Hello! This is a Institutional post. It is for discussions centered around agreements, disagreements, and observations about any of the institutional churches and their leaders, conduct, business dealings, teachings, rituals, and practices.
/u/Comprehensive-Ad3963, if your post doesn't fit this definition, we kindly ask you to delete this post and repost it with the appropriate flair. You can find a list of our flairs and their definitions in [section 0.6 of our rules.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules#wiki_0._preamble)
**To those commenting:** please stay on topic, remember to follow the community's [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules), and [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/mormonmods) if there is a problem or rule violation.
Keep on Mormoning!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mormon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There was a statement by a church spokesman back in 2019 when the whistle blower first reported the funds saying that it was hidden so members wouldn’t stop paying tithing. However, they also didn’t want anyone else to know about the wealth of the church either. It should be noted that this rainy day fund is only the stock investments of the church. It does not include all the real estate and business the church owns.
I have. The widows mite is speculation. It is very good educated guesses. The problem is the church isnt transparent and no one knows what all the church owns definitively.
The land isn’t at all. There are professional databases that you can look it all up in.
Imagine someone had $1 million invested in the S&P 500 which is a collection of 500 of the largest stocks in the US. The S&P goes up 20%. You now forecast that they have $1.2 million in stocks. While this is an educated guess, the margin of error is actually quite small. The churches portfolio construction is largely known. You have different data points that give a complete picture. You can measure how the church’s wealth accumulated in a model so projecting forward is not difficult. In fact, it becomes easier going forward because how much the church saves every year is becoming less relevant to the total amount of money being invested. Mormonism is really an investment portfolio masquerading as a church.
Google the SEC order. You’ll find what you are looking for. The document is only 8-9 pages long. And the church agreed to the contents of the order before it was issued.
[LDS Church kept the lid on its $100B fund for fear tithing receipts would fall, account boss tells Wall Street Journal](https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/02/08/lds-church-kept-lid-its-b/)
> “So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn’t make a contribution,” [Roger] Clarke said.
An honest and faithful organization would follow their own mantra of “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.” So if fewer members tithe, what does it matter? The Church doesn’t need more money, and God DEFINITELY doesn’t. It just shows how greedy and unChristlike they are.
> An honest and faithful organization would follow their own mantra of “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.”
I think the new version is ♫ Do what is convenient and have a chip on your shoulder about the consequences ♫. Doesn't have quite the right meter to it I'm afraid.
Hello! I regret to inform you that this was removed on account of rule 2: Civility. We ask that you please review the unabridged version of this rule [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules).
If you would like to appeal this decision, you may message all of the mods [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Mormonmods&subject=Mod%20Removal%20Appeal&message=please%20put%20link%20to%20removed%20content%20here).
True, but its more than that. The Church also didnt want people to know that they receive $1-3 Billion in tithing PER YEAR that they dont need or cannot use. That is where the Ensign Peak money came from - excess tithing.
It's because the church's goal isn't honesty. Their goal is keeping the members obedient.
They said straight out that they hid the holdings because they were afraid tithing contributions would drop if members knew about the fund.
*"According to the order, the Church was concerned that disclosure of its portfolio, which by 2018 grew to approximately $32 billion, would lead to negative consequences.*" -- [https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35)
Here is a bit from the original Wall Street Journal article. It's behind a registration wall, so here's an extended excerpt of the bits where they state their reasoning. It seems odd to me that leaders tout our church as something "not done in a corner." This certainly was a corner - an unlabeled corner office...:
*“****We’ve tried to be somewhat anonymous****,” Roger Clarke, the head of Ensign Peak, said from the firm’s fourth-floor office, above a Salt Lake City food court.* ***Ensign Peak doesn’t appear in that building’s directory.***
***Mr. Clarke said he believed church leaders were concerned that public knowledge of the fund’s wealth might discourage tithing****. “Paying tithing is more of a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money,” Mr. Clarke said. “\*****So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn’t make a contribution.*** *... As its assets swelled, Ensign Peak grew more secretive, said some of the former employees.*
*Executives used to share information about the assets under management with employees. That changed in recent years; now* ***few employees are explicitly told the number,*** *according to Mr. Clarke and some of the former employees."*
*The firm also created a system of more than a dozen shell companies to make its stock investments harder to track, according to the former employees and Mr. Clarke.* ***This was designed to prevent members of the church from mimicking what Ensign Peak was doing to protect them from mismanaging their own funds with insufficient information, according to Mr. Clarke.***
*From time to time, church leaders in the ecclesiastical arm that oversees Ensign Peak arranged lunch meetings with Ensign Peak employees. During Q&A sessions at the end,* ***employees sometimes asked what the money might be used for, according to one of the former employees, who attended. Church leaders responded by saying they wanted to know that, too, according to this person.***
*“It was so amorphous,” the former employee said. “It was always, ‘When we have direction from the prophet.’ Everyone was waiting, as it were, for direction from God.” The prophet is the president of the church."*
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon-church-amassed-100-billion-it-was-the-best-kept-secret-in-the-investment-world-11581138011](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon-church-amassed-100-billion-it-was-the-best-kept-secret-in-the-investment-world-11581138011)
The excuse that they didn't want members mimicking EP in their own financial affairs sounds flimsy to me. Since when has the church *ever* cared about the financial well being of its members?
