property, among other things. Without the legal personhood, church property would have to be owned by a natural person; when that person died, it would somehow have to be differentiated from that person’s personal property, and would have to be passed on to some other person. That passage could potentially create problems.

As a corporate entity, a church can continue to own its property indefinitely; there are no worries about who to trust and who to pass it on to.

And there are other advantages, too: a legal person (including an incorporate church) can sue and be sued. That is, if a church is incorporated and causes harm to you, you can sue it. If it’s not incorporated, that’s a lot harder.

Finally (for these quick-and-dirty purposes), in the U.S., any entity that wants to be tax-exempt has to be incorporated. That applies to churches, and also to universities and museums and non-profit hospitals and all sorts of other charitable entities.

The Church is Too Money-Focused

So two things about this. First, there’s a problem lumping all corporations together. For-profit corporations are owned by shareholders who presumably invested to make a profit. Shareholders share in the corporation’s profits, either through dividends or capital gains (or, in closely-held corporations, through employment or other streams of income).

The church, though, doesn’t have shareholders. Because it is tax-exempt, it could not distribute profits to to shareholders, even if it had shareholders. A tax-exempt corporation is something entirely different than a for-profit corporation.

But even for-profit corporations aren’t required to pursue profits at the expense of all else. While shareholder primacy is a theory of corporate governance, it is not a tenet of American corporate law. Corporations can pursue a wide range of un- or less-profitable endeavors. (In fact, benefit corporations and B corps, both types of for-profit corporations, can also have explicit social benefit obligations.)

The Church is Too Bureaucratic

That may well be true, but it has nothing to do with its status as a corporation. True, for-profit corporations have to follow certain formalities. But outside of that, they can be as hierarchical or informal as they want. There’s nothing about incorporation that creates bureaucracy.

Incorporation is also not necessary to create bureaucracy. Law firms, often organized as limited liability partnerships, can also be bureaucratic. State and local governments can be terribly bureaucratic (see, e.g., your local DMV).

Specificity, Folks

I realize that typing “LDS Inc.” is quick. And it’s probably satisfying. But it’s also imprecise and lazy.

Look, I don’t have any problem with criticisms of Mormon practice and organization. The church isn’t perfect; thoughtful critique helps the church—and its members—improve.

But specificity, folks. That’s the key. And “LDS Inc.” as an assertion just isn’t specific enough to be valuable.

[fn] Note that, in its conception, this was going to be much more comprehensive, linking all over the place. But “LDS Inc.” as an assertion doesn’t justify that much work on my part; this post would probably work just as well if I simply wrote, “LDS Inc. is a meaningless assertion; if you have a complaint about the church, please be specific.”

Last week on The Surly Subgroup, I wrote about a bill making its way through the House right now. The last section of that bill would make it even harder than it already is for the IRS to audit churches it suspects have campaigning for or against candidates for office.

Reading the bill (and writing the post) crystallized for me a question I’ve had at the back of my mind: how much accommodation should we push for? That is, should there be an upper to the exceptions churches and other religious organizations seek from the law? 

I guess I should start with this: I support the idea of religious accommodation. Religious entities should be free from (at least some) laws that impinge on their religious beliefs and practices. The law should not forbid, for example, a Jewish Air Force officer from wearing his yarmulke.

At the same time, there are limits to accommodation. Even if a religion teaches that it should be able to take any real property that God demands it take, the law should not recognize and enforce property rights in property that belongs to other people.

I’m not talking about these extreme cases, though—I’m talking about matters of convenience. For example, there’s not (legitimate) religious objection to auditing a church, or at least, there’s not one that the government needs to recognize. At the same time, while there are problems with heightened audit procedures applicable only to churches, the revenue system can survive them (the IRS has already faced heightened audit standards for churches for at least two decades).

But this is my question: at what point does requesting accommodations harm religion itself? (And n.b. that there’s no indication at all that any church, much less churches as a category, requested the heightened audit standards; it could well have been a Texas Representative who saw something in the news about a church investigation in his district, was offended by the idea, and added a rider to a bill.)

