I haven’t been able to shake Mike’s excellent post from Thursday. The identification of need with belief strikes me as an important one for our faith.

But I haven’t been able to shake it not just because of the insight it provides, but because I’m a step outside of the world Mike describes: frankly, I don’t need the church to be true.

That’s not to say I don’t believe, or that I don’t participate. I do both. But I don’t need the church to be true in a way that previous generations may have.

Partly, I live in a disenchanted world. I don’t need religion to explain the world I live in. Science can do that. I may not understand the intricacies of evolution or of the Big Bang, but I could if I’d focused on science rather than music and literature. The world around us is spectacular. It’s beautiful. And it’s explainable.

I don’t need religion to live a good life. I can act ethically without fear of hell or hope for heaven. Many people navigate life admirably without religious belief. Many people fail miserably in spite of religious belief. (Also, the reverse: many fail without religious belief, and many navigate life admirably with belief.)

I don’t need religion to get ahead. My Mormonism doesn’t open a whole lot of doors in Chicago, or in academia. (I’ll note that it also doesn’t really close any doors in either place.)

I don’t even need the community that religion provides. Most of my friends are the parents of kids my kids go to school with. Or people I work with, or people who live in the same building I live in, or people whose kids do the same activities my kids do.

None of that is to say religion doesn’t explain the world I live in, doesn’t aid my living a good life, doesn’t provide me with a community. It does all of those things. It’s simply that I don’t need religion to do any of those things.

And what does that mean? Maybe nothing. But more and more I believe it means that we need to think carefully about what we’re offering. To the extent that people don’t need religion in the same way they once did, our truth-claims may not be enough to capture their interest.

Does that mean we should give up our truth-claims? By no means. But we may have to recognize that they, standing alone, may not be enough; what does it matter if we’re the only true and living church upon the face of the earth if the people we’re engaging with aren’t choosing only among churches, but also among church and non-church?

Ultimately, a large part of the reason I attend church, a large part of the reason that I engage with the church, is because I’ve chosen to. But that choice can be a hard one, for all sorts of reasons. If we want to care for Jesus’ sheep, we need to engage them at the level they need. We need to be open to the idea that “One True Church” is answering a question many of our neighbors don’t have.  And we can’t take for granted that they want religion—if we want to be truly pastoral, we need to give them a reason to choose belief.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of class, students will be able to:

1. Identify commonalities between the Law of Consecration and other communitarian religious movements.
2. Explain the roots of consecration in the Mormon church.
3. Assess how consecration fits in the modern church.

What Is Consecration?

In October of 1830, Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, Parley Pratt, and Ziba Peterson went west on a mission to the “Lamanites.” As they travelled, they came to the Morely farm near Kirtland, Ohio. Morely, along with fifty or sixty others, were part of “the Family” or “the Big Family.” Eleven core families moved onto the Morely farm and established a communitarian society, where they held goods and property in common.

When JS moved to Kirtland, he initially lived in the N.K. Whitney home, and his revelations during the first few weeks there focused on economic issues. On Feb. 9, 1831, he received a revelation on consecration, which modified the communitarian style that the Family had adopted. [Sources: Hearken O Ye People, Joseph Smith’s Revelations]

Have the class read part or all of D&C 42:30-42.

Note that Webster’s 1828 dictionary defined “consecrate” as

To make or declare to be sacred, by certain ceremonies or rites; to appropriate to sacred uses; to set apart, dedicate, or devote, to the service and worship of God….

Potential discussion questions:

1. What did it mean for members to “consecrate” their property? (I would think the discussion should eventually arrive at the idea of sacralizing the profane. Even property could be dedicated to God. Of course, the discussion doesn’t have to arrive here.)
2. Although we think of consecration as a matter of sharing, JS’s revelation prefaces it as a way to remember and aid the poor. What is our duty to the poor? How can consecrating (or making sacred) our property help us fulfill that duty? And without a formal system of consecration, how can we make sure to remember and help the poor?

The Apostolic Roots of Consecration

The idea of consecration has roots in the New Testament. Have class read the story of Apostolic economics and the story of Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 4:32-37, 5:1-10.

How did JS’s introduction of consecration line up with the Apostolic church? And how did it differ from what we see in Acts?

Honestly, the story of Ananias and Sapphira is awesome in a lot of ways. Though I’m not going to lay out specifically how to discuss it, I wouldn’t blame you at all if you wanted to dissect it for a little while. Maybe get into what lessons we can glean from the story, particularly the idea of strict honesty. Because really, they weren’t obligated to contribute, and there’s no indication that they would have been struck down if they hadn’t joined in. Rather, it’s the dishonesty that got them. Why might strict honesty be important in a communitarian society?

Note that a big problem the first Mormon experiment with consecration faced was that courts weren’t comfortable with the economic arrangement. As a result, disillusioned members could often walk away and take either their stewardship or the property they had initially deeded back with them, which kind of death-spiraled the endeavor. [Source: Zion in the Courts.]

Other Communitarian Groups

This section isn’t essential, but it is interesting context:

Mormons weren’t the only group trying to return to the Apostolic church’s economics. (I mean, that should be clear: the Family were modified Owenites.)

A couple of the big groups were the Shakers and the Hutterites. (There are still Hutterite colonies throughout the U.S. and Canada, and they still hold property communally.) The Oneida Community was initially a communitarian religion, but, like many, eliminated communitarianism by the turn of the twentieth century.

My favorite, though, is the Israelite House of David. It was an early twentieth-century religion, and thus its communitarianism wasn’t contemporaneous with Mormonism’s. But it was pretty awesome: located in Benton Harbor, Michigan, the group eventually owned the trolley system, built and operated an amusement park, had travelling jazz and concert bands, and fielded a baseball team that played throughout the country. Oh, and also, members were forbidden from cutting their hair or shaving.

If you have the technology to show pictures, check out the baseball team here. The jazz band is here. The amusement park is here.

And there are videos, too: the midget autos are here. Miniature trains are here.

And look, I get that this may not fit in the lesson you want to teach. But the context is valuable, I believe, and the pictures and videos are frankly awesome.

If you want more details about religious communitarian groups in the United States, either for your lesson or for your own edification, I wrote an article about the tax treatment of these groups; whether or not you’re interested in the tax side of things, I talk in a little more detail about a number of religious communitarian groups. The article is “Taxing Utopia.”

The United Order

For purposes of this lesson, I’m going to mostly skip the United Order, except to say that basically everything you were taught about it was wrong. At least, if you were taught what I was.

Check out the introduction to D&C 78 online (because if your physical scriptures are as old as mine, they don’t have the same introduction). Per that (and Hearken O Ye People and this BYU Studies article), there was no “United Order” established in 1832 that included all of the members of the church. Rather, there was the “United Firm,” formed to oversee the church’s publishing and mercantile endeavors. The United Firm was made up of nine men (JS, Edward Partridge, Newel Whitney, A. Sidney Gilbert, Sidney Rigdon, John Whitmer, Olver Cowdery, W.W. Phelps, and Martin Harris).

It’s not entirely our fault that we were wrong, though. Sometime after the United Firm was disbanded, JS replaced verse 3’s phrase “mercantile and publishing establishments” with “the affairs of the storehouse for the poor” and replaced the word “firm” with the word “order.”

If you have time and are comfortable with it, this may be a good time to talk about how JS was comfortable editing and amending his revelations after the fact. What should we make of that willingness? How does it affect the manner in which we read his revelations? Does that even matter? What can it tell us about the process of receiving revelation? How about the process of interpreting revelation?

One-Minute Paper

In the final minute of class, have the students write a one-minute paper. Depending on your ward, you may need to bring in paper (or notecards) and pencils. Alternatively, if your ward is tech-savvy, you could ask the class to do this on their Notes app or another word processing app on their phones or tablets.

The idea behind a one-minute paper is that students respond to a prompt for one minute. It’s basically a way for them to synthesize and process what they’ve learned. There’s no reason for them to turn it in to you or to share it with other members of the class, unless they really want to.

Suggested prompts (choose one):

1. What was the most interesting thing you learned during today’s lesson?
2. How did scripture influence and affect JS’s revelations?
3. How can we help the poor today?

Seriously.

I don’t mean this as some kind of Swiftian modest proposal. I’m completely serious about it. Maybe it’s my background as an attorney, but I believe that disagreement—that the airing of conflicting viewpoints—helps us discover truth. And Truth. I mean, we don’t know everything yet; that’s literally an article of our faith.

And it’s not just a matter of finding truth (or Truth). We don’t have to fully think through our beliefs when we just assert them, especially if everybody nods in assent. Assertion is easy, and allows us to be lazy in constructing our beliefs. When we have to defend our assertions, we see the weaknesses, the places we need to study more, the places we need to look for further revelation. Putting our ideas into the stream of discourse helps us improve and increase our understanding.

But wait, you may be saying, it’s un-Mormon-like to argue at church.[fn1] Or: Church is supposed to be a safe place, where we can nurture faith, not tear it down.