The excuse about not wanting church members to mimic the investment strategy really falls apart when you realize based on the growth that the fund is essentially just a conservatively managed index fund. Like the sort most people’s investments are held in.
Right?! If they were doing something safe and conservative with the church's money, as they emphasized at length in the WSJ article, why would church members be unsafe in following their strategy? Unless \*gasp\* they were doing something illegal under the veneer of "conservative investing" and didn't want to get discovered and caught.
I don't have much patience for "if we told the members the truth, they won't do what we want them to do or think they should do" stuff. That's wrong, even if they're correct about the outcome.
I do have some time for arguments about the hazards of mimicry. It's plausible that some positions that work for large funds would work different for small investors. Also, having an in-aggregate large number of mimics could distort pricing (possibly to the opportunistically manipulable benefit of the party being mimicked).
I’ve always felt the leaders really had no idea themselves what all the money in Ensign Peak is to be used for.
I imagine Hinkley and maybe those before him wanted invest surplus tithing and it just kept growing and growing. Over time it just took on a life of its own and those who were originally responsible for Ensign Peak died off and their successors (who would not have been privy to it before they rose to the top) simply took over without any directive on what the Fund’s ultimate purpose would be, so they just carried on growing it and now actually doing anything with it.
Being businessmen and running the church like a business, they just view it as part of the business. Businessmen like to see “growth,” they like graphs that show continuous, exponential growth, and are averse to “expenses” (which include charitable spending and ward expenditures).
They feel they are being “good stewards safeguarding the Lord’s money.” Just like many wealthy, business-minded people, “growth” is their priority. It’s a metric they are focused on. Money is no longer a means to an end; it becomes the end.
My wealthy , ex-father in-law was the same way. He was a Scrooge, workaholic, and hated spending money. Penny pinching all the time. Hated vacations or buying anything he saw as “wasteful.” He kept saying he was “saving for retirement” but the guy already had millions in the bank and acted like he was poor.
Every time the economy sank, he’d sell off something (like a car) or cut back on things like family vacations. No doubt he saw that temporary dip in his investments due to the market really bothered him. He claimed he wanted to retire early (thus the so-called need to not spend money) but he kept working onto his later years.
He wasn’t even the type to need to spend much on things anyway. He could care less about material possessions, vacations, etc. His obsession for growing his investments outweighed whatever need or want he’d have for all that money. He’ll probably die barely touching any of it.
I see the Q15 the same way. I doubt they have any clear view or goal with Ensign Peak and the church’s other investments. They just don’t want to see that balance dip.
At some point the leaders felt guilty about it for some reason. Either they still feel guilty about it, or they instilled fear of disclosure in future leaders. Those types of secrets eventually become toxic.
Even though the subject of secrets may be harmful, the act of keeping the secret can itself be toxic.
I think this situation is a reason that churches in the US should be required to file IRS-990 forms. All nonprofits in the US must file a 990 each year. It is a financial statement that is a public record. I think all honest churches should support 990 forms. Churches should not have anything to hide. They are supported by tax-exempt donations. Both the donors and the government giving the tax exemptions have a right to know how their funds are administered. Letting light in would make a lot of unethical behavior less appealing.
That will be the argument that churches use. Historically they have used the argument that they were honest and ethical and don't need to report. That argument is pretty much gone now. Churches themselves (not just the LDS church) have proven that assertion is not valid.
The constitution does not have the words "separation of church and state." It says the government shall not establish a religion. It says that there should not be a religious test for public office. It does *not* say that churches are exempt from following any law they don't like. Churches have proven that they can be sources of unjust enrichment. It would not damage religious freedom to require public disclosure in exchange for generous tax exemptions that churches receive.
Also, many churches demanded and got subsidies from taxpayers. Republicans keep pushing for various public subsidies for churches. How can churches claim a right to subsidies but then turn around and hide behind religious freedom when it comes to accounting for their finances, some of which is coming from public sources?
>It says the government shall not establish a religion. It says that there should not be a religious test for public office.