I don’t have any solid evidence, but my feeling is that, at some point, society has a limited tolerance for requests for special treatment. And my feeling, further, is that, the more arbitrary and unimportant those requests, the less patience society has for them.

And the heightened audit requirements strike me as an arbitrary and unimportant accommodation. Yes, churches (like the rest of us!) would rather not be audited. But not-being-audited doesn’t strike me as a compelling religiously-based practice.

It may be valuable for religion to think carefully before advocating any particular accommodation—I would hate for churches to lose accommodations writ large over a handful of cases of overreach.

(This post isn’t really a Fourth of July thing, except that there’s something distinctly American about Route 66. So we’ll go with it.)

We talked about taking a Route 66 vacation this summer. After all, we live in Chicago (and Route 66 starts across the street from the Art Institute!), and it ends in L.A., just north of my parents’ home. But with this year’s Every Kid in a Park (which, btw, if you have a kid who just finished fourth grade and you haven’t enrolled yet, I don’t think it’s too late), we switched to a visit-National-Parks trip.

Still, our National Parks roadtrip ended up overlapping briefly with Route 66—we were going to Petrified Forest National Park, which is on historic Route 66, and we decided to stay in nearby Holbrook, in Wigwam Village #6.[fn1]

While at the motel, my little boy fell into an epic meltdown, a combination of being off any sleep schedule plus being in the back seat of a Prius with his sisters for interminable hours plus epic amounts of enjoying national parks plus some trigger that I frankly can’t remember.

So I took him on a walk around the parking lot of the motel. Because, between the guests’ cars, the parking lot of Wigwam Village #6 is peppered with classic cars from the 60s and earlier, the kinds of cars that didn’t have seatbelts, but had space-age tail lights.[fn2] My son found the cars hilarious (the cars had eyes! and Mater—or his doppelganger—was in the parking lot!).

By now, he’d totally forgotten that he was melting down. But he wanted to show all of the cars to my wife. While exploring, they stepped into the building with the registration desk. In a back room, they discovered a collection of Native American artifacts and guns and other tchochkes that Wikipedia tells me (in a passage that “needs citation”) belonged to Chester Lewis, the guy who built the Village.

I didn’t think to take a picture, so this isn’t actually the Book of Remembrance I saw.

After getting back, my son wanted to take me to that room. And in there, something caught my eye: a book, twice as wide as it was high, with three pins through the spine and the words “Book of Remembrance” embossed on the cover.

Why did it catch my eye? Because my mom had a book with the same name, shape, and construction when I was growing up. I remember flipping through it on occasion—it was mostly sheets of family trees, and it traced her ancestry for a long time. (When we arrived to visit, I asked her about it; she doesn’t remember where she got it, but she confirmed that I was right about its content.)

Although it struck me as Mormon, I didn’t know that for sure—I only knew it was part of my Mormon upbringing. (For all I knew, Books of Remembrance were an American fad in the 1960s or 1970s.) It turned out, though, that there was a second Book of Remembrance in Lewis’s collection, and the second one had “Arizona Temple,” and a picture of an Arizona temple,[fn3] embossed on the cover.

Which leads me to believe that Chester Lewis, the guy who built Wigwam Village #6 in Holbrook, AZ, was Mormon. And that’s my unexpected encounter with Mormonism on Route 66.

(N.b.: I apologize in advance that I probably won’t respond to comments, should there be any. Being a Chicagoan, it’s amazing to me the stretches through Arizona, Nevada, and the California desert that don’t get any Verizon reception. So while I’ll certainly read comments, whether they’re about unexpected encounters with Mormonism or about Route 66 or about Wigwam Villages, it may be a while before I see them.)

[fn1] Partly, we were inspired by the Cozy Cone Motel of Pixar’s Cars, which itself was inspired by the Wigwam Villages. While Cars may be lesser Pixar, it is also the Best. Movie. Ever. for some set of toddler/preschool boys. A year or two ago, that set of small boys included mine. (Also, of course, we were inspired by the retro-kitsch that Route 66 basically demands.)

