And like that, it’s a new year! Look, I’m not much of a write-down-formal-goals-or-resolutions person, but I have some things I’d like to accomplish this year, and thought it would be fun to hear what you’re planning on. This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course, but here are four things I want to do this year:
Improve my Spanish and Portuguese
In mid-2022, Texas began sending refugees and asylees to Chicago. One of the shelters the city has provided for recent arrivals is about three blocks from our church building, and by October or November, Central and South American immigrants began attending our ward. A couple friends organized a Sunday School class in Spanish, and English classes after church and on Wednesdays, for the immigrants. My wife, who speaks a little Spanish, decided to attend. I served a mission in Brazil a couple decades ago, and took two years of high school Spanish, so I started attending too. (Originally, missionaries from one of the Spanish wards started attending our ward on Sundays too; then, maybe six months ago, the mission president assigned Spanish-speaking Elders to our ward, and they have been wonderful.)
I’ve been using Duolingo (and conversing with people) to improve my Spanish, and recently started also working to ramp up my Portuguese. I’m planning on continuing to improve them both in 2024.
Improve my saxophone
My freshman year of college, I was a saxophone performance major. For all sorts of reasons, that’s not what I ended up graduating in. But just before the pandemic hit, I picked up my sax again. And now I’m working on jazz tenor and classical soprano (and, for the heck of it, fusion/funk EWI). This year, I want to get in the kind of shape on each that I can play comfortably publicly (which may also involve getting my soul jazz band together more frequently and possibly finding three others to form a saxophone quartet).
Read the Book of Mormon with a focus on care for the stranger and refugee
I mentioned some of the scriptures’ focus on refugees in my last post. And migration is absolutely central to the Book of Mormon. As we read it for Sunday School this year, I really want to dig into what it says about migration and care for migrants.
Publish my book
Just as everything shut down for the holidays, I sent a final draft of my book on Mormonism and taxation to my editor at the University of Illinois Press. I’m really excited to be able to share it (hopefully in the near future, though the mills of academic publishing sometimes grind slowly). I’ll post more on it here as we get closer to publication, but in the meantime, I’ll be working this year to push it toward completion.
So those are some of my plans/goals/resolutions for 2024. I’d love to hear what you’re hoping to do, accomplish, or even survive this year, it you’re willing to share.
It’s a new year at church! And, among other things, that means that a new crop of kids has graduated from Primary! Boys and girls who turn 12 in 2024 are now attending Young Men and Young Women. The boys are going to start passing the sacrament! And the girls are going to … um … start attending Young Women.
And why are boys passing the sacrament and girls are not? Because of policy choices that church leaders made decades ago, and that current church leaders keep in place, either because they don’t realize it’s a policy choice that they could reverse or because they support the policy that treats girls as second-class and inferior in the church.
I’ve blogged about this several times (here and here and here; also, my co-blogger David Huston has written about it here), but let me reiterate: nothing in scripture requires priesthood or maleness to pass the sacrament. In fact, D&C 20:58 says expressly that deacons and teachers don’t have authority to administer the sacrament, so passing the sacrament is not administration. It’s purely a policy choice church leaders made, and one they continue to make every day that they don’t change it. I personally think it’s bad policy: it sends a message to girls and women that they aren’t as valued in the church as boys and men and/or that the church doesn’t value their service and participation as much as it values the service of boys and men.
Look, I get the inertial quality of this: it’s been this way for a long time. Church leaders likely feel like they’re not actually making a policy choice here—they’re just maintaining the status quo. But they’re not: to paraphrase Rush, even choosing not to make a choice is, well, a choice, at least if you occupy a position that would let you make a meaningful choice here.
And it’s not the only deliberate policy choice that the church makes devaluing women and girls and/or their service. There are a string of callings that we only let men hold, notwithstanding there being no priesthood requirement and no gendered reason.
What callings? I’m going to leave out callings that specifically require priesthood (bishop, stake president). I’m also going to leave out ones that are arguably gendered (YM and YW leaders, RS president; EQ president probably fits in both buckets).
So what are we looking at? This isn’t an exhaustive list, but here are a couple callings that are limited to men, in spite of the fact that priesthood is unnecessary and there’s no implicit gender.
“The bishop calls and sets apart a Melchizedek Priesthood holder to be the ward Sunday School president. They discuss whether counselors should be called. If counselors are needed, and if there are enough men to serve in these positions, the Sunday School president may recommend one or two counselors. If the bishopric approves, a member of the bishopric calls them.”
Why does it need to be a Melchizedek Priesthood holder? Honestly, no idea. Teachers can be men or women, priesthood holders or not. The Sunday School presidency doesn’t administer any ordinances. Largely, as far as I can tell, they ensure that there’s someone to teach every Sunday School week and, if they really want to go the extra mile, provide some teacher training.
“Every ward should have a qualified, functioning ward clerk. He is recommended by the bishopric and called and set apart by a member of the stake presidency or an assigned high councilor. He should hold the Melchizedek Priesthood and have a current temple recommend. He is a member of the ward council.”