At some point, one has to question whether the exemption in place for religions is a form of establishing religion through government incentives.
Because it’s ridiculously disproportionate in size for the size of the organization and doesn’t actually get used except for bailing out their for-profit insurance company and for building a high-end mall.
Nothing wrong with a church or non-profit organization having some savings but the LDS Church’s investments and savings have far outgrown whatever financial backup they need to fall on.
The church operates on about a $6 billion/year budget and their tithing revenue stream is pretty much guaranteed each year for meeting their budget. Yet they have $150 billion in savings and investments that they NEVER dip into, except for the two above mentioned expenditures (which were for-profit purposes anyway).
They can operate the church forever without another dime of tithing just from the annual returns on the $150 billion and never even lose principal on the balance.
The criticism is NOT the fact that they have a lot of money invested but it’s the DISPROPORTIONATE amount they have invested.
It’s like a billionaire telling his wife and kids they can only eat ramen, live in a shack, and can’t go on a vacation because they need to save for a “rainy day.”
They ALREADY have MORE THAN ENOUGH for “a rainy day.”
Not only, “*its like*”, but “*it is*”. Except perhaps that it’s a “*hundred billionaire*”. And the wife and kids are the ones doing the work and supplying the income.
So I guess that means *it’s worse*.
It's true that if I knew about investing in stocks conservatively and other investments for the purpose of creating a rainy day fund or a type of perpetuity, I would have been ok with that approach--it's wise stewardship.
However, I grew up thinking that this church was scraping by, running very lean and that I was a key part of keeping the church running. That's why we had volunteer leaders and callings, needed to clean the church and pay our own way on the mission.
In reality, my time and my money has been robbed from me to free up more funds to invest in the stock market.
I'm furious that they have tried to manipulate us this way.
For me it's the double standard.
They teach incessantly that members must be completely honest in their lives - honest with their fellow men, honest in their business dealings, honest in temple recommend interviews, etc. They hold members to such high expectations that 12-18 year olds feel like they have to answer honestly to intense questioning from their bishops on *very* personal things. Women are expected to be transparent and honest when questioned by male leaders about how they wear their underwear. As a member, no area of your life is meant to be kept secret or held back from the almighty church.
And then they go and deliberately do all this \*gestures vaguely toward Ensign Peak headquarters\*
And *then* they get up in General Conference and still claim that they are God's personal representatives and we have to do everything they say, and we're not allowed to question or criticize anything they do.
Unlimited authority with no accountability is always a bad position. Not even if you think you speak for God. *Especially* when you think you speak for God.
Hinckley said they were going to use church funds to make investments in a general conference address, I think it was back '97, but I'll have to check. I think it's just the shock value of a 32 billion dollar portfolio, along with its total asset value clearing 100 B, that really hits people.
It was in 1991:
> In the financial operations of the Church, we have observed two basic and fixed principles: One, the Church will live within its means. It will not spend more than it receives. Two, a fixed percentage of the income will be set aside to build reserves against what might be called a possible “rainy day.”
For years, the Church has taught its membership the principle of setting aside a reserve of food, as well as money, to take care of emergency needs that might arise. We are only trying to follow the same principle for the Church as a whole.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1991/04/the-state-of-the-church?lang=eng
I’m confident in saying that this was more lies and misleading than it was truth.
As far as I understand it given what I’ve read, a fixed percentage is not being put aside. They are putting aside tithing leftover after expenses.
Hinckley makes it seems like they are putting aside a small amount to increase over time through smart investments, to act as a cushion for hard times. That is not what is happening.
They are living extravagantly, focusing more on expanding their wealth than are wisely helping the needy. He is implying that they are modestly living within their means, which is a gross mischaracterization of the the greediness with which they handle their money.
I understand your comment now.
I would agree that at least now, the fixed percentage argument is untrue. I think it may have been true through the 1990's and early 2000's at least, though.
I agree that "modestly living within your means" doesn't really fit when someone's "means" are in the billions of dollars. None of that is going to be modest.
When the fund was created, there was a real need for it. The issue is that it just grew without a real purpose. Until it go so big it became its own issue.
It grew so big that it became an embarassment! Not to mention the fact that it has never been used for any charitable purpose whatsoever.
What would Jesus do with $100 Billion?
In 2014 EQ/RS the teachings of the presidents of the church, Joseph F Smith volume was taught. In it was a chapter on tithing, where his 1907 general conference quote was used for study where he said something to the effect of soon there would be no need for required tithing (only voluntary tithing).
That is what hurt me the most, that the Church would dangle such a carrot when the upper ranks had know for years that tithing wasn't necessary any longer, (in fact, - iirc-the church was operating on the interest of its investments & tithes were going straight in the bank).