[fn2] In the morning, one of the other motel visitors was photographing the car next to mine. He apologetically explained that his wife’s parents used to have an old Studebaker, but, until staying there, he’d never been able to find one.

[fn3] I assume—I didn’t look terribly closely, and wouldn’t know what any Arizona temples look like anyway.

We didn’t plan on being in Omaha on the day before Pioneer Day. To be frank, the approach of July 24 doesn’t generally trigger anything in my mind. I mean, the ward I went to when I was a kid usually had a picnic at Lake Poway sometime around the end of July that was loosely inspired by Pioneer Day, but it was mostly baseball and hamburgers and hot dogs, and rarely made any mention of 1847 or pioneers or anything.

But months ago, we’d decided that Omaha was a decent halfway(-ish) point between Rocky Mountain National Park[fn1] and Chicago, and so that was our stopping place on Friday night. 

During our drive through Nebraska, it hit us that Winter Quarters was in Omaha. And, through the magic of an iPhone and Google, we figured out that the church has a visitors center at Winter Quarters, and that the visitors center was like 15 minutes from our hotel. So yesterday morning, we went.

Not to bury the lede too far: it was probably the best LDS visitors center I’ve been to. I’m not sure how many Mormons go to visit—I’m certain it doesn’t get Nauvoo- or Palmyra-level visitors—but that seems to work to its advantage. When we got there, we were greeted by a young sister missionary, who guided us to the short video, then took me and my family through the various displays.

One-on-one attention could, in some situations, be a bug, but here it was a feature. Our missionary guide was excited and enthusiastic, but not overbearing. She led us around, and spent a lot of her time engaging with my kids, while my wife and I looked at the artifacts and displays (more on that in just a minute). She had anecdotes and answered my kids’ questions.

At the same time, though, she didn’t seem to have a tight script. She didn’t tell us about the importance of families or about the Book of Mormon. She didn’t ask for referrals or take every story back to Jesus. She let the stories and the people and the displays speak for themselves, trusting, I think, that pioneers’ lived experiences were inspiring enough without her punctuation.[fn2]

Which leads to the second thing: the displays were pretty cool. They had a fair number of actual things that pioneers had brought across the plains, and well-written and informative explanations of those things. (My daughters’ favorite artifact was probably the china dogs.)

They also had interactive displays, including little covered wagons with blocks that represented various things that pioneers might have brought with them. My kids were supposed to figure out how much they could bring.[fn3] They had a wagon wheel with the rag to count distance, and Orson Pratt’s odometer. My kids proudly spun the wheel for about a mile. They had a handcart that the kids could try to pull over a handful of small rocks.[fn4]

Winter Quarters is basically one building. I said it compared favorably to other church historical sites (including Nauvoo and Palmyra), and I mean it. In one building, you learn about pioneers who travelled on covered wagons, who pulled handcarts, who came by train (I hadn’t realized it, but dozens[fn5] of Mormon emigrants would pack into a single car, without water or sanitation), and who came by ship.

Tl;dr: next time you’re in Omaha, you should definitely stop by the Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters. Also, happy Pioneer Day!

[fn1] (which, btw, is absolutely amazing, and you should definitely try to spend a couple days camping and hiking there)

[fn2] I don’t know if her approach was laid out by her mission president, or if it was her own idiosyncratic thing, but it contrasts enormously well to my last time in Nauvoo, where every senior missionary ended the tour by explaining how the family in the house ate dinner together because families are important and family dinners are important, &c, &c.

[fn3] A little earlier, our guide had asked my kids what they would bring with them. My oldest daughter said books. My middle daughter said art supplies. My four-year-old son said, “Everything.” And he managed to put all of the blocks in his wagon, so I guess he wasn’t kidding.

[fn4] The group just ahead of my family had five or six rambunctious children with it, who, in various iterations of four or five kids, struggled to move the handcard. I could see in my daughters’ eyes the desire to show them up. So, when the kids ahead of my family finished, my daughters proceeded to move the wagon over the rocks by themselves, something it had taken the other group (honestly, whose kids were bigger than mine) four kids to do.