Ward clerks are important! They serve critical administrative capacities, ensuring, among other things, that necessary records and reports are done! And that doesn’t require priesthood! (I’ll ignore the whole temple recommend creep that’s become so big in the last decade or two, but it’s also worth noting that (a) that’s not necessary, but (b) women also hold temple recommends.)
(And before someone tries to bring it up: yes, bishoprics work closely with ward clerks. But also, if you’re going to have an affair with someone you’re working closely with, (a) you probably shouldn’t be in the bishopric, and (b) you’re almost definitely working closely with women at your work, and you should also not be having an affair with those women.)
Women Only
As far as I can tell, there’s only one women-only calling that’s not RS or YW: Primary presidencies. From the Handbook:
“The bishop calls and sets apart an adult woman to serve as the ward Primary president. If the unit is large enough, she recommends one or two adult women to be called as her counselors ….”
Again, there’s no reason that a primary presidency needs to be a particular gender (though honestly, as long as other callings are unnecessarily gender-segregated, at least this provides a formal leadership role for a couple women).
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way!
The church is perfectly capable of getting rid of these unnecessary gender restrictions, and even doing it without a ton of fanfare. Think stake auditors. The 2010 Handbook, section 14.9.2, reads:
“The stake president or his counselor who is chairman of the stake audit committee calls at least two stake auditors. These auditors should be trustworthy brethren who hold current temple recommends. If possible, they should be experienced in accounting or auditing” (emphasis added).
The current Handbook is different. Today we read:
“The stake president or his counselor who is chairman of the stake audit committee calls at least two stake auditors. These brothers and sisters should have current temple recommends. If possible, they should be experienced in accounting or auditing.”
Sometime in the previous 13 years, church leadership realized that it’s dumb to have a gender requirement for stake auditors. So it got rid of the gender limitation! Now men and women can both be church auditors.
So church leaders can change policies, even where those policies were, at one point, enshrined in the church handbook. They can’t pass off these limitations to tradition, because tradition only carries the amount of weight we decide we want it to carry. If the church endorses and maintains policies that treat women worse than men, girls worse than boys, it’s the policy church leaders have explicitly decided to adopt and maintain.
Church leadership needs to do the same thing with respect to other unnecessarily gendered callings. And frankly (and I’ll keep beating this drum), it’s even more important that it eliminate the unnecessary, unscriptural, prejudiced, and frankly stupid[fn1] policy that only priesthood holders can pass the sacrament. It sends a message to our girls, loud and clear, that they’re not necessary, their service isn’t valued, and frankly, that they’re second-class citizens in the church at best.
I don’t think that’s true. Church leaders say it’s not true. But their nice words are drowned out by the volume of their actions in keeping in place these discriminatory policies.
[fn1] I’ve seen the argument made that there are so many boys that if we let girls pass the sacrament too, the boys wouldn’t get to. Which is dumb on its face—so what if the boys pass half as many times?—but also reflective of a very narrow part of the church. Yesterday, only adult men were passing the sacrament. Why? Because we have four or five young men. And at least half of them are priests who could actually administer the sacrament (though most of them were out of town). But we had at least two young women who could have—and should have—passed the sacrament today.
Sometime last year, Osmar Emilio Mata left Venezuela with his partner and their two young daughters. They made a 2000-mile trip through dangerous landscapes to arrive in the United States. I don’t know Osmar and his family, so I’m not sure exactly how they travelled. But if their trip was anything like the dozens of Venezuelan refugees and asylum-seekers I’ve met, if they were lucky, a portion of their journey was by bus. But the vast majority was on foot, walking through diverse landscapes (and sometimes inhospitable) regions, looking for food and water, trying to avoid violence and death, trying to make it to the United States.
With, remember, two little girls.
Why did they embark on that trek, leaving their home and most of their possessions, sometimes leaving family, always leaving friends?
Most are fleeing a collapsing economy—no work, medicine, or food. Many are also fleeing rampant and widespread violence.
And a lot are leaving: Venezuela has the second-largest displaced population in the world right now. Roughly 11,500 migrants are crossing the U.S.’s southern border daily, some legally and some not. In the last year and a half, more than 30,000 refugees and asylum-seekers have come to Chicago.
I couldn’t help but think of these migrants—a dozen or more of whom attend my ward every Sunday—as I started reading 1 Nephi. Because what are Lehi and his family if not refugees?
“forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as a result of who they are, what they believe in or say, or because of armed conflict, violence or serious public disorder.
“Many have been forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their back, leaving behind their homes, possessions, jobs and loved ones. They may have suffered human rights violations, been injured in their flight, or seen family members or friends killed or attacked.”
Lehi faced violence in Jerusalem. After he started preaching, the residents of Jerusalem mocked him and “also sought his life, that they might take it away.” In other words, he faced violence and threats of violence.
In addition, through prophetic revelation, he anticipated societal collapse as Jerusalem was conquered and fell.