To which I reply:

Vocal Disagreement Is Not Un-Mormon-Like (or Otherwise Precluded by Our Beliefs)

There are plenty of reasons to assert this, but let me provide two, one from modern example and one from scripture:

(a) In 2007, when he was called into the First Presidency, Pres. Eyring talked about a meeting with general authorities when he first started as president of Ricks College. As reported in the Deseret News, Pres. Eyring said:

“Here you have the prophets of God, and they are disagreeing in a way you never see in business,” when participants most often defer to the chairman. “I thought revelation would come to them all and they would all see things in the same way. It was not like anything I had ever seen in studying small groups in business.”

After awhile, the men began to find points of agreement, and he believed he’d seen a “miracle in unity” occur. Waiting for then-church President Harold B. Lee to announce a consensus decision, he was startled to hear him table the discussion after noting he felt “someone in the room who is not yet settled.”

So sure, the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency feel a religious or cultural obligation to come to the body of the church in consensus. But they don’t start out with consensus: they stake out differing positions, argue their positions, and gradually find commonalities on which they can eventually base their consensus. In other words,church leaders’ process of finding truth, Truth, or the best answer is the same one I proposed at the beginning of the post.

(b) But what about the Book of Mormon’s warnings against “contention”?

To the extent we think about why step back from arguing at church, I suspect we often base it on these Book of Mormon injunctions.

In fact, ctl-f for “contention” in a text file of the Book of Mormon shows that the word appears 88 times in the text. And it’s not mentioned positively. So what do we do about that?

First thing we do is figure out what “contention” means in the context of the Book of Mormon. Since we don’t have the original text, and since presumably the original text isn’t in a language we have access to, even if we had it, we’re stuck with the English as our primary source. Webster’s 1828 dictionary helps sort out the definition a little, though not entirely: its first definition is

1. Strife; struggle; a violent effort to obtain something, or to resist a person, claim or injury; contest; quarrel.
Multitudes lost their lives in a tumult raised by contention among the partizans of the several colors.

That sounds more serious than your average Sunday School disagreement. But the primary definition isn’t the only one, and the second definition could capture Sunday School argumentation:

2. Strife in words or debate; quarrel; angry contest; controversy.
Avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law. Titus 3.
A fools lips enter into contention. Prov 18.

So while the idea the “contention” is serious enough for multitudes to lose their lives as a result, we’re probably going to want more to go on than just Webster’s.

And we have more: of the 88 uses of “contention,” my ctl-f found the phrase “wars and contentions” 19 times, and “wars, and contentions” shows up another four times; in other words, more than 25 percent of the Book of Mormon’s use of “contention,” it’s paired with war. I’d say that lends additional credence to the primary definition. (It’s probably worth noting that more than one in four uses of contention are paired with war; skimming through, Jacob 3:13 says, the large plates will include the Nephites’ “wars, and their contentions.” That’s not picked up by a ctl-f search, but it is, nonetheless, a pairing of war and contention.)

I mean, I can’t say that this is categorically true, but at the very least, almost every use of the word “contention” in the Book of Mormon deals with an argument that threatens the political and religious structures in place. That is, Book of Mormon “contention” threatens the destabilization of Nephite society. Rarely will our arguments at church carry that much risk or weight.

Church Should Be a Safe Place

Absolutely.[fn2]

“Safe” doesn’t mean “conflict-free,” though. It is perfectly possible to disagree—to argue, even—without being rude and aggressive. Sure, it’s a skill, but it’s a skill worth developing.

It’s worth noting that we don’t have any religious obligation to be polite. That said, to the extent we want to be the body of Christ, that we want to see our neighbors as our sisters and brothers, there’s something to be said for the community-building that social graces—including polite disagreement—have. And frankly, it’s always worth keeping in mind that a soft answer turneth away wrath.

Our church meetings should be a safe place to hash out (faithful) ideas, to discuss, convince, change our minds, and change others’ minds. It should be a place where we can receive revelation, where we can help that revelation come.

The gospel can stand up to scrutiny; we don’t have to worry about its falling down. But if we fail to scrutinize—if we fail to think carefully and deeply about it—we do risk falling down.

[fn1] I’ve had that idea proposed to me on at least a couple occasions, though worded differently.

[fn2] (OTOH, part of the purpose of the church is to help us change and improve, which may not always make it comfortable, though it should still be safe.)

Happy Tax Day![fn1]

Most years (and maybe every year) I do a tax post on Tax Day. I’ve been struggling to think of one the last couple days, though: there haven’t been a whole lot of Mormon tax (or even religious tax) developments over the last several months, and those few there have been[fn2] I’ve already posted on.

So I thought that I’d do something that isn’t really timely, but is interesting. See, as I was researching for my book,[fn3] I came across a Tax Court decision that dealt with the Church of Jesus Christ. I’m pretty sure, name notwithstanding, the Church of Jesus Christ is not part of the family of Mormon churches,[fn4] but its web presence is really, really limited, so most of what I know about it comes from the court’s opinion. Even if the Church of Jesus Christ isn’t a Mormon church, though, the case itself has to engage with Supreme Court tax precedent that is the result of the Mormon church. So here goes:

The Church of Jesus Christ has no hierarchy, clergy, or even formal leadership. Members come together and form their own churches, and these churches are basically entirely autonomous. To operate, the churches rely on donations, but the Church’s doctrine proscribes accepting donations from individuals who are not local members.

The Wilkeses belonged to the Westside Church of Jesus Christ in Golden, Colorado. In 2005, they gave money to three missionaries, who were starting churches in Michigan, in North Carolina, and in South Africa. When the Wilkeses filed their 2005 tax returns, the claimed charitable deductions for the amounts they gave the missionaries.

Which is where we run into the Mormon church. I’ve blogged about the Davis case in the past, but a quick tl;dr refresher: Prior to 1990, Mormon missionaries (or, often, their families) paid the actual expenses for their missions. Some parents deducted the amounts they sent to their missionary children, and they had a colorable argument for doing so, an argument so colorable, in fact, that two of the three Courts of Appeals that ultimately heard cases on the question held that those amounts were deductible.

But the Supreme Court thought otherwise, and ruled that donations made directly to missionaries were not deductible.

Davis would appear to have foreclosed the ability of the Wilkeses to deduct their donations. The Tax Court recognized a significant difference between pre-1990 Mormon missionaries and 2005 Church of Jesus Christ missionaries, though. While the pre-1990 Mormon missionaries were performing service for the church, they had ultimate control over the money they received. Sure, they had to account to their mission presidents for it, but if they wanted to spend it on video arcades and junk food, the mission president didn’t have any real legal authority to prevent that.

In the case of the Church of Jesus Christ, though, the missionaries acted as conduits (or, better, as agents of the church). For doctrinal reasons, the churches couldn’t directly accept the Wilkeses’ donations. But if those donations first went through missionaries (who were members of the local congregation), the churches could accept the donations.

Because the transaction was, in substance, a donation to a church, the Tax Court treated it as such for tax purposes, and, rather than looking at whether the missionaries could receive deductible donations, it looked at whether the churches could. And the two U.S. churches could. For U.S. tax purposes, though, donations to foreign charities (including foreign churches) are not tax-deductible, so they could not deduct the amounts they gave to the missionary in South Africa.

And, with that, have a happy Tax Day!

[fn1] Yes, I know it’s not April 15 anymore. When April 15 falls on a weekend, Tax Day is the Monday after the weekend. Except that Monday was Patriots’ Day, a holiday in a handful of states, so Tax Day was pushed back one more day.

[fn2] (*cough*Fred Karger*cough*)

[fn3] I’ll say more about the book, tentatively titled God and the IRS: Accommodating Religious Practice in the Tax Law, later; I’m not entirely sure when it will be published, though I think it’ll be early 2018.

[fn4] (if you have any familiarity with the Church, though, I’d love to get more details on it)

Learning Outcomes

At the end of class, students will be able to

1. Describe the roots of tithing in the Hebrew Bible and in American Protestantism.
2. Assess how scriptural text relates to contemporary practice in Mormonism.
3. Explain how the blessings from tithing compare to Prosperity Gospel ideas.

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible mentions three different types of tithes/taxes:

1. Temple tax: each male over the age of 20 paid a half-shekel, irrespective of wealth. Ex. 30:11-16. Went toward the upkeep of the temple. This was paid to atone for one’s own soul
2. Agricultural tithe: paid in-kind; 1/10 of the produce of the field. Deut. 14:22. Why? The Levites didn’t inherit any land; this was meant to support them where there was no land. Num. 18:25-26.
3. Another tithe that was meant to be taken to Jerusalem and consumed, or given to the poor, depending on where in the 7-year cycle you were. Deut. 14:23-29. Years 1,2,4, and 5 it was to be eaten in Jerusalem at the temple. Year 3 and 6, given to the poor. Year 7, the land lay fallow, and obviated the need for tithes.

American Protestantism

Tithing basically didn’t exist in American Protestantism until the late 1800s. [See Beumler, In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar]

In colonial America, settlements generally weren’t big enough to support more than one physical church. Once new churches came in, that represented a significant trauma, because it represented the breakdown of the communal life that existed.