[fn5] I’m almost certain my 10-year-old would remember the exact number, but I’m writing this at midnight, and she’s fast asleep. I hope.

Every time[fn1] I write about the church’s investments, I get pushback. Usually that pushback involves asserting that there is something immoral or wrong about the church accumulating wealth. The implication is something like, it’s not that the church can’t have money, but it should use its money to promote good things,[fn2] and it should promote those good things now.

Often the justification for this mindset consists of scriptural exhortations to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, etc. 

The thing is, I don’t find that kind of argumentation convincing. And I don’t for a simple reason: in Mormonism, we haven’t come up with a satisfying theology of institutional monetary duties.

That’s not to say that the scriptures don’t talk about financial responsibilities. But they talk about the financial responsibilities of individuals; they largely don’t anticipate institutions. And frankly, institutions have different duties and responsibilities than individuals do.

An analogy: pretty much every discussion of the federal budget will hit a point where somebody asserts that households have to stick to budgets, so the federal government should have to do the same thing.[fn3]

The thing is, that’s stupid. There are substantive differences between the federal government and individual households. (For example, the federal government can print money; my family, at least, can’t. The federal government has to worry about the effects of its policies on the economy at large. My family’s spending has very little impact on the economy at large.)

Similarly, there are substantive differences between individual Mormons and the Mormon church. The things that I’m obligated to do are different from the things the church is obligated to do. That’s as true in the financial realm as in any other.

That’s not to say that the church can do whatever it wants with its money. But the proposition that a church having and managing money is de facto immoral and wrong strikes me as just as naive and reductive as the proposition that everything the church does in the financial realm is per se right and endorsed of God. Neither represents a careful or nuanced understanding of money, of institutions, or of the difference between individual and institutional obligations.

So what is are the church’s moral obligations with respect to its money? I don’t know. I’ve been delaying writing this post in hopes of being able to assemble a theology of institutional money, but, it turns out, I have a family and a day job and I haven’t worked out any kind of framework yet.

That’s not to say that no frameworks exist: the EFCA has established “Seven Standards of Responsible Stewardship” for churches and other Christian organizations.

But here’s an important thing: while these standards are derived from scripture, they’re not self-evident. The EFCA had to use scripture, look at the world we live in, and adjust the standards so that they were relevant to the mission of churches, a mission that differs from the mission of individual Christians.

And to the extent we discuss the church’s money, we need to do the same thing. It’s not enough to say that Jesus said to sell all we have and give to the poor. Yes He did, but he was talking to an individual, not an institution.[fn4]

How do we translate that command to institutional monies? With fear and trembling, and a real dose of humility, I hope.

[fn1] (Note that this is probably slightly hyperbolic—it’s very possible that you can find a time I wrote about the church and money and didn’t get pushback. But I often do.

[fn2] Those good things might be feeding the poor, or they might be building temples. It doesn’t really matter for this post—what’s important is the idea that investment is bad, while current expenditures are good.

[fn3] And the assertion is bipartisan. E.g., Pres. Obama:

Families across this country understand what it takes to manage a budget.  They understand what it takes to make ends meet without forgoing important investments like education.  Well, it’s time Washington acted as responsibly as our families do.

John Boehner:

Every family in America has to balance their budget.  Washington should too.

[fn4] And frankly, of all the imperatives He gave to individuals, I suspect that’s one of the most-not-followed.

Yesterday my family and I went to Chicago’s Field Museum. After checking out several other exhibits, we went to the Women of Vision exhibit.

Women of Vision shows some photography that 11 female photographers have shot for various National Geographic stories. The exhibit is (not surprisingly) spectacular. Organized by photographer, the subjects range all over the map, from women’s lives (there was a great display of women in Afghanistan) to architecture to religion (Muslims, Uigars, Christians in the Middle East, shamanism) to African animals. 