So he and his family left. Like Osmar and the vast majority of Venezuelan refugees I’ve met, he left his home and his property, taking “nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents.” And his family set out, through wilderness, presumably either on foot or largely on foot, to find a new and better life. And, in fact, Lehi’s family, like many refugees, made this journey not just with adolescent children, but with babies, at least some of whom were born as they travelled (albeit in chapters we don’t read for this week).
I know that sometimes I don’t really dig into the Book of Mormon when I read it. It’s a story I’ve known, at least in broad strokes, for my whole life. I don’t always engage with the fear, the struggle, the pain that the people are dealing with. I already know, when I read “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents” that they’re going to make it to the land of promise, that the family is going to split, but that Nephi ends up mostly fine.
But when Lehi came home that day and said, “We need to leave,” he didn’t know that. Nephi didn’t know that. Sariah didn’t. Laman, Lemuel, Sam: they were all stepping into an unknown, escaping violence and economic collapse in hopes of finding a new and better life.
That’s an old story. But it’s also a very modern story, as people continue to escape violence and economic collapse, often through dangerous and difficult circumstances, to find a better life for them and their children, becoming strangers in a strange land.
For a year or two while I was a teenager, in addition to sacrament meeting, Sunday school, and RS/PH/YM/YW, we had a fourth church period. After sacrament meeting ended, the Primary teachers would leave to set up their classes. And, while they did that, the rest of us stayed in the chapel for a singing practice.
Now I was a teenager; I believe this was a formal church program, though it’s possible that it was just my ward or just my stake. Either way, this extra singing time was an incredible religious innovation. Why? Well, while we have a whole lot of hymns to choose from, we mostly sing the same one or two dozen, plus the Christmas ones in December.
And that makes sense: more often than not, if an unfamiliar hymn is called,[fn1] you get mostly silence, with a handful of tentative voices trying to follow the music. So the catch-22: your ward is mostly going to pick familiar hymns so that everybody can participate, but if it only picks familiar hymns, nobody’s going to get familiar with unfamiliar hymns.
This fifteen minute post-sacrament meeting hymn practice was aimed at fixing that problem (and, of course, giving Primary teachers a head start): in my ward, we’d practice (I think) two unfamiliar hymns each week. And then, the following week, we’d review the hymns from before and, if they were comfortable, move on to additional hymns.
I have no idea why the church/my stake/my ward stopped. It did, but in the near future, it would truly behoove us to pick up that post-sacrament meeting hymn practice again.
Why?
Over at Times and Seasons, Chad Nielson has been writing about the church’s forthcoming new hymnbook (the first new one since, I believe, 1985). As he describes it, the new hymnbook will likely have our familiar hymns, but it’ll also have both new and new-to-us hymns.
He even has guesses for what five of those new hymns might possibly be. And one of his guesses caught my eye: “This Little Light of Mine.”
I’m sure I had hear the song before, but my biggest memory of “This Little Light of Mine” is of three men parading through a subway car when I lived in New York City. As they walked through the car, they sang, with clear voices, stunning harmony, and perfect gospel swing.
Part of me desperately wants “This Little Light of Mine” to find a place in our hymnody. It’s a joyous song; it may or may not be a spiritual, but it grew and matured in the Black church tradition in the U.S., and has become an important part of the civil rights movement.
But part of me doesn’t want us to import it. Why? Well, after reading Chad’s blog post, I Googled whether the Mormon Tabernacle Choir[fn2] had recorded a version. They have, an arrangement by Mack Wilberg. And it is, well, not great. I mean, if you can’t say something nice. So I’m not going to say much about it.
But their arrangement loses the swing, loses the backbeat, and loses the passion. In their arrangement, it’s been transformed into a soft, timid, dirge-like piece of music,[fn3] without any of the elements that make it inspiring and beautiful.
Those elements—swing, syncopation, improvisation, call-and-response—aren’t part of our white, Protestant, North American and British hymn sensibility.
But here’s the thing: according to the church’s announcement, while we’re keeping our hymns, we’re also explicitly borrowing from other religious traditions and trying to create a globally-relevant hymnbook. That doesn’t mean trying to shoehorn other traditions’ hymns into our model—it means embracing diverse means of worship through music, expanding our own horizons, and learning to worship in ways we’re not yet comfortable with.
So I hope we do get “This Little Light of Mine.” And I hope the arrangement doesn’t sound like what the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang—I hope it’s arranged in a way that embraces the hymn popularized and perfected in the Black church. And I sincerely hope that, as we add this and other hymns to our repertoire, that we’ll also take the time—in church—to learn how to sing and appreciate these unfamiliar hymns.
So how should “This Little Light of Mine” sound? Below are a bunch of versions that I truly like. And we’re not going to sound like Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, or Bruce Springsteen in church. But I hope we can all appreciate the way that each of these performers lets the inherent joy and worship of “This Little Light of Mine” shine.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Her version of the song is just awesome. But also, without her, there wouldn’t have been rock’n’roll as we know it. Just wait for her guitar solo.
The Staples Singers: They were gospel. They were civil rights. And they could do no wrong musically.