Tithing was fairly unnecessary: initially, the established church in each colony/state was supported through public taxes. And once we had disestablishment, most churches raised money through offerings, through pew rents.

Post-Civil War, Protestantism rediscovered the tithe.Advantages: it had a biblical precedent, so it was a spiritual law, and thus was “unappealable as the laws of motion, force, and gravity.” (p. 51.)

They focused on different texts, sometimes from Genesis, sometimes Leviticus, sometimes Deuteronomy, and sometimes Malachi.

Two big problems: one is the idea of Gospel of Prosperity. Once you refer to Mal. 3:10, what do you do about the promises? Do you tithe merely to become rich yourself?

Second: the gross-vs.-net debate: that’s not unique to Mormonism. In fact, the question came up popularly in the late 1950s. Why? It’s not until, say, the 1940s that the federal income tax became a mass tax, and it suddently hit most Americans.

LDS Church

In 1831, Joseph adopted a type of consecration, which was not unpopular among groups in the 19th century. For various reason, though, it didn’t work terribly well. By 1837, the church was deeply in debt and the country had slumped into a depression.

At that time, in the church, the term “tithing” referred to any free-will offering/consecration to the church.

In late 1837/early 1838, the bishop of Missouri tried to make “tithing” more specific: he proposed that each household should offer a tithe of 2% of its net worth after paying off its debts. (Makes sense: the idea of income taxation started in England in 1799, but didn’t hit the US until the Civil War.)

Joseph moved to Far West, Missouri. The church was facing a daunting task of raising money for the temple, among other things. In July 1838, Joseph met with a group of church leaders, prayed. D&C 119.

How did it function? First, every member was to contribute their surplus property to the bishop. After that, they were to tithe one-tenth of their “interest” annually.

That’s raised a number of questions: what is “interest”? The Encyclopedia of Mormonism defines “interest” as “increase”; President Kimball said “interest” meant “income.” It turns out that both were wrong.

Basically, “interest” meant that the payor of tithing calculated their net worth, assumed a return on that (6% according to Bishop Partridge), and then paid 10% of that. Essentially, then, tithing was calculated as a percentage of net worth (essentially a property tax). Which again, makes sense: Americans at the time were used to property taxes.

Reading Scripture

So one interesting thing this does is illustrates our relationship with the actual text. The tithing we pay is not what D&C 119 says. But is that wrong? I’d argue that it’s not: the point of continuing revelation is to adjust things as we go. So we don’t pay Section 119 tithing; rather, we pay tithing in the way that’s more amenable to the kind of economy we have today.

Back to Blessings

Note that I don’t believe that paying our tithing helps ensure that we have enough money. Rather, it forces us to economize more carefully. Maybe there’s a loaves-and-fishes thing that occasionally happens, but for the most part, I don’t think it does. Rather, it forces us to be more careful with our money.

Avoiding Prosperity Gospel

So how do we negotiate tithing without falling into the trap of the Gospel of Prosperity?

Update: Shoot, I meant to include a link to Kevin Barney’s lesson plan from four years ago. It has some spectacular ideas, and you should definitely look at it, too!

If she were alive, Ella Fitzgerald would celebrate her 100th birthday today.

I don’t listen to a ton of jazz singers; my preferences definitely lie in the direction of instrumental jazz.[fn1] But Ella’s got a special place in my heart and my ear.

I’m not a terribly nostalgic listener; I rarely listen to those CDs I still have from high scool, and even from college. But some music is so important that it never leaves.

In most #MutualNight posts, I try to highlight an album and explain what I think it does, and why you should listen to it, and maybe provide a little background to the artist and the style. I’m not going to do that here. In high school, I bought “Ella & Duke.” I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand everything on it, but it had “Mack the Knife,” perhaps the most perfect song of the twentieth century. It’s a live performance, and it’s just so joyful.

And perhaps that’s what I love about Ella: her singing is lovely, and her voice has a clear, perfectly centered tone, whether she’s hitting a note straight on or subtly scooping up to it, whether she’s in her lower or her upper register. But on an upbeat song, there’s also an explosive joy to what she’s singing. And when she scats, well, there may well have been nobody better. And she’s inventive–I just heard her briefly quote the Beatle’s “A Hard Day’s Night” in her scat solo on “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).”[fn2]

It wasn’t just Duke that Ella played with; my wife had an Ella/Louis Armstrong album, and we’ve since bought “Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas.” And frankly, her discography is enormous, and you can’t go wrong with it. My daughter’s choir sang “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” and my son’s preschool plays the song on a regular basis.

If somebody tells me they don’t listen to jazz, but wants to know what album they should buy, I generally say Miles’s “A Kind of Blue.” And that’s always the right answer. But, at the same time, any album with Ella Fitzgerald is a good alternative choice, but especially live albums. (In its fundraising campaign this year, the local jazz station was giving some donors a copy of Ella’s “Twelve Nights in Hollywood.” Everything I’ve heard from the album has been simply amazing.)

So celebrate the centennial of one of the central figures in twentieth-century music, and spend some of today with Ella Fitzgerald.

Addendum: Clearly I’m not the only Ella fan (I mean, look who she sang with!). But this morning, after writing the post but before posting it, I encountered a surprising fan: Mo Willems. You know his Elephant and Piggie series? Well, Willems tweeted this this morning:

Such a fan, I named a character after her (Elephant Gerald). https://t.co/RZSXy7RoNi

— Mo Willems’ Pigeon (@The_Pigeon) April 25, 2017

[fn1] That’s not, of course, to say I don’t listen to any vocal jazz; I’m a big fan, for instance, of Katie Bull, and sometime soon I’m going to do a #MutualNight post on jazz/hip-hop fusion, including Steve Lehman’s “Sélébéyone.” And, of course, Billie Holiday is a regular on my record player.

[fn2] Yes, of course I’m listening to Ella as I write this post.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump released his tax reform plan.

Scratch that: he released a one-page outline detailing highlights of what he wants his tax reform plan to look like. But even with its limited details, as my friend and colleague David Herzig points out, it is worth taking seriously. Presidents have traditionally had some power to shape tax reform according to their priorities, and at the very least, Trump’s Wednesday memo provides insight into his tax preferences.

And, because this blog focuses on Mormonism, here’s a great place to ask this question: how will his tax priorities affect U.S. Mormons?

@smbrnsn the memo really does read better in Comic Sans. @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Ap4lnyOfHi

— Allison Christians (@taxpolblog) April 26, 2017

Not surprisingly, there’s nothing in Trump’s tax memo that explicitly relates to Mormons, or, for that matter, to religious individuals generally. Nonetheless, there are two provisions that should probably be of interest to Mormons generally.[fn1]

Both issues of interest derive from the same thing, though: the doubling of the standard deduction.

What Is the Standard Deduction?

Put simply, it’s a default deduction that all taxpayers are permitted to take. The standard deduction is adjusted for inflation; in 2017, the standard deduction for a married couple filing a joint return is $12,700.[fn2]

Note that while all taxpayers are permitted to take the standard deduction, about one-third of taxpayers choose not to take it. See, a taxpayer can choose between the standard deduction and itemized deductions. There are a number of itemized deductions under current law, but the big three are deductions for mortgage interest, for charitable contributions, and for state and local taxes. Basically, if those three deductions together exceed $12,700, you will probably choose to itemize your deductions (and thus not take the standard deduction). If those three deductions are less than $12,700, you’ll take the standard deduction.

In his plan, Trump proposes to double the standard deduction. That would mean in 2017, all (married filing jointly) taxpayers would be able to deduct $25,400.

Paying Tithing

It’s counterintuitive, but doubling the standard deduction would increase the cost of paying tithing to some portion of middle-class U.S. Mormons.

Why is that? Because some percentage of U.S. Mormons have itemized deductions between $12,701 and $25,400. Under current law, those Mormons itemize. Assuming they’re in the 25% tax bracket,[fn3] they don’t bear the full after-tax cost of their tithing. That is, they get a deduction for every dollar of tithing they pay in excess of $12,700, which reduces the after-tax cost of that dollar by 25 cents. After tax, that dollar of tithing costs 75 cents.

Once the standard deduction is doubled, those Mormon taxpayers bear the full cost of their tithing. And yes, the full effect is more complicated than that: they may be better off, because they get a bigger deduction under the Trump plan than they do under current law.[fn4] But they get that bigger deduction whether they pay tithing or not; if they choose to pay tithing (and, again, have itemized deductions between $12,701 and $25,400), they bear the full cost of their tithing.

It may affect churches (and other charitable institutions), too. As I’ve said before,[fn5] charitable giving is elastic, meaning the amount we give depends on the cost of giving. How elastic is it? I don’t know, but research has demonstrated some level of elasticity in charitable giving.

(And what about the fact that fully two-thirds of taxpayers don’t itemize? It may be that the charitable deduction is hypersalient. That is, taxpayers (led on by charitable fundraisers) may overestimate the likelihood that their donations will be deductible. If this hypersalience hypothesis is correct, query whether eliminating another swath of itemizers, and the publicity that would surround the change, would reduce the hypersalience of the charitable deduction, as people discovered that an even larger percentage of taxpayers will not be able to deduct their charitable contributions.)