The second or third photographer was Stephanie Sinclair. The first wall of her work featured photographs of child brides (some of which are on her site here). The pictures were deeply affecting and, mostly, heartbreaking.

Then, on the next wall: pictures from the Yearning for Zion ranch. I knew from my first glance from the corner of my eye that she’d photographed Fundamentalist Mormons—the hair and dress on the first woman’s portrait were immediately obvious.

And the photos (from this article, which is behind a paywall) were also deeply affecting, but in an entirely different way.[fn1] The handful of photographs (I think there were seven or eight) included a portrait, pictures of women working, and pictures of women playing. (The fifth photo in this slideshow was included in the exhibit, and is the one that most stands out to me, both because of the strangeness of wearing the same thing swimming as you wear not swimming and because they look like they’re having a blast.)

Even after the exhibit I’m not a fan of polygamy or of the FLDS church. But the exhibit let me see these women as people doing all of the things people do. And there’s something awesome about changing abstract Others into relatable people.

So if you’re in Chicago before September 11, go to the Field Museum and see it. (And if you can’t make it here, it will spend the rest of the year in Pittsburgh. So that could be an option.) It’s worth it for the visions these women provide, including the visions of FLDS women.

[fn1] Two years earlier, she published these photos in the New York Times Magazine. Her National Geographic pictures are similarly intimate, but different.

I have a sure-fire proposal to improve church welfare.

Church welfare admittedly has a long and storied history. In 1936, the Church officially inaugurated the Church Security Plan. President Grant explained that the purpose of the plan was to provide

sufficient food, fuel, clothing, and bedding to supply through the coming winter, every needy and worthy Church family unable to furnish these for itself, in order that no member of the Church should suffer in these times of stress and emergency.[fn1]

In 1936, the Great Depression, which hit Utah hard, was still a recent memory, and its effects were still being felt in Utah. So it makes plenty of sense that church leaders were trying to establish a procedure that could help members weather the financial storm. 

In 1938, the church had renamed the Church Security Plan—we officially had the Church Welfare Plan. And by 1943, it had taken the shape we’re all familiar with:

First, every individual should value his or her independence and labor with all his might to maintain it by being self-sustaining. … Second, next to himself, the responsibility for sustaining an individual rests upon his family—parents for their children, children for their parents. … Finally, the individual having done all he can to maintain himself, and the members of his family having done what they can to assist him, then the Church, through the Welfare plan, stands ready to see that its members, who will accept the plan and work in it to the extent of their ability, shall each be cared for “according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs.”

Note what this threefold vision of church welfare didn’t include, though: the government. In fact, the government was not only conspicuously, but deliberately absent. From the 1936 announcement again:

Our primary purpose was to set up, in so far as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self respect be once more established amongst our people. [Emphasis added.]

It’s important to note that the church has moved on this: it expressly allows (and, in fact, encourages) members to simultaneously receive church and government benefits. From a 2009 worldwide church leadership training:

Question: Is it appropriate if an individual is receiving governmental welfare assistance to use Church welfare assistance as well?

Response: Members may choose to use resources in the community, including government resources, to meet their basic needs. The bishop should become familiar with these resources.

***

When Church members receive assistance from non-Church sources, the bishop may also give Church assistance and should help members avoid becoming dependent in any way on these sources.

I’ve seen first-hand the good that the church welfare system does, especially working hand-in-hand with various government programs that are available. But we could always do better. And this week, I saw how.

In the 1990s, a county welfare office in Riverside, CA, produced a CD.[fn2] And, with songs like “Welfare’s Just a Temporary Way of Life” and three versions of “Feels So Good” (the next words are “to get a job,” and the three versions are “country,” “urban contemporary,” and “Spanish”), what’s not to love?

My proposal, then: give a copy of the music to anybody seeking church welfare. Also, to anybody not seeking church welfare. Heck, if we forced the whole world to listen to this music, well, I don’t know that it would do anything to the employment rate, but we’d all have awesome/horrible songs stuck in our heads.[fn3] So there’s always that.