Sam Cooke: A gospel singer-turned-soul singer, he seems to have popularized the song as something that could be sung by a solo performer (as opposed to as a choir). And while there is almost nobody in the world whose voice matches his, he demonstrates how you can do the song slowly, but with passion, soul, and worship. This is a slow version, but not a dirge. (One of the hard things about truly incorporating this into our hymnody: there’s an improvisatory aspect to it, and a call-and-response, both of which Cooke does.)
Aretha Franklin: Honestly, I hope everybody knows who the Queen of Soul is. This is an even slower arrangement than Sam Cooke’s. But notice how it is still moving forward; maybe it’s taking work to get to the promised land, but you can feel its movement, its determination, and, frankly, its salvation.
Soweto Gospel Choir: I know literally nothing about this choir, but I like their arrangement. It highlights that this is an worldwide song.
Gospel Dream: A French gospel choir. This sounds most like what I’d expect to hear from a gospel choir, as opposed to a soloist. But note that the way the song works is that there is a soloist over the choir. How would that work in congregational singing? That’s something we’d have to figure out.
Bruce Springsteen: Since the early 2000s, Bruce has spent a lot of time singing and recording the corpus of Alan Lomax’s folk song archeology. And honestly, he does it really well. Including this version of “This Little Light of Mine,” which sounds like the kind of number I want to be in when I get to heaven.
I’m not convinced there’s a good way to make “This Little Light of Mine” Mormon. I’m even less convinced that making it Mormon is a good goal.
But I also think we can expand Mormonism to learn, and to embrace, “This Little Light of Mine.” And I hope we have the desire to expand our sense of worship, and to expand our tastes and abilities, so that we can let ourselves fit this wonderful song. To do it, though, we’ll need to work at it.
[fn1] Yeah, I know. That’s how you choose songs at a jam session, not church. But it’s more fun to write that way.
[fn2] Yes, I know the choir has been renamed. No, I don’t care. And no, I’m not willing to bother remembering what its new name is.
[fn3] It’s a separate conversation from this one, but we ought to talk about why it is that we think that slow and quiet = reverent and worshipful, while spirited and joyful doesn’t.
Yesterday, Harrisburg, PA’s local ABC affiliate reported that Pennsylvania police had charged a local stake president of being aware of, but not reporting, child sexual assault allegations. Allegedly, the stake president knew of the abuse as early as October 2020, and appears to have learned about it from both the victim and the perpetrator (who was, himself, a local church leader). Under Pennsylvania law, clergy are “mandated reporters,” required to report suspected child abuse where they have reasonable cause to suspect that it’s happening. Failure to report is a third-degree felony in Pennsylvania, and people convicted of third-degree felonies face up to seven years’ imprisonment.
Allegations that church leaders mishandled accusations of child abuse are, unfortunately, nothing new. And my cobloggers and I have written a fair amount about abuse and the church’s reaction to it.[fn1] But until we repent and get it right, I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep returning to questions of mandated reporters.
This isn’t my area of expertise, but I’ve glanced through the literature, and there’s no clear consensus about whether, from a policy perspective, expansive mandated reporter laws are good for children. In fact, most people I’ve read are at least marginally skeptical of them, for a couple big reasons. The first is, they tend to be harmful to poor and nonwhite families. Because a good portion of what mandated reporters report is “neglect.” But often what neglect looks like is a mom who works two jobs and leaves her slightly-too-young child at home alone. A mandated reporter find out and reports mom. And suddenly, DCFS[fn2] swoops in, the family gets put into the system and separated, and that almost certainly does more harm than being left alone for a couple hours a day.
Also, the more mandated reporters you have, the more reports you have. Even trained, mandated reporters are not necessarily experts in the signs of child abuse—the number of inaccurate accusations may rise, making it harder to sort through for the accurate reports. And bad actors can weaponize abuse reports to attack people. Even if they’re ultimately absolved, the process can sometimes be the punishment.
So mandated reporters aren’t a perfect system. That said, a lot of the problems go away when the perpetrator or the victim tells you that they are abusing/being abused. And honestly, most of the time, that’s what happens in the publicized cases that involve the church: either the victim told a church leader that they were being abused or the abuser confesses that he is abusing children. And child sexual abuse is, frankly, less squishy than “neglect.”
So, while it would be great to see evidence that mandated reporting laws help victims of child sexual abuse, most of the issues researchers have raised about mandated reporting laws don’t seem to apply in this context. That is, requiring mandated reporters to report child sexual abuse doesn’t intuitively seem to do any harm to children; by contrast, not reporting potentially significantly harms children.
So why does the church work so hard to try to prevent bishops and stake presidents and other local church authorities from reporting child sexual abuse? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it’s looking to a maximalist version of religious liberty, where the state can’t tell it to do even things that are good? Maybe it’s standing in solidarity with the Catholic church, which has a absolute confessional seal, one which we don’t share? Maybe for other reasons?
Whatever the reason, at this point it’s getting beyond time to switch our mindset. Instead of going in with a default of not reporting, we should make our default to abide by mandated reporting statutes. A bishop should, in every circumstance, report to the proper authorities when an abuser confesses abuse and when a victim comes to him alleging abuse.