Effect On Family Size

Stephanie Hoffer, another friend and colleague,[fn6] just wrote about how Trump’s proposal would affect middle-income families. I strongly recommend reading her post; I’ll hit a handful of high points here, but she explains it in greater detail.

Basically, she says, doubling the standard deduction is expensive.[fn7] Trump hasn’t said how he will pay for it, but the Republican blueprint for tax reform would pay for it by eliminating personal exemptions. The personal exemption is another deduction, this one available to (basically) all taxpayers, whether they itemize or not. Like the standard deduction, it is indexed to inflation. In 2017, the personal exemption is $4,050. Essentially, that means a married taxpayer filing jointly gets to deduct $4,050 for herself, $4,050 for her spouse, and $4,050 for each dependent.[fn8]

If personal exemptions are eliminated, suddenly, the doubling of the standard deduction doesn’t look like a tax cut at all, at least for families with more than one child.

The average number of children born to Mormons between the ages of 40 and 59 is about 3.4. If we round down, that’s a five-person family. The parents would be able to deduct $20,250 in personal exemptions, as well as $12,700 as a standard deduction. That’s $32,950 in deductions. If the personal exemptions go away, even doubling the standard deduction only provides $25,400 in deductions.

That’s $7,550 less in deductions, which, at a 25% marginal rate, means that family would pay $1,887.50 more in taxes under the Trump plan than it does under current law.

Of course, the actual number assumes the elimination of personal exemptions, and depends on the interaction of various other provisions of a changed tax law (including, perhaps, expanded childcare credits, though, as Stephanie points out, those don’t help where one parent is a stay-at-home parent).

Why Do This Speculation?

Because Trump’s tax plan includes a listening process. He says that, throughout May, his administration will hold listening sessions with various stakeholders to hear their input and to figure out how to fill in the details. And if Mormons want their voices to be heard in this process, we need to understand how the proposal will affect us, and be prepared to advocate for a tax law that will raise revenue for the government in a fair manner.

[fn1] Note that to some extent, what I lay out is speculative—Trump hasn’t laid out any specifics, and, for that matter, his plan is probably unenactable as it currently stands. But it’s what we currently have to evaluate.

[fn2] To figure out how much a deduction reduces your tax liability, you have to multiply the deduction by your marginal tax rate. If, for example, you pay taxes at a marginal rate of 25%, the standard deduction will reduce your tax liability by 0.25 * $12,700 = $3,175.

[fn3] Why do I keep assuming my hypothetical Mormon taxpayer is in the 25% tax bracket? Basically because that makes my math easier.

[fn4] Or they may be worse off, depending on the size of the tax brackets, depending on what other changes happen, depending on what happens to spending, etc.

[fn5] I’d link to it, but it’s after midnight as I type this, and I have an early meeting tomorrow morning, so I’m not going to look for it.

[fn6] And friend of the blog: a year and a half ago, she was kind enough to write a guest post for us about the ABLE Act.

[fn7] The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that it would reduce federal revenue by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That number depends, of course, on the new tax brackets, but the cost will be significant.

[fn8] For these purposes, I’m going to treat dependents as minor children. As Stephanie points out, though, they can also be parents or other people who live with a taxpayer and who that taxpayer supports.

Yesterday, Donald Trump signed his 34th Executive Order, titled “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty.” And, much to everybody’s surprise (really!), it doesn’t do anything. Like, at all.

I was interested because of rumors (backed up by leaks of early drafts) that it would fulfill his promise to “get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment.” Or, at least, that he would order the IRS to quit enforcing the prohibition on churches endorsing or opposing candidates for office.[fn1] In fact, the night before, there were reports that the EO would provide that the IRS should “exercise maximum enforcement discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson amendment which prohibits religious leaders from speaking about politics and candidate from the pulpit[.]”

Several colleagues and friends started discussing how we would divide the blogging duties over at The Surly Subgroup when the EO was signed and released. Then it was signed. Then it was released … and it didn’t look anything like what we expected, forcing us largely to rewrite our posts. If you’re interested in an explanation of what the so-called Johnson Amendment is, David Herzig explains it here. For a detailed, excellent review of what the EO actually says and does, Ben Leff has your back here. And if you decide that, in spite of the contentlessness of the EO, you want to sue,[fn2] I talk about some impediments you’ll face here.

So what does it do? From a tax perspective, it adopts the status quo: it basically says, Don’t apply the Johnson Amendment to religions differently than you would apply it to non-religious tax-exempt organizations.[fn3]

It makes sense, in a way, that the EO doesn’t do anything here. Because this isn’t a problem at all for churches; I’m only aware of one church that has lost its exemption for endorsing or opposing a candidate for office. That’s one church in the last more than 60 years. One.

In addition, the EO tells the Attorney General to issue guidance about religious liberty protections in federal law, and tells several agencies to “consider issuing amended regulations” (could the language be any wishy-washier?) addressing conscientious objection to the contraception mandate.

It’s clearly possible that the guidance and regulations that are eventually issued (if they’re ever issued—remember, there’s no order to issue the regulations, just to consider issuing them) the content will be objectionable. It’s also possible that the content will be benign. But, in spite of Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the signing, and in spite of fears and concerns on the left about what would happen, the EO does not do a single thing to promote or detract from religious liberty.

So why did Trump sign it? He’s fulfilling a promise he made to Evangelical voters. Or, rather, he’s making a show of fulfilling that promise, though Evangelicals have been, by and large, unimpressed with the content of the EO. Did he do this as a bait-and-switch? Did attorneys in his administration inform him that his early drafts were constitutionally or legally dubious? Does he just not really care about the issue? (Or, paraphrasing a friend, did we get punked or did Trump get punked?)

I don’t know. I do know, though, that, while this pays lip service to the concerns of some religious individuals, it does nothing more than lip service. And even that lip service is almost entirely in statements around the EO; it mostly can’t be found in the actual document.

[fn1] There were also—justifiable, based on early drafts—concerns that it would expand the ability of religious persons and entities to discriminate against the LGBT community and that it would severely curtail requirements that insurance provide contraceptive coverage.

[fn2] The ACLU said it would sue, but then its attorneys read the EO and decided that it really, truly was a nothingburger, and announced they wouldn’t. But never fear! The Freedom From Religion Foundation is picking up the slack, suing because, I don’t know, the EO says “religion” or something?

[fn3] Important to note here: both Trump and NPR have gotten the content really, really wrong here. I was listening to NPR yesterday afternoon, and the host talked about how 501(c)(3) limits religious people’s political speech. IT DOES NOTHING OF THE SORT. As a religious person, I can be as political as I want to be. I can rail against candidate Donald Trump (and, if you check my Twitter feed, I did, in fact, rail against candidate Donald Trump.) The prohibition only affects tax-exempt organizations, and representatives of the tax-exempt organization speaking in their capacities as representatives. That is, if President Monson endorsed Hillary Clinton during General Conference, that would probably violate the prohibition. If he was hanging out with people at dinner and said that he couldn’t imagine how a rational human being could vote for Donald Trump, well, that wouldn’t have any impact at all on the church’s exemption.

The June issue of The New Era includes an article entitled “Why Religious Freedom Matters: What’s at Risk.”

As I read through it, I had two primary thoughts. On the one hand, I applaud the church for attempting to educate teenagers about their civil rights and responsibilities. This is an important topic, and one that our teenagers should be exposed to.

On the other hand, though, I’m perplexed and bothered by the actual delivery. The content ranges from accurate to irrelevant to speculative to flat-out wrong. So while conceptually, I think this article is both necessary and important, it ultimately fails spectacularly. 

I’ll be completely honest here: I mostly don’t want to discuss the content. I’d rather focus on two things that, if improved, would exponentially increase the value of the article.

Conflating Private and State Action

The first big problem I have with the article is that it doesn’t separate private actions from state actions. And while both state and private religious discrimination are invidious, in most cases, they’re analytically distinct, and cramming them together isn’t terribly illuminating. If I were writing this list (which I wouldn’t, btw, for reasons I’ll go into in the next section), I’d probably group job loss, hiding religion at work, working on the Sabbath, and faith-based clubs in the private action column, and most of the rest in the state action column. At the margins, there may be questions about where to categorize an issue (for instance, is loss of professional certification a state or a private action?), but, for the most part, the two aren’t hard to distinguish.

And distinguishing them is important, if we’re going to deal with them. Having the state refuse to allow you to adopt based on your religious beliefs and practices is significantly different from your neighbors’ not allowing their kids to play with your kids because of your religion. The first raises questions of law, while the second raises questions of social norms. The solution to the first may well be a lawsuit (or lobbying, or running for office), while the solution to the second may be becoming a better neighbor. Both are bad, both are discriminatory, but only one, frankly, invokes questions of religious freedom.[fn1]

What If?

When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Marvel comics, and in my collection, I had several What If? titles. The basic premise was, we’ll take something significant that happened to a superhero and tweak it. What kind of impact would that tweak have? What would it change in the trajectory of the hero we know so well?