Enjoy:

—

[fn1] Message of the First Presidency, Oct, 1936, pp. 2-3.

[fn2] For the full story, check out The Uncertain Hour or 99% Invisible.

[fn3] Heck, I’d be cool with it if the Mormon Tabernacle Choir decided to perform some of these songs at Conference. Or if the next hymnbook included them. Not because they’re good, but because they’re awesome.

The Chicago Temple First United Methodist Church may have the coolest parsonage anywhere.

Not quite three years ago, and again not quite two years ago, I wrote about a Freedom From Religion Foundation lawsuit against the IRS. In the suit, the FFRF argued that section 107 of the Internal Revenue Code was unconstitutional.

Quick refresher: in general, when your employer gives you something, that thing you receive is income to you. And it doesn’t matter if what you receive is cash, is property, or even is services. To the extent your employer gives you something of value, that’s income to you.

Congress has carved out a handful of exceptions to the general rule, though. Maybe most importantly, employer-provided health insurance is not treated as income. So those of us lucky enough to have health insurance provided by our employers don’t have to pay taxes on its value. Similarly, all kinds of fringe benefits are excluded. 

And in 1921, Congress amended the tax law to add the predecessor to section 107. Under the 1921 law, “ministers of the gospel”[fn1] didn’t have to include the value of housing provided by their church employer in gross income. In 1954, for an array of reasons, Congress added to the exclusions and, since then, ministers of the gospel also don’t have to include in income cash they receive that the church designates as a housing allowance even if they own their own home.[fn2]

Several years ago, FFRF challenged the constitutionality of this parsonage allowance, and the district found it unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals, though, found that FFRF didn’t have standing to challenge the provisions, because its executives had never tried to claim it. (For a more details on the whole standing thing, you can look at my two prior posts on the subject, or, for a lot of depth, you can always look at a real academic article I wrote that dealt with the subject.)

Recently, the FFRF refiled, following the map the Court of Appeals suggested would give them standing. Two executives filed amended returns, claiming the parsonage allowance on their taxes and requesting a refund. The IRS denied the refund.

Last week, Forbes blogger Peter J. Reilly gave me a head’s-up that FFRF has passed one significant hurdle: the government does not contest that FFRF and its executives have standing to sue over the cash housing allowance.[fn3] (The government doesn’t concede that FFRF has standing to challenge the constitutionality of ministers’ excluding in-kind housing and, I suspect, if FFRF pursues that part of the provision, that part of the suit will ultimately be dismissed for lack of standing.)

What does that mean? It means we’ll (eventually, at least) get a ruling on the constitutionality of the cash parsonage allowance.

And what will that ruling be? As I said to Reilly, at the district court level, I suspect it will be ruled unconstitutional. At the Court of Appeals level, I still think it’ll be found unconstitutional. At the Supreme Court? It’s anybody’s guess. Establishment Clause jurisprudence is a hot mess, and I’m not sure what cues we can take from the past. (From a tax policy perspective, though, I think this particular allowance is indefensible.)

And is there a Mormon connection? Probably. The church almost certainly either provides in-kind housing or designates a housing allowance for General Authorities who draw a salary from the church. Those General Authorities almost certainly qualify as “ministers of the gospel.” The parsonage allowance lowers the cost of employing them, and it would border on malpractice[fn4] if the church didn’t take advantage of the parsonage allowance.

[fn1] The IRS has read “minister of the gospel” broader than merely Christian minister; essentially, according to the IRS, MofG means any religious leader who exercises certain sacerdotal functions, including cantors and imams.

[fn2] There are limits to the cash allowance. Specifically, the minister in question can’t exclude more than the fair rental value of her house.

[fn3] It’s in footnote 2, page 2, of the government’s brief.

[fn4] (Slight hyperbole alert.)

I blame Time for the whole “LDS Inc.” movement.