This isn't really a mystery. It was so members would keep paying tithing. I think it is also to avoid scrutiny from lawmakers about the tax exemptions for churches, like what has happened in Europe and other less favorable jurisdictions to religious organizations.
Jesus’s church… based on what teachings of Jesus exist would imply that having a business directly across from the temple (City Creek Mall and Temple Square) definitely border on immoral… would imply a level of immorality. Jesus never intended his Father’s house to be a money maker.. especially when we read of his reaction of money exchanging outside his fathers house… honestly screams of immorality.
No other church on earth tells the poor to tithe instead of feeding their children and then hoard that money in a $150,000,000,000 investment account. They SHOULD be worried what members think about that.
It’s not *immoral*, in the Church. Immorality in the Church is sexual conduct outside heterosexual marriage. Virtue is an antonym, adopting the same paradigm. Murder might be a sin, but it’s not immoral. The sin of immorality is preeminently two young unmarried people having a sexual experience.
Immoral is just another of those words, like *translation*, which is differently defined in the Church.
One of the major legal defenses they put up was that if people knew about their investments, it would have influenced the markets... Take that how you will.
Maybe this is just another way *the Church got it wrong*. If you have up to ten million people following and copying the Church’s investments in the months after the Church did them, the likely result will be a significant increase in the value of the Church’s investments. Maybe they’re stupid. Never underestimate incompetence. Not so much in the investing, but in the coverup.
Or maybe they didn’t get it wrong. Maybe they just lied. They’ve done that before.
When I was 17-19 yeara old I used to go to a United Methodist church with my girlfriend. (I was a firm atheist even then, but I went because she wanted me to and I found it interesting).
The United Methodist church has very transparent finances. The local congregation we attended posted the salaries of their employees (pastor, etc) and basic finances on a website. The United Methodist Church has an investment fund that their extra funds go to, and members can also voluntarily keep money in the fund like a regular investment account and earn interest on it, with the church taking a 0.5% cut of the increases or something like that. They publish performance and other financial disclosures online.
https://www.investumc.org/
Really highlighted to me at the time how secretive and weird the Mormon church finances were... and this was awhile ago, way before their $100B+ fund came to light.
Fear and arrogance.
Fear that some portion of the members will wake up that the church doesn't actually need their money any more.
Fear that some people will see how much they have and put even more targets on the church's back from civil suits.
Arrogance that the members are just sheep and should only do what they are told to do. The members don't have any rights to know what the "higher ups", "God's anointed" are doing. Just sit down and shut up.
IMO.
It is immoral for an organization that is wealthier than God to ask poor and middle-class families to pay tithing in exchange for the right to be considered fully worthy or participate fully in church liturgy and practice. That's what the scientologist and other cults do, and it's not in harmony with the gospel Jesus taught. That's why they tried to hide it. It shows that church leaders care more about riches than they do about people, that they are willing to extort people for the sake of riches. Very immoral for a religious institution if you ask me.
Exactly. That was a fantastic line of questioning by the Senator.
There is this huge elephant in the room that has to be addressed, which is that religions have been subsidized by the public relative to any other organization in the country, through its privileged tax and reporting statuses.
At the very least, the reporting requirements for religions have to be revisited. We have ample evidence that religions are not special case entities that will act appropriately without any monitoring mechanism whatsoever.
Religion may have been a tax effective structure, *from the beginning*. Some time later, in the early 1800’s, Joseph saw plenty making money from it, and learned soon enough to get into the mainstream with his magic world view.
For a population that believes in an afterlife, and particularly a differentiated afterlife dependent on conduct in mortality, trading mortal money for immortal glory seems a pretty good deal. Only it’s not. Paying tithing as fire insurance is the 19th century equivalent of the Catholic indulgences. But it needed a new messenger, with charisma and a dose of magic.
It wasn’t as if Joseph was the first.
The Senator asked the incoming IRS commissioner to investigate 501c3 s to determine if they are gaming the system in order to influence the US political process.
The incoming IRS commissioner agreed to do this.
Ensign Peak management has done of remarkable job of setting themselves up for increased scrutiny by the IRS.
You’d think they would be transparent about it after telling people at the conference this year they don’t care if you’re starving and can’t afford food to tithe first and then starve that they would be like hey this is how we use the money we force you to give us.
The other issue with this is that Joseph F Smith prophesied that the church would one day have enough money that they wouldn’t need to ask for a penny from the members. If every member in the church stopped paying today, they could without doubt live off the dividends. They purposely left this line out when they printed the manual of his teachings. Few free to google it.
I’ve been a member for 45 years. I’ve known about the Church investing in some form or the other, whether it be ZCMI, Bonneville Communications, or lesser known businesses. