#TaxDay 2018: For Ye Were Strangers
The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. —Leviticus 19:34 My liturgical...
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Book Announcement: God and the IRS
I’m thrilled to announce that my book God and the IRS: Accommodating Religious Practice in United States Tax Law (New York: Cambridge UP, 2018) has just been published and is available for your reading...
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What’s the Buzz? #LyricJCS
Full disclosure: my history with Jesus Christ Superstar is pretty thin. The first time I remember experiencing it was after my wife and I got married, and she got a DVD of the 1973 film version.[fn1]...
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The Church Is Dropping Boy Scouts and Personal Progress. Now What?
If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, you’ve heard that yesterday the church announced that it’s cutting ties with Boy Scouts, effective December 31, 2019. It’s also going to drop Personal...
View ArticleImmigration and the Twelfth Article of Faith
In the last couple days, an apparently Mormon Twitter user claimed to have reported someone in his ward to ICE, which started deportation proceedings against the family. I’m dubious of the claim,...
View Article$32 Billion?!?
On Wednesday, MormonLeaks announced that they had connected the church to $32 billion in U.S. stock market investments. [KUTV story.] And how did it figure this out? Ingeniously, actually: it looked at...
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Tithing and Coercion
A number of comments on my post yesterday talked about the coercive nature of tithing. I thought I’d follow up on that idea in a new post, with two principal thoughts. A History of Tithing and Coercion...
View ArticleStudy Bible Bleg
I’m going to be quick here: after years with an iPhone, I’ve switched to an Android phone. That switch came with one unexpected loss: the Lumina app. The Lumina app is great. Not only does it have the...
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The Loveloud Foundation
According to my Facebook feed, Saturday was the Loveloud Festival in Salt Lake. Now in its second year, Loveloud is meant to provide love and acceptance for LGBTQ+ kids. If you’ve followed my...
View ArticleCan the Ecclesiastical Endorsement Process Be Fixed?
Over the weekend, a Salt Lake Tribune article highlighted an enormous problem at the BYUs: the annual ecclesiastical endorsement process means that bishops can circumvent the amnesty clause that BYU...
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Money and the Kingdom of God
Photo by Pictures of Money. CC BY 2.0 Last week, I was involved in a Twitter discussion that at least implicated questions of economics, government spending, and private spending. A couple of the...
View ArticleMarijuana, Mormon Lobbying, and Tax Exemption
Scrolling through Twitter this morning, this tweet caught my eye: NEW: Mormon church lobbyists urged Utah politicians to come out against the state's medical marijuana initiative. And an email I...
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Socialism and Satan’s Plan
Via GIPHY It happened. Again. On Mormon Twitter, someone mentioned socialism, to which somebody responded that socialism was Satan’s plan. (There were a couple other responses I saw that hinted at the...
View ArticleRequired Training
On Monday, I got an email from HR reminding me that, as part of the school’s Harassment Prevention & Business Skills initiative, I needed to complete an online Sexual Harassment for Employees...
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When Religious Tax Accommodations Are Inconsistent
On Wednesday, October 24, the Seventh Circuit is going to hear arguments in the appeal of Gaylor v. Mnuchin. I’ve written about this parsonage allowance case a number of times in the past (see here and...
View ArticleMormon Obedience: On Disregarding the Prophet’s Preferences
On Sunday morning, President Nelson dedicated his full full talk to shutting down the use of Mormon and other nicknames for the church. This seems to be something he feels passionate about, and...
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Two Quick Things Related to the Freedom From Religion Foundation
A quick announcement, and a quick related link: I’ve been blogging about the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s suit challenging the parsonage allowance for several years, both here and at Surly...
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My Middle Way Mormonism
Over at Wheat & Tares, a number of bloggers have written takes on what they’re calling “Middle Way Mormonism.”[fn1] Although their takes differ marginally from one another, they’re all fairly...
View ArticleBuilding Zion. In Two Hours Per Week.
We’re weeks away from the end of the three-hour block. Implemented in 1980, the three-hour block was, in part, a response to the energy crisis, in part a recognition that as the church expanded, the...
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A Class Tax: Utah Taxpayers in 1920
The other day, I did a quick search on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America site to see if I could find any information about prominent Utah or Mormon taxpayers. See, today’s tight privacy of...
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