The examples the New Era provides remind me of these What If? comics. Basically, every bullet point starts with “You may” or “You might” or “You could.” Some examples (like pressure to resign) are based on actual things that actually happened. Some are based on things that religious individuals have worried about, and some on things that others have suggested should happen. But the thing is, few of them are likely. Take, for example, the idea that churches will lose their tax exemptions. It won’t happen.[fn2]

But there’s a real problem here: the possible is intermingled with the unlikely is intermingled with the impossible. And essentially, it starts reading to me like the boy who cried wolf. If I, the person interested in religious liberty, am not willing to take the time to figure out the real threats, why is the person I’m trying to convince going to bother listening to me?

For this, too, there’s an easy solution: point to real examples of violations of religious freedom. They’re not hard to find! Check this:

State Action:

• Russian government’s classifying Jehovah’s Witnesses as “extremist” group.
• French laïcité.
• U.S. Muslim ban.[fn3]
• Using zoning rules to prevent mosques.

Private Actions

• Rising anti-Muslim hate crimes.
• Vandalism of synagogues.
• Bomb threats to Jewish community centers.

It’s Not About Us

One last thing: many of the examples I provided probably don’t pose any direct threat to Mormons or Mormonism. (Okay, Russia probably does, and we’ve faced discriminatory zoning with temples and churches, but that’s basically it.) That’s intentional on my part. I recognize and understand the power of “First they came …” But what if you can guarantee a fire break, guarantee that, even if they came for the Muslims and for the Jews, they won’t come for the Mormons? I don’t think that reduces the importance of arguing for religious freedom; in fact, in some ways, focusing on issues that will not affect us strengthens the perception that we’re interested in religious freedom as a right, unconnected from our selfish preferences. And that, too, is an important lesson to teach our teenagers (and, frankly, ourselves): we don’t merely advocate for things when those things will benefit us personally; we advocate for right things precisely because they’re the right thing.

So kudos to The New Era for addressing an important topic. I hope it returns to the topic soon, and that its next attempt is done in a more nuanced, accurate, and valuable manner.

[fn1] And I know, the article doesn’t say anything about neighbors not letting their kids play with yours. Perhaps the better example—though it lost the parallel structure that I thought adoption and kids enjoyed—is that you could be fired or pressured to resign for donating money to oppose same-sex marriage. That may not be ideal, but in a marketplace that’s trying to appeal to a certain customer base, that monetary donation may send a message that the clientele doesn’t want. Note that your employer cannot fire you for belonging to a church that opposes same-sex marriage; that would violate federal law. But as long as you’re not being fired for your religious beliefs, it seems to me that pressure to resign is not something we want to deal with through by law, both because it would shield people from the consequences of their actions and because it would significantly infringe on speech rights.

[fn2] Every time I say this, somebody chimes in to say, But it’s different this time!!!1! The world has changed!!1! The past is out the window!!11 So how about I revise that statement a little: churches could lose their tax exemptions for opposing same-sex marriage. But also, the Skrulls could come to Earth and take it over. But the likelihood is infinitesimal. I mean, if we just look at incentives, what incentive would the IRS have to revoke a church’s tax exemption? It’s a ton of work, it’s not going to provide any additional revenue, and it will only make the IRS less popular than it already is (see, e.g., the Lois Lerner thing). So it could, conceivably, happen. But it won’t.

[fn3] Yeah, I get why the church wouldn’t want to raise these politically-charged examples. But we use what we have.

On Wednesday, we left the Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum[fn1] in Eau Claire, WI, and drove to the Goose Island Campground[fn2] in La Crosse, where we were going to spend the night. As we followed the GPS to our campsite, it suddenly gave us this direction:

Evidence that Google didn’t lie to us about the road’s name.

My wife and I debated (briefly) whether there could have been a non-Mormon reason for naming the road “Mormon Coulee,” but couldn’t think of any. So we tried to think of any Coulees (whether or not their first name was “Mormon”). Nothing lept out.

That night, a little Google research told me that coulee isn’t a name; it’s a geographic description. Specifically, a coulee is a ravine.

But what made this particular La Crosse ravine so Mormon? A little more Google searching brought me to Melvin C. Johnson’s “Wightites in Wisconsin: The Formation of a Dissenting Latter Day Community.” The underlying story’s fascinating, and I’m not going to try to relate the whole thing, but a couple highlights.

Lyman Wight was involved in many of the important first-decade milestones of the church. In 1841, he was ordained a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. Three years later he became a member of the Council of Fifty.

As Nauvoo started growing, it faced a significant problem: it needed lumber to build the Nauvoo House and the temple, among other things. Shortly after his ordination to the Q12, Wight, with a few other church leaders, started a “logging mission” in Wisconsin (which makes it doubly appropriate that we had just come from the Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum). It turns out that a logging mission in Wisconsin in the early 1840s, made up of people without experience with logging or with Wisconsin winters, was pretty miserable; the first winter, they lived on half-rations, and the second they almost starved.

After Wight moved to the mission in 1843, they began to have some success. And they managed to create a very Mormon community, adopting the communitarian economics Mormons had established in Ohio, as well as Nauvoo’s polygamy.[fn3] (According to the Johnson article, marriages among these Wisconsin Mormons were fairly insular, and the marriages and geography divided the logging mission from the bulk of Nauvoo Mormonism.)

In 1844, shortly before Joseph Smith’s death, Smith coach Wight on going to the Republic of Texas to see if the Mormons could move there. In the aftermath of Smith’s death, Wight broke with Brigham Young and the Q12, partly over Texas vs. the Rocky Mountains, and partly because Wight and the Wisconsin Mormons believed that Young had cheated them, not paying what he owed them for the timber.

By 1845, Wight and many of the La Crosse Mormons had left Wisconsin for Texas, and it doesn’t appear that they ever went back to Wisconsin. They left a name, though, that is still there today. And while their logging exploits may not match Paul Bunyan’s,[fn4] they mark a fascinating chapter in Mormon history, and one that I, at least, was entirely unfamiliar with.

[fn1] (which is, frankly, pretty cool—if you’re ever passing through, you should give it an hour or so)

[fn2] The campground is on the backwaters of the Mississippi, which means two things: first, it is gorgeous. Like, absolutely beautiful. Second, mosquitoes. Tons of mosquitoes; more than I’ve ever seen anywhere. That, plus a thunderstorm at 2 a.m. made it slightly less fun camping than it might have otherwise been.

[fn3] Yes, I know polygamy predated Nauvoo. But it appears to be at Nauvoo that Wight learned about polygamy.

[fn4] Btw, Paul Bunyan tall tales are way cooler than the Paul Bunyan log chute ride at the Mall of America—though the ride is pretty cool—or the Disney cartoon I grew up with. We bought Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan at the gift shop. I haven’t read the book proper yet, but the appendix reproduces Paul Bunyan stories collected in the nineteen-teens, largely from loggers, and they are amazing.

One summer, my parents’ ward held a special Sunday School class for the kids who had come back from college for the summer.[fn1] The Sunday School class was essentially a basic financial life skills class, the kind of thing that every college student (and most of the rest of us) needs, but that is woefully undertaught. The teacher, a member of the bishopric iirc, was a financial planner. He talked to us about budgeting, about saving, and other simple, practical skills.

I haven’t thought about that class in years, but my memory was jogged as I read (on Twitter) about a combined priesthood-Relief Society lesson on self-reliance.

I don’t know about your stake, but recently, mine has gone all-in on self-reliance. We had the combined lesson a couple weeks ago,[fn2] and at the end of this month, the stake is having a self-reliance devotional. And then we’re going to have a weekly self-reliance group that people can go to if they feel like it.

Now, I’m of two minds[fn3] about this. On the one hand, I’m a fully committed modern American. Frankly, helping people learn the basics of economic independence is unquestionably a good thing. Our social safety net has way too many holes and traps. It is super-valuable and super-helpful, but also super-difficult to navigate.[fn4] I mean, thank goodness it’s there—it is truly a blessing for those who need it—but it’s better to not have to rely on it.[fn5]

And I don’t think there’s anything wicked or anti-spiritual about addressing money at church. To the extent we believe that there is nothing that is purely secular, money is part of our spiritual lives. The Gospel should suffuse both the transcendent and the mundane parts of our life.

On the other hand, though, economic self-reliance can be done poorly. Even harmfully. The special Sunday School I went to when I was in college was good—it was pitched specifically as a practical and useful set of skills.

But the idea of self-reliance can become dangerous when we transmogrify it into a spiritual virtue. Why? Because it’s almost precisely the opposite of what our scriptures teach. The scriptures command us to care for each other, to rely on and support one another. Moses’ followers depend on God for their daily manna. The children of Israel find salvation as a community. Jesus commands the Apostles to feed His sheep. After His death, the Apostolic church practices communitarian economics. The Nephites rise or fall collectively. The D&C restores Apostolic economics, and even into Utah, the church experiments with various types of communitarianism.