The other day, our own Aaron B. posted this on Facebook:

The single DUMBEST criticism of the LDS Church is the claim that “it’s a business, not a church”, or “it’s a corporation, not a church”. Obviously it’s both …[fn1]

I’ll confess that, like Aaron, I’ve never been particularly impressed by the implication that somehow corporate organization is antithetical to spirituality. After a discussion with one of Aaron’s friends, though, I think I kind of understand where some who object to its corporate status are coming from. 

Aaron’s friend explained that he’d grown up with the church’s transcendent truth claims, the idea that the church was both True and special. And finding out that its organizational structure is common and secular felt like a letdown, somehow, the mundanity of the container tarnishing the claims of transcendence.

I can understand where that disappointment comes from, even if I disagree that there’s anything disappointing. That said, throwing “corporation” around like an epithet shows a significant lack of understanding of religion in America broadly, and of the benefits (not only to the church and its members, but also to those who are skeptical of the church’s good motives) of the corporate form. In the interest of helping out, then, some context:

The Corporate Form Is Common for Churches

It’s not unique to Mormonism. Among others, the Catholic church, the Presbyterian church, and the United Methodist Church incorporate.[fn2] They each do it slightly differently—the Catholic church appears to incorporate each diocese separately, where the Methodists appear to permit the incorporation of each church separately, and the Presbyterians incorporate at least at the state level.

And why do churches incorporate? A couple big reasons: for a tax exemption in the US, you have to have a corporation. Also, a corporation is a legal person that can enter into contracts and own property. That prevents issues with succession (that is, if the Bishop owns the diocese’s property, when he dies, what happens to it? A corporation, on the other hand, never dies, and when the Bishop dies or leaves, the corporation continues to own the property).

But I Don’t Trust Corporations (and/or the Mormon Church)

Fair enough. But there’s nothing inherent in the corporate form that is antithetical to religiosity. Believe it or not, under US law (or, better, state law in the US) there is no requirement that corporations maximize their profits.[fn3] Again, the whole point of corporate status is that the church has the ability to act in certain legal ways.

And, to the extent you don’t trust the church, you definitely want it to be a corporation. Remember the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church? Those who were abused sued various Archdiocese where the abuse occurred, and won significant recoveries. Note that they won the recoveries from the corporate entities; had they been required to sue individuals, it would have been really tough to get any money, because priests—including those who abused children—take a legitimate vow of poverty. That is, the abusers were basically judgment-proof. But the corporate form made it possible for victims to have some degree of recovery.[fn4]

So Are You Saying I Can’t Criticize the Mormon Church?

Absolutely not. There are definitely places that the church does poorly.

I am saying, though, that criticizing the church for being a corporation is stupid. It misunderstands both churches and corporations. At best, it is a lazy way of saying, I’m critical, but I don’t want to work hard enough to explain what my criticism is. At worst, it’s a lazy way of saying, I’m critical, but I haven’t thought carefully enough to even figure out what my criticism is.

(N.b.: I know, from long experience, that someone’s going to comment that the church needs to disclose its finances!!!1! I mean, feel free, but I’m going to delete any comment that does, since it has nothing to do with the post at hand. The question of transparency is unrelated to the question of entity form.)

[fn1] And I’m not particularly interested in the argument that the church isn’t actually a corporation, but instead is a series of corporations. Sure, it’s “The Corporation of the Presiding Bishop” and “The Corporation of the First Presidency,” not “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Inc.,” but so what? What we think of Apple, Inc. is actually a series of corporations, LLCs, partnerships, and foreign entities, each of which has different duties and different roles. But, while for-profit entities differ in many ways from non-profit entities, in both, it’s easier to think of the series of entities as a single entity and, for most purposes, that’s good enough anyway.

[fn2] It’s not unique to those three, of course, but I didn’t feel like Googling any further.

[fn3] There is one case, about a century old, that suggests they might, but the context—a closely held corporation, minority shareholders who were being squeezed out, and a state court in Michigan—indicate that it has little, if any, relevance in today’s world.

[fn4] And note that it’s possible that, had there been no corporate form, there would have been a person to sue, but it was a whole lot easier with the corporate form.