Not doing that does a ton of harm, on a ton of levels. Most immediately, it hurts the child who is or was being abused. The abuse may continue. The refusal to act sends a message that the victim is unimportant (or is disbelieved). The refusal makes it possible for the abuser to abuse other children in the future.
This harm to children should be enough. If we have one single guiding moral principle, it should be to protect children. But the harm goes beyond children. This stake president is facing up to seven years in prison. Even if the church pays for his legal defense, and even if he’s acquitted, the process of being arrested and prosecuted is, as I said above, part of the punishment. By putting lay leaders in a position to hear confessions but preventing them from reporting, we’re risking their liberty. We’re risking their consciences.
And frankly, it’s bad for the church. The church has an increasingly well-deserved reputation for not taking the actions necessary to address child abuse among our ranks. That’s not a reputation that has served the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church well; it’s one we would do well to get in front of by actively addressing the problem.
The down sides? They’re limited; the biggest one I can think of would be if, in fact, mandated reporter statutes on the margin are more harmful than helpful to children. And if the church thinks that they are, it can and should absolutely support research on the question! More knowledge is always better than less.
But can the church disclose? After all, in most states, the clergy-penitent privilege is held by the penitent; for clergy to disclose it would seem to require the penitent’s permission.
But that’s probably not a problem here: not every communication with clergy is protected by privilege. One of the common requirements is that the confession be confidential. And this is an opening for the church on two fronts. First, the church can get ahead of the problem by declaring that church leaders who hear confessions of child abuse will report that information to the required state authorities. That wrecks any reasonable expectation of confidentiality. And beyond that, courts have explained that in “determining what is confidential, courts must defer to churches.” If the church says that the confession of child abuse is not confidential under LDS church policy, then, courts cannot second-guess that.
And if I’m wrong? Would the church face liability if it disclosed confessions to the government? Almost certainly not. Even if clergy-penitent privilege applies, one New York court has convincingly explained that statutory privileges (like the clergy-penitent privilege) are merely rules of civil procedure, and that they don’t give rise to liability. Rather, if a statement from a penitent to clergy can’t be admitted into evidence, the court will prevent it from being admitted into evidence, but neither the clergymember nor the church would face any financial liability.
Again, maybe mandatory reporting isn’t the ideal solution (though also again, the arguments against it seem much less convincing when it comes to a perpetrator confessing or a victim looking for help). And that’s a policy argument that belongs to the legislature. But I can’t find any court decision that says clergy have a religious liberty excuse from reporting abuse where they are mandated reporters. And I further can’t think of any reason that the church shouldn’t have its bishops and other leaders comply with mandated reporter requirements (and, for that matter, report even where they’re not required to). Doing so would be good for abuse victims, good for church leaders, good for the church itself, and, in general, good for a more just world.
[fn1] See, e.g., here, here, here, and here. I know I’m missing at least one post I wanted to link to, but I can’t find it and can’t remember which of us wrote it.
[fn2] I know, where you are, you probably call it “CPS.” But in Chicago, “CPS” is Chicago Public Schools; in Illinois, the “Department of Children and Family Services” investigates child abuse.
I really don’t have time to post today, so this is going to be short, but I thought it important to point out that today is Fat (or Shrove) Tuesday.
That may not really resonate, since Mormonism doesn’t really have a liturgical calendar beyond Christmas, Easter, and maybe July 24,[fn1] but Fat Tuesday marks the day before Lent begins. Lent is the 40(-ish) days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, and Catholics (and many other Christians) celebrate it through a combination of fasting, prayer, scripture study, and almsgiving, all in an effort to become more like Jesus.
Before all of that begins, though, we have Fat Tuesday, Originally a day of confession in anticipation of the Lenten season, Fat Tuesday has shifted into a celebratory day; it also has a lot of food traditions. Some places celebrate Pancake Day. (I made pancakes for breakfast.) In Chicago today is Pączki Day. (Tonight I’m headed to a bakery to pick up the pączki I ordered.) In almost all Fat Tuesday food traditions, people eat food heavy in eggs, sugar, and fat.
Like I said, in Mormonism, we don’t particularly celebrate either Fat Tuesday or Lent. But we could! The idea of celebrating with rich food has New Testament roots, as does the idea of a period of reflection and introspection.
The church isn’t going to tell us how our Lenten worship should happen. But that’s great! It provides us with the opportunity to figure out how we can become better followers of Jesus, how we can make ourselves more like Him, and it doesn’t require any intervention or instruction by the church.
The other day, the Salt Lake Tribunereported that the church’s wealth had increased substantially yet again. According to Ensign Peak Advisors’ Form 13F, as of Dec. 31, 2023, it held about $50.5 billion in reportable securities (basically, the set of certain publicly-traded securities listed here). That’s up about $6.1 billion from the prior year, and, according to the Trib, is just a hair (well, a couple billion dollars) below its four-year high.
According to a Widow’s Mite estimate, this $50.5 billion represents just under 20% of the church’s net worth.