I want to reiterate that none of this argues against teaching self-reliance at church. It’s a good thing, and, as a practical matter, a necessity. But it has limited moral valence, and is certainly not a spiritual virtue. Our brothers and sisters who can’t make ends meet are not spiritually inferior to those of us who can, and aren’t in a worse position than us when it comes to salvation. [fn6]

In fact, as we look at camels and needles, they may be in a better position.

[fn1] At the time, the church encouraged college students on summer vacation to go to their home ward, not to the local singles ward. I have no idea why, or, for that matter, whether that’s still what the church encourages, but even without that directive, I wasn’t interested in the singles ward in my parents’ stake.

[fn2] (which I missed—the Primary didn’t have a pianist, so I filled in)

[fn3] At least.

[fn4] For a first-hand account of the practical difficulties of navigating the U.S. social safety net, you could do far worse than reading Tracy’s recent book.

[fn5] That’s something we who are U.S. voters should work to change, but that observation’s outside the scope of this post.

[fn6] As best I can determine, the self-reliance push isn’t just financial, but also helping us work on spiritual self-reliance. On that front, I’d level the same response and critique: spiritual self-reliance isn’t a bad thing, but we can’t ignore the communal part of spirituality.

A quick hypothetical. (For those of you who didn’t attend law school, a law school hypothetical is a carefully constructed situation meant to tease out the implications of a rule or a law. The hypothetical itself isn’t meant to convey any truth value. What I mean is, please don’t argue for or against my hypothetical: it’s the consequences I’m interest in.)

Let’s imagine that it has been established that homosexual behavior (however you want to define that) is sinful. What do we, as members of the church and the ward, do when an LGBTQ individual comes to church? And what if it’s clear that that individual is participating in homosexual behavior (again, whatever we want to define that as)?

Confession: as best as I can tell, this is a pretty easy hypothetical; it seems to me it only allows for one answer: we welcome, love, and serve that individual. The scriptures are replete with admonitions to love and serve our neighbors. And there’s no way to define “neighbors” that doesn’t include the LGBTQ community.

Which brings me to a second (non-hypothetical) question: why do we so often fail at this basic Christian duty? Because we do fail at it, frequently.

I’m sure there are lots of reasons, actually, but one struck me as I read this piece by Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons. You should read the whole thing, but in high-level summary, he calls out the media for buying into a narrative that puts religious commitment in opposition to LGBTQ identity.

I suspect that’s a narrative that we largely buy into. We’re suspicious of our LGBTQ neighbors because we believe for some reason that their sexual orientation is incompatible with religious belief, so, if they’re coming, there must be some suspicious reason for that.

That’s absolutely wrong, though. (Or, in the lingo of the day, it’s “fake news.”) As Graves-Fitzsimmons explains, a”vibrant and growing religious and queer community exits.” While members of that community has no obligation to choose Mormonism as their religious home, we do have an obligation to welcome them. Are they sinners? Like the rest of us, yes. Irrespective of whether homosexual behavior is sinful, the LGBTQ community isn’t any different from the non-LGBTQ community in that regard—we all sin. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t need Jesus and the Atonement. After all, as He said, “They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.”

It’s our duty to become like Christ; for me, I hope that someday someone will ask me, “Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?” Because that strikes me as the best way to know that I actually have followed His example.

[And n.b.: again, I’m not arguing that homosexual behavior, however you define it, is or is not sinful, or that it’s different in kind from, e.g., drinking coffee or not paying tithing. I hope we can be as welcoming to those who sin in other ways as I hope we can with the LGBTQ community and whatever sins they may bring to the table. But we’re particularly bad, I think, with the LGBTQ community, so that strikes me as a good place to start on our journey toward being Christlike.]

In preparing for day’s Primary lesson on missionary work, I did a quick search to see if I could find anything out Seymour Brunson’s mission.

The short answer is, not a lot of detail on an iPhone during sacrament meeting. I mean, access to the D&C tells me he was called on a mission in 1832. And, thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers Project, I know that his mission was in Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia. And, per Ferron Olson’s Seymour Brunson: Defender of the Faith, he went through those states, baptizing hundreds (as missionaries did in the 1830s) and organizing branches along the way.

Me, more than 20 years ago. The back of the picture tells me a truck had just passed and splashed a line of mud on my pants, shirt, and face.

The lesson was actually fortuitously-time for me. Just the other day I realized, I returned home from my mission 20 years ago this week.[fn1] I was in the São Paulo East mission from August of 1995 until August 1997.

Twenty years is a nice round number, and it means that my life after my mission has been longer than my life before my mission. I’m actually (believe it or not) not entirely sure what I want to say here, but I feel like 20 years is something worth commemorating, and my mission was worth commemorating.

There are legitimate criticisms of the way our missionary program works in our 21st-century world. (John F. has offered a compelling recommendation for how we could make it better.) I agree with many of the critiques and recommendations.

And yet, my mission was an important and a defining part of my life. It wasn’t a life plan for me—I decided at 12 that I wasn’t going on a mission, and didn’t change my mind until I was 18. Those two years were a spiritual cementing for me, and a chance to engage with a world I’m not a part of. Before my mission, I was a music major at BYU, and those two years gave me some distance and time to rethink my future. Perhaps most importantly, when I met my now-wife, our initial common ground for conversation was our missions.

I’m a different person today than I was in 1995 when I left on my mission, and than I was in 1997 when I got home. I don’t want to be the person I was 20 years ago. But without my mission experience, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. And that’s something worth commemorating.

[fn1] I don’t remember exactly when I got home—it was 20 years ago, after all—but I’m pretty sure it was the first week of August. I know I had not more than three weeks at home before I left again for BYU. The exact date may well be in my mission journal, but my mission journal was destroyed in a house fire a number of years ago.

Hear any other similar sermons this AM?

Let me know! https://t.co/DBBcF1tmfJ

— Jack Jenkins (@jackmjenkins) August 13, 2017

This morning, as I read my Twitter feed, I came to Jack Jenkins, a religion reporter for Think Progress, asking for examples of sermons addressing racism.  As of when I’m writing this, he tweeted out eight examples of sermons representing an array of Christian denominations.

Meanwhile, Guthrie Graves-Fitzgerald tweeted a photo of Charlottesville clergy marching, united, against the racism that invaded—and tried to infect—their city.

#CVilleclergycall is what love looks like in public. Thank you for your witness! pic.twitter.com/ehLI9CtIqo

— Guthrie Graves-Fitz. (@GuthrieGF) August 13, 2017

And how about the Mormon church? Our leaders, too, issued a statement condemning racism and expressing sympathy for those in Charlottesville.[fn1]

Why, we might ask, should our church respond to and condemn these Nazis and white supremacists? After all, there’s not indication that any of the protestors were Mormon; I’d be unsurprised to learn that none were.

There’s a danger inherent to looking at and condemning racism; it’s too, too easy to believe that it belongs somewhere else. After all, we all know that the South is racist. But I don’t live in the South; ergo, I can’t be racist, and those around me can’t, either.

Or we all know that racism existed before the Civil War, or before Brown v. Board in 1954, or the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or President Kimball’s 1978 revelation. But not today; today, racism is some other time.

And those are both true statements: racism exists in the South, and it existed before whatever transformative year we choose. But if we relegate it only to the South, or only to before, we lose the ability to confront it, because it also exists where we are and when we are.[fn2]

And when we see it as just a Southern thing, we excuse ourselves from having to do something about it ourselves. https://t.co/kFI3hvyWzE

— Sam Brunson (@smbrnsn) August 13, 2017

Charlottesville made that clear; certainly some of the racist protestors were homegrown, but not all were. James Fields, who murdered one woman and injured several others, went to Virginia from Ohio. Peter Cvjetanovic went to Virginia from Reno. There are reports that one person was there from Berkeley, CA.

In fact, the SPLC’s map of hate groups shows as many in the Northeast and Midwest as in the South, and no state is free from them.

Instead, then, of saying, There are racists in Virginia, or, There are racists in Alabama, we’d do good to follow the Apostles’ examples. When Jesus told them that one of them would betray Him, they didn’t ask, Is it Judas? They asked, Lord, is it I?

I am convinced that none of the preachers who preached against racism and hatred today approves—or even countenances—the racist ideologies that brought white supremacists to Charlottesville. But they didn’t use the fact that it wasn’t them as an excuse to sit by, silent and complicit. Instead, they followed the Apostles’ example; they looked internally at themselves, they looked at their congregations, they asked, Could it possibly be us, and they moved to condemn racism. They moved unequivocally to say that racism doesn’t belong in the body of Christ.

And, Southern or not, modern or not, that’s a sermon we all need to hear and internalize. And, since the church has unlocked the door, I hope we can fully pass through on the local level, reiterating the Savior’s command to love our neighbor, and unequivocally condemning racism, out loud and in our meetings.

[fn1] Let me note here that we’re far from angels on issues of race; while we’ve started to confront that racism that has been part of our history, we’re far from where we need to be. That said, this statement is certainly a step—an insufficient and perhaps not-entirely-satisfying step, but a step nonetheless—in the direction we need to go.

[fn2] In fact, my wife suggested that I title this post, “Racism Doesn’t Only Speak With a Southern Accent.” And frankly, that’s a way better title. But she agreed that, for a Mormon blog, it probably made sense to go with something more scriptural.

On Monday, the church-owned Deseret News published an editorial condemning—in no uncertain terms—the racism of “the KKK and other so-called white nationalist groups.” The editorial leaves no wiggle room, and brooks no disagreement.

And then it turns in what—to me—was an unexpected direction: protectionism.

So I’m a modern liberal, meaning I buy into the economic consensus that free and open trade is a good thing. It increases the net wealth in the world, and provides both Americans collectively, and our foreign brothers and sisters, better access to the goods we need.

But.

But the fact that free trade is a net benefit for society doesn’t mean it’s a benefit for each and every member of society. Free trade’s “costs and benefits are distributed unequally within each country, making some people better off and others worse off.”[fn1] In fact, economists have found that workers with the lowest incomes—the most vulnerable workers—bear the heaviest costs of international trade.

So what do we do about the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of free trade? Like the Deseret News, I believe that protectionism is bad. It decreases the wealth available across the board; moreover, in our increasingly-globalized economy, returning to some sort of closed-off economy strikes me as implausible, even if I thought it were a good idea.

Toward the end of its editorial, the Deseret News touches on what strikes me as the best answer:

There is of course room for safety nets to aid those who cannot fully participate in the marketplace and appropriate wealth distribution to help mitigate adverse market excesses or to provide adequate access to opportunity and education.

I’d personally strengthen the recommendation, though, and explain it in slightly more detail. Essentially, what I’d say is this: free trade increases the net wealth, but it imposes significant costs on a subset of American workers, a subset that happens to be among the poorest and most vulnerable.

In order to pay for our increased wealth, then, we should be both willing and happy to expand the social safety net, not just to provide benefits to some imaginary group of “worth poor” (and excluding the poor we find unworthy), but provide true help and sustenance to anybody who falls below a certain line.

Assuming that free trade increases our collective wealth, it’s not costly to improve our social safety net. After all, the free trade that hurt our poorest neighbors has increased the wealth available to all of us. We can fund a social safety net and still be better off than we would have been with protectionist trade policies.

Which is to say, it strikes me that there’s a compelling economic argument to be made for expanding our welfare, job retraining, and other benefits available to prevent individuals and families from slipping into poverty (and, at the same time, to lift those in poverty out).

But it also strikes me that doing so helps us fulfill our religious obligation to build Zion, a place of one heart and one mind that notably has no poor among them.

[fn1] James Kwak, Economism 165 (2017).

Last year, Angela wrote an important post about the problems with seminary starting so early.

I was reminded of her post because (a) my kids started school today, and (b) I read this article on teenagers, early start times, and sleep deprivation yesterday.

FWIW, the article doesn’t say anything new that Angela didn’t already bring up. But largely, schools are ignoring the more-irrefutable-by-the-day research and keeping the same early start times they’ve had since time immemorial (or, at least, since the 90s when I was in high school). And, as far as I know, nothing has changed with the church’s early-morning seminary program, either.

Angela wrote her post out of experience; I write mine out of hope. Because my oldest is still a couple years away from high school, and I hope the local high school (start time: 7:55 am, which is 35 minutes earlier than the AAP recommends) and the church (which has local seminary at some time earlier than that, I assume) can move to best practices before she hits high school.

In Favor of the Status Quo

The author of the Slate article mentioned some of the pushback she got previously when she raised the issue of too-early start times. And I imagine there will be some pushback here, too. I’m going to try to anticipate and refute a couple of the objections:

(1) I did it when I was a kid; these kids should be able to, too. I did early morning seminary in high school, too. 6:00 a.m. at the church, then we drove to school. And I survived. But the thing is, I hope we do things for reasons other than just inertia. When I was a kid, I didn’t hear any conversations about teenagers’ different circadian rhythms and stuff. Now that we know that teenagers need more—and later—sleep, we ought to adjust their schedules in line with that, to the extent practicable.

See, seminary’s not supposed to be a hazing thing. It’s not supposed to be an artificial trial intended to be a gatekeeper to true belonging. According to the church, the purpose of seminary is

to help students understand and rely upon the teachings and Atonement of Jesus Christ, qualify for the blessings of the temple, and prepare themselves, their families, and others for eternal life with their Father in Heaven.

That is, seminary isn’t meant as a trial, or a gatekeeper, or even a marker of identity. It’s meant to help our teenagers better understand and use the Atonement. And for that, sleep deprivation seems like an impediment, not a help.

(2) God can give them energy. I have no doubt that’s true. But I also have very little doubt that He won’t. I mean, if He created us with circadian rhythms, why would He want to shift them just for scheduling convenience? It seems more likely to me that we ought to use our reason and inspiration to create a schedule that meets the bodies He’s given us.

(3) Sacrifice brings blessings. A couple thoughts on this. First, sure, why not? But you know what? Seminary requires sacrifice whether it happens at 6:00 am or at 8:00 pm. Either way, the kids are giving up something else that they could be doing at that time. So changing the start time of seminary doesn’t remove the sacrifice it entails.

But also, the sacrifice of getting up too early and being sleep-deprived has no correlation to the specific blessings that seminary is meant to provide (i.e., increased knowledge of and experience with the Atonement). I mean, if we’re into sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice itself, why not sacrifice, I don’t know, pizza? I mean, giving up pizza would represent a real sacrifice to me, and, while I could be wrong, I’m not aware of anybody saying that the sacrifice of giving up pizza will cause me to be able to better understand and experience the Atonement. (And if anybody does say that, that person is wrong.) I don’t see any causal connection between sleep deprivation and spiritual maturity.

Real Benefits

The benefits of letting our adolescents get the sleep they need doesn’t accrue just to them. The RAND Corporation just released a fascinating report that tries to quantify the economic benefits of later school start times. It estimates that, based on those two things, moving school start times to 8:30 could contribute $83 billion to the economy over the next ten years.

And it bases that increase on two factors: reduced car accidents and increased academic performance. Why reduced accidents? Well, about one-fifth of fatal car crashes involving kids between the ages of 16 and 18 involve a sleep-deprived driver, and car crashes among that cohort decrease significantly by delaying school start times by an hour.

And the later start time would increase the percentage of students who graduate from high school and go to college, increasing their potential lifetime earnings. (Note that RAND doesn’t look at other possible benefits, such as improved mental health.)

Although RAND was looking specifically at school start times, it’s worth noting that the super-early seminary start times are going to present the same negative effects, and making them later will have the same positive repercussions, as delaying school start times. Frankly, there is no compelling argument (other than scheduling simplicity) for early start times for seminary, but there are tremendously compelling arguments for later starts.

How Do We Solve the Problem?

Of course, complaining about early-morning seminary is different from—and easier than—coming up with a solution. After all, there’s not an answer that automatically works for everybody. Swimmers practice in the morning. Rock climbers practice in the afternoon. Actors may have intense schedules for a couple months, and then free time in other months.

Fortunately, Angela offered a couple potential solutions. I’d like to offer a variation on hers.

See, the online option is good in several way. But there are a couple problems. One is, I think the social aspect of seminary is an essential part of students’ learning. After all, if we’re trying to build a Zion society, it’s not about the solitary study of scriptures. It’s about interacting with, and loving, people who may not be much like us—there’s a communal part of the gospel.

Another is, the online instruction needs to be asynchronous. That is, kids need to be able to go to their computers for instruction at their convenience.

So what to do? Well, this semester, I’m teaching in Loyola’s part-time program. And it’s a joint online-in person program–the students meet every other weekend for classes, and do the rest online.

And there’s no reason that seminary couldn’t be run on the same model. With asynchronous instruction, plus in-person meeting at regular intervals,[fn1] students could benefit from sleep, flexibility, and in-person meetings.

[fn1] When? I don’t know. Maybe once a week in the morning; maybe Sundays after church. Maybe some other time.

I’ve been looking through 1860s Bureau of Internal Revenue records from the district of Utah for a project I’ve been working on. (It’s a really interesting project; once I get a handle on what I’m going to write, I’ll blog some interesting tidbits.)

As I was looking through the assessment lists, I came across a (pretty decent) doodle of a person’s head. I don’t know anything about who drew the doodle (was it the assessor? the assistant assessor? somebody who got his or her hands on the list later?). I don’t know who the doodle represents (is Stubb or Stout or Shoebridge? or is it a self-portrait? or a generic picture?).

Whoever drew it, and whomever it represents, though, it was an unexpected—and rather fun—find.

Last week, driving home from my brother’s wedding, my family and I stopped at Homestead National Monument of America.[fn1] We didn’t really know what to expect. We only planned on staying for an hour or so, because Nebraska falls halfway into the 21-hour drive from Utah to Chicago, the drive that we needed to do in two days so that we’d be back before our kids had to start school.

We got to Homestead when it opened. And we ended up staying for more than three hours. Because Homestead is amazing; it celebrates the Homestead Act of 1862, which ultimately distributed about 10 percent of U.S. land to successful homesteaders.