And here’s the thing: that’s a lot of money. Even if the other $215 billion in assets were operating assets (like church buildings) and illiquid investments (that is, investments that can’t easily be sold, like land), the church has a lot of liquid assets.
Is that a problem? It is, for a couple closely-related reasons.
But before we get into those reasons, let’s talk quickly about nonprofits and operating reserves. See, best practices is for nonprofits (including churches!) to have operating reserves. Operating reserves are unrestricted liquid assets that allow the nonprofit to continue operating if, among other things, a significant stream of revenue dries up, the nonprofit faces an unexpected expense, or it has less revenue than it anticipated.
Nonprofits should have operating reserves. But knowing they need operating reserves is just the start of any inquiry. Critically, a nonprofit needs to decide how much to maintain in operating reserves and when it will dip into its reserves.
These two questions are interrelated and don’t have right or wrong answers. But there is some guidance: generally, the advice I’ve read is that a nonprofit should have sufficient reserves to allow it to function for at least three months; I’ve seen recommendations of up to six months. But this flat 3-6 month recommendation glosses over differences in nonprofit profiles. Organizations with riskier donation profiles should probably save more, while organizations that have a fairly stable, steady, and consistent stream of revenue can probably save less.
Just having operating reserves isn’t enough, though: a nonprofit should have explicit policies for when it will use those reserves. Reserves should generally be used to fund short-term shortfalls, and once a nonprofit gets past its emergency, it should work to replenish the funds it used.
Also, this plan doesn’t have to be—and probably shouldn’t be—static. In fact, it isn’t a terrible idea for the board to revisit its operating reserves policy annually. Maybe it keeps everything the same, but at least it keeps the idea front-and-center of the organization’s mind.
So we have a minimum size for a reserve fund. Is there a maximum size?
There’s no legal limit on how large a nonprofit’s reserve fund can be (or, at least, there’s no such ceiling in the U.S.). But there are pragmatic reasons why a nonprofit might want to limit the size of its reserve fund, relative to its costs. The biggest one is that nonprofits generally want to show that they’re being good stewards of donor money.
And having a reserve fund is a critical part of that stewardship—it shows donors that the nonprofit is being responsible and preparing for unanticipated contingencies. But allowing the reserve fund to grow too large undercuts its message that it is stewarding the money well. Too much in reserves means the organization is not spending on its charitable mission. It signals to donors that it doesn’t actually need their money.
I’m afraid the church is in the too-large-reserve-fund position right now, and also in the it-doesn’t-have-a-reserve-fund-policy position. Now, I could absolutely be wrong, but at the very least, based on public disclosure, mine is a fair assumption.
Now, it’s laudable (for real) the the church was able to save and grow its assets as much as it has. But the Widow’s Mite estimates that the church now gets more revenue from investment returns than from tithing. But the thing is, it should be funding its operations out of tithing. It really shouldn’t be using its reserve fund for anything other than emergencies. But if it makes more on its reserve fund than it brings in in operating revenue, it could continue to exist perpetually (barring some kind of massive shock) without collecting any more tithing.
That sends a bad message to members, especially if, like me, they believe there’s something sacred about the sacrifice of paying tithes. If the church doesn’t need our tithes, though, because it could 100% operate without them, it to some extent transforms the sacred into waste. After all, if my tithing is just going to sit in EPA and make the church more money, rather than funding buildings and temples and salaries and aid to the poor, my tithing isn’t doing the things that transform it from profane to sacred.
(The Widow’s Mite report suggests that inflation-adjusted tithing has fallen; is that because people are discouraged? I truly don’t know, but it’s at least possible.)
And the church has yet to signal when or how it would use its reserves. I’m not going to Google it, because this is just a blog post, but several years ago, and EPA executive suggested that it was a rainy day fund (and perhaps an apocalypse-insurance fund). Now, in large part I ignore that, because EPA execs aren’t the ones deciding how or when the church will use its money. But it’s worth noting that we just rode out a world-wide pandemic that lasted somewhere between two years and from 2020 until today, and the church didn’t access that money. And if a worldwide pandemic isn’t the time to access it, I don’t know what is.
Now again, I don’t have any inside information. Perhaps the church has a reserve fund policy. Perhaps it knows how and when it will spend its investment income.
But it hasn’t disclosed the fact of or the details of any such policy to its donors or its members. And frankly, in all my research, I can’t tell if best practices around reserve fund policies include transparency. But in this case, I’d suggest that transparency would only serve the church’s interests.
In the first instance, it would allow the church to explain how it was stewarding tithing dollars. It can demonstrate both that it has a reserve and that that reserve isn’t just sitting there growing and gathering dust, but is there specifically to meet contingencies that church leaders lay out. (And again, those contingencies can change: I suspect what the church needs to prepare for today is different from what it needed to prepare for in April 2020.)
On top of stewardship is public perception. See, every quarter EPA is going to file its 13F. And every year, there’s a pretty good chance the number will be higher than the previous year. (Not always, of course. The market can go down. And some quarters/years, the church is likely to sell more securities than it buys, and because the 13F just reflects securities, if the church shifts to cash or to real property, say, that’ll show up as a lower reported asset value.)
That means that literally every quarter, the press can write a story about LDS finances. And as long as the church doesn’t have an explanation for how it’s going to use its reserve funds, that story at least implies that the church is here hoarding wealth for the sake of hoarding wealth.
So having a reserve fund is good. And the church’s reserves could allow the church to do more good than it could do without that money. But until it decides how big that fund should be, and until it decides when and how it’s going to spend that money, the reserve fund literally does no good, for the church, its membership, or the broader community. And it may actually harm some or all of those constituencies.
And it’s not so much that I was fascinated with Smith. I knew more or less what most of us know about him: he was the son of Hyrum and Mary Fielding; he served a mission in Hawai’i; he had a dream where he was late but he was clean; he served as the president of the church; he testified at the Smoot hearings; he had a revelation canonized in the D&C; his son, Joseph Fielding Smith, was also president of the church.
So it’s not that I was necessarily looking forward to the biography of Joseph F. Smith; I was looking forward to the biography of Joseph F. Smith as written by Stephen Taysom. Because I’ve been lucky enough to read some of his other scholarship, and I occasionally saw him posting excerpts from his book as he wrote.
And then, well, I came to the book a little late. It was published about nine months ago, and I finally started reading it in February. And it was everything I hoped it would be. I can say, unequivocally, that if you haven’t read it, you should get your hands on it as quickly as possible and dig in.
Why? Because this is as clear-eyed, yet empathetic, a portrayal of Smith as I can possibly imagine. It is easy enough for members of the church to treat prophets as something other than human: we can pedestalize them and either leave them on their pedestal or knock them off. But that’s not fair to actual flesh-and-blood people who lived lives, who struggled and felt joy, made mistakes, and had flashes of brilliance. And that’s who Taysom portrays here.
His Joseph F. Smith is a deeply flawed man, a man who experienced tragedy after tragedy and felt each one. His father and his uncle were murdered before he turned 6. He crossed the plains with his mother, and they struggled financially when they arrive in Utah. Then his beloved mother died in 1852, when he was about 14. Then, over his life, fourteen of his children predeceased him. And, Taysom shows, each death of a child, whether an infant or an adult, tore his heart.
Smith felt beset, a victim at war with a world filled with enemies. He struggled to contain his temper, and struggled to live up to his view of masculinity. He held prejudices.
But he was also smart. He learned Hawaiian and spoke it fluently throughout his life. He love his family, he loved his church. And he loved order. For better and worse, he began to systemize Mormon theology, trying to sand down the rough edges and inconsistencies that had developed.
In fact, in many ways, the church we currently have is rooted in Joseph F. Smith’s version of the Mormonism prophets before him had created.
Taysom’s portrait of Joseph F. Smith comes, in large part, from Smith’s own diaries and letters. He supplements those with writings from Smith’s contemporaries and family members. And in the gaps, he posits based on a histography of the time. He not only relates, but he explains what theory tells us about, for instance, childhood on the frontier.
The book is long. It’s thorough. It is as complete as a biography needs to be. And yet I could have read it for twice as long. Taysom’s writing is not only empathetic and clear-eyed, but it is also engaging and propelling and, frankly, fun to read.
I came away liking Joseph F. Smith more than I expected to. And in large part, that’s because Taysom doesn’t shy away from the good or the bad. After reading his biography, I can picture Joseph F. Smith as a real person. And he was not the kind of person that I would hang out with; he held beliefs and attitudes that I find repugnant. But he also held beliefs and attitudes that I find inspiring. Critically, though, he was a human, struggling through life and trying to make his way in a world that he found simultaneously hostile, but also compelling.
My sophomore year at BYU, freshly off my mission, some friends invited me to hot springs somewhere in the Provo vicinity. (I didn’t end up going, so I have no idea where in the Provo vicinity these hot springs are.) As a freshly returned missionary, though, I had a question: should I wear my garments there, then change into my swimsuit? or should I change into my swimsuit at home and then head to the hot springs?
See, most of my time as an endowed member of the church, I’d been a missionary, and questions of when to change into a swimsuit hadn’t come up. I ended up asking my bishop; I have no memory at this point of what he said, but I assume he said to wear my swimsuit to the hot springs (that again, I didn’t end up going to).
So why a random BYU memory here? Well, a couple days ago, the Salt Lake Tribunereported that Elder Hamilton of the Seventy spoke about garment-wearing at a stake conference in Elk Grove, California. And his statements, as reported, suggest that at least some church leaders are looking askance on how some members are wearing garments, and are possibly looking to shift the church’s policy on garments from a largely standards-based to a largely rule-based approach.
Based on the reporting, though, I’d propose that church leaders ask themselves a series of questions before making any such changes. In no particular order, I’d love to hear their answers to these questions:
Why focus solely on women?
According to an attendee of the stake conference, Elder Hamilton said that “too many younger women wear them mostly on Sundays and when attending the temple . . . rather than every day.” He also said that “many younger women are opting for ‘yoga pants’ during the week.”
Now, there are a couple possibilities here. One is that, in fact, women are more likely to wear garments less frequently than men. Another is that they are roughly equally likely, but church leaders are more likely to notice when women don’t wear garments.
But if women are more likely than men to wear garments less, maybe the problem is the garments themselves present problems to women that they don’t present to men. If that’s the case, perhaps rather than mandate that women wear garments more frequently, the church should redesign garments to take into account the problems women face.
If, on the other hand, it’s just a perception thing, then the focus on women looks even less justifiable. It looks like an attempt to control young women’s behavior, in a piece with telling Relief Society presidents that they can’t sit on the stand and other similar gender problems.
Either way, then, focusing on women strikes me as a bad substantive, a bad rhetorical, and a bad policy choice to make.
Is there only one correct way to wear garments?
In the meeting, Elder Hamilton asserted that there is “only one covenant path.”
I’m not a big fan of the “covenant path” metaphor. I don’t personally find that it provides any helpful illumination. But clearly a lot of people disagree with me, so let’s go with it. And let’s go with the idea that there is only one covenant path.
That still doesn’t tell us there is only one correct way to wear garments. In fact, it’s clear that there’s not (and that there’s broad variation in garment-wearing, at least on the margins). I don’t know of any endowed member of the church who would wear garments swimming or bathing. (There may be some, of course—I’m not in a position to say there’s literally no member who does, but I feel very comfortable saying that any who does is in the vast minority.) But what about the trip to the beach or swimming pool (or hot springs)?
Most of us don’t wear garments while we do at least some kinds of exercise. But where do we draw the line? Do we wear them running? biking? lifting weights? rock climbing? playing soccer? playing football? doing yoga? I suspect that the answer varies depending on the person.
How about doctors’ appointments?
So it’s clear that there are times when we wear garments and times when we don’t. It’s not clear what the dividing line between those times is, and, in fact, I suspect that many of us come to different conclusions.
Which is great! The point of wearing garments isn’t to wear garments; according to the church it’s “an outward expression of an inner commitment to follow the Savior Jesus Christ.” But the important thing is that inner commitment to follow the Savior. And part of how we follow the Savior is through making active decisions about what we need to do to follow Him.
Do we want to push members out?
Remember here we’re talking about active endowed members. And maybe you (meaning you, or meaning general authorities, or meaning the church itself) would prefer that active endowed members pretty much always wear garments.
So here’s the thing: for these purposes, we’ve basically got four groups of Mormons: (1) those who haven’t been endowed, (2) those who have been endowed, are active in the church, and wear their garments an “acceptable” amount, (3) those who have been endowed, are active in the church, and wear their garments an “unacceptable” amount, and (4) those who are endowed but are not active in the church (and presumably largely don’t wear garments, though I wouldn’t be shocked if some do).
By retrenching, the church may push some people from category (3) into category (2). But it also may push some people from category (3) into category (4).
Chances are both would happen. But is it worth losing otherwise active members of the church just to get some active members to wear their garments (which, again, are a symbol, not an end result) more frequently worth the cost? I’m skeptical that it is.
In the end, the church can set the policies that it wants. But I hope, before it looks to retrench, that leaders ask themselves why they want retrenchment, what benefits it would bring, and if those benefits are worth the costs.
It is, again, April 15, Tax Day in the United States (except in Maine and Massachusetts, where Tax Day will be Wednesday, April 17). As happens most years (at least when I remember and am not too busy), I like to post something Mormon-and-tax related, and I will this year too.
But before I do: if you’re a US taxpayer and you haven’t yet filed your returns or obtained an extension, may I recommend that you do that before reading on?
With that: this year’s installment is going to be a little different from usual, because I’m not actually going to write anything about the church’s or church members’ engagement with taxes. Rather, I’m going to post an excerpt from a newspaper article by Amos Morehead Stack. According to the biographical note I’ve linked (which seems to correspond with his writing), Mr. Stack visited Egypt and the Holy Land in the early 20th century, and he wrote and published a series of reflections on his experience. One of those was on tax collection in the Middle East. I’m not going to copy the full section (you can read it here if you’re interested).
He describes how tax collection happens: essentially, would-be tax collectors bid for a contract to collect taxes. If they won the bid, they put up a bond and collected from people. They were responsible for returning a specific amount, and they could keep any additional amount they raised. In describing this collection system, Stack writes:
It is easy to see how readily a Publican can become also a sinner. The tax collector’s execution is also a Winchester rifle. Tax collectors, like Mormon elders, generally go two together. You may see these tax gatherers galloping about the country any day.
Now frankly, I don’t know how accurate Stack’s report here is. To some extent, I’m skeptical that an American attorney who took a brief visit to the Middle East could really learn much, if anything, about the tax collection procedures in that country.
But his accuracy or not isn’t what stood out to me here; rather, by 1906, the image of Mormon missionaries proselyting in pairs was common enough that a random North Carolinian used it to illustrate others going two-by-two.
And with that, happy Tax Day!
Photo of Mormon missionaries Rudger Clawson and Joseph Standing.