What was the Homestead Act? Basically, it was a law that allowed settlers to claim 160 acres of land. If the settler built a home on the land, lived on it, made improvements, and farmed it for five years, the settler would receive a patent for the land, signed by the current president, that meant the land was his or hers. And the “his or hers” is deliberate; land was available broadly to men, women, recent immigrants, even African Americans who had been freed from slavery.[fn2]

(Of course, the government wasn’t giving away empty land, and the National Monument does an excellent job giving voice to the Native Americans whose land was taken to give to these men, women, immigrants, and African Americans.)

So where’s the Mormon connection to Homestead National Monument of America? I actually wondered that while I was there. The Monument says that there are an estimated 93 million descendants of homesteaders alive today; I assumed that I wasn’t one of them. After all, I didn’t know of any of my ancestors who had homesteaded.[fn3] the Act wasn’t passed until 1862; Mormons had made it to Utah in the late 1840s. My quick phone search at the Monument indicated that the Utah territory had made a mess of divvying up federal lands, between giving them out before they were surveyed and driving the first federal surveyor out of Utah in 1857. Still, 7 percent of Utah’s land was given out to homesteaders. Did that include any of my ancestors?

To figure it out, I looked in FamilySearch for ancestors who would have lived in Utah at roughly the right time (say, 1870s to 1910s). I then searched for those names in BLM General Land Office Records site.[fn4]

And it turns out that at least four of my ancestors got land under the Homestead Act.[fn5]

Sondra Sanders. Sanders was my great-great-great grandfather. He received his patent for 160 acres in Salt Lake County on December 1, 1874.

James Fackrell. Fackrell was another great-great-great grandfather. He received his patent for 80 acres in Weber County on March 30, 1881.

A couple things about this one: first, 160 acres was the minimum size of a homestead, but a number of my ancestors seem to have homesteaded something less than 160 acres. I’m not sure if that was just to deal with the chaos of Utah land transfers, or if it was something else.

Second, 11 years earlier, Fackrell had purchased 80 acres in Davis County.

Christian Pedersen. Pedersen was my great-great grandfather. He received a patent for 80 acres (again!) in Cache County on March 24, 1887.

Charles A. Brunson. Brunson was another great-great grandfather. He received a patent for 160 acres in Millard County on October 28, 1915. That’s just about a decade before my grandfather was born. Which is crazy to me.[fn6]

So there you have it: Mormonism, family history, and the Homestead Act of 1862. Anyone else among the 93 million Americans descended from homesteaders (whether in Utah or elsewhere)?

[fn1] The National Monument is on the site of the Daniel Freeman’s homestead. Freeman was one of the first people to claim a homestead under the Act.

[fn2] That’s not to say the law was entirely progressive and colorblind. To qualify for land under the Homestead Act, an would-be settler had to be a citizen or have filed a declaration of intention to become a citizen. But not everybody qualified for citizenship, at least during the first eight decades of the law. People of Chinese decent didn’t become eligible for U.S. citizenship until the end of 1943, and would thus have been ineligible to homestead and get land. For Indians, it didn’t happen until 1946. And for Japanese individuals? 1952.

[fn3] Which maybe isn’t saying much—I didn’t know a ton about my 19th-century ancestors.

[fn4] Note that the site isn’t limited to land received under the Homestead Act of 1862; when you click on the person, though, you can determine how that person acquired the land.

[fn5] I say “at least” because I didn’t do a comprehensive search, so I may have missed somebody.

[fn6] Though it shouldn’t be—the Homestead Act remained in effect until 1976, and applied to Alaska for another 10 years, even though homesteading largely stopped in the mid-1930s.

Last Thursday, the House passed an appropriation bill for fiscal year 2018. The vote was close—211 to 198—and it’s not clear that it will pass the Senate in any kind of recognizable form. Still, the bill has at least some relevance to churches.

See, sections 101-116 attempt to regulate the IRS, and section 116 would largely eviscerate the so-called Johnson Amendment.

A little background before we get to the meat of the post, though. First, what is an appropriation bill? It’s a proposed law that authorizes specific government spending.

And how about the Johnson Amendment? I’ve written about it several times on BCC; essentially, it’s the rule that tax-exempt organizations (including churches) can’t support or oppose candidates for office and, if they do so, they lose their tax exemptions.

Getting rid of it has been a big deal in GOP circles, and Trump has promised to “totally destroy” it.

But the appropriation bill can’t do that. So what does it do? Essentially, it limits the IRS’s ability to spend appropriated money on enforcing it. Interestingly, it doesn’t entirely forbid the IRS from enforcing the campaigning prohibition, though it could. In several other sections, the bill flatly prohibits the IRS from using appropriated funds to enforce certain provisions of the tax law (including the ACA penalty for not maintaining sufficient insurance).

Here, the House would set up hoops for the IRS has to jump through to use appropriated money to enforce the campaigning prohibition. Specifically, the IRS couldn’t revoke a church’s exemption for violating the campaigning prohibition unless (a) the Commissioner of Internal Revenue consented, and (b) within 30 days of the determination, the Commissioner notified the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. And the revocation could not happen less than 90 days after that notification. (Note that this is on top of a fairly onerous set of rules governing how the IRS can start and engage in a church audit in the first place.)

A couple things to underline here. First, revoking a church’s exemption for violating the Johnson Amendment is tremendously rare. Like, it has happened once that I’m aware of in the 60+ years that the rule has existed. So even a complete destruction of the rule would barely affect enforcement.

At the same time, this is potentially a more-significant move than the change in enforcement would make it seem. It’s an, if not explicit, at least implicit, blessing on churches campaigning. Moreover, it changes the cost-benefit analysis by significantly reducing the risk of a church losing its exemption. So on the margins, at least, it means that more churches will engage in politicking, and those churches that use the Johnson Amendment as an excuse not to engage in partisan politicking have a significantly smaller backstop for that excuse.

(Btw, if you’re interested in some of the other ways the appropriation bill would regulate IRS activities, I have a post at Surly.)

(h/t on the story to Jack Jenkins.)

[For a quick refresher on what #MutualNight posts entail and how they relate to Mormonism, read this.]

Full disclosure before I  get started: Matt Wilson is one of my favorite jazz drummers and musicians. I’d put his last two albums (2016’s Beginning of a Memory and 2014’s Gathering Call) were each in my top 5 albums of their respective years, and his Christmas album is my favorite Christmas album.

And yet I’ve put off talking about Honey and Salt. And that’s for one major reason: Carl Sandburg.

See, Wilson and Sandburg were both born in Knox County, Illinois. And Wilson is a fan of Sandburg. Such a fan, in fact, that this album pays tribute to Sandburg by setting his songs to music.

And I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve read very little Carl Sandburg. I’ve been afraid for the last month plus that I couldn’t do justice to the poetry, and thus to the album.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t listened, or that I haven’t enjoyed it. For the first two weeks I had Honey and Salt, I basically didn’t listen to anything else. Frankly, the album has made me into a Sandburg fan.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Each song is a setting of a Sandburg poem. Some of the poems are sung, and some are recited. But this isn’t a nouveau-Beat/So I Married an Axe-Murderer/coffee-shop-in-the-90s thing. Wilson is one of the most charismatic performers I’ve seen. The musicians are virtuosic. And Wilson is a deeply melodic drummer. Also, he has a great sense of humor.

And the songs! The poetry and the music are intertwined; the music was clearly written to fit the songs.

The album kicks off with a chunky bass riff and off-kilter horns that match the off-kilter poetry of “Soup.”

“Anywhere and Everywhere People” keeps the funk coming. The song highlights the care Wilson put into matching the music to the poetry. The horns are in direct conversation with the narrator, hitting in time with end-of-line accents. The saxophone solo is almost more texture than solo, with Lenny Pickett-ish altissimo. That’s not to say there aren’t solos, but they owe more to, say, the textures of early Miles Davis fusion than the bebop lines of Charlie Parker.

“Night Stuff” backs away from the driving beats of earlier songs, replacing them with a floating, haunting feel. Partly its the impressionistic words of the poem, partly it’s the funereal beat. Partly it’s the singer, who floats along over the music, and partly it’s the croaking bass clarinet that starts the song. The trumpet solo is largely long languid notes, and, even when it moves faster, it’s in no hurry to get anywhere. The bass clarinet plays faster lines, but still manages to be almost ghostly.

Then “We Must Be Polite.” If you’re not familiar with “We Must Be Polite,” stop reading now and click the link. The poem is a pure delight, as charming as anything I’ve read. The music matches the delight, hinting at the Bo Diddley beat, but skewing it just enough to keep the listener off-balance. The song becomes explosive when the horns begin to solo. And the subtle touches—right after the narrator reads “If an elephant knocks on your door,” Wilson has a short burst of frantic snare strikes, the drum mirroring the knocking on the door.

That’s not it, of course, but it’s enough to give a taste of the joy the album contains. Wilson is a modest drummer. Which doesn’t mean he’s a poor drummer; rather, he’s not interested in making this a drum album. Instead, this is a musical album, a poetry album, and, best of all, a remarkably fun album. Honey and Salt is contemporary jazz at its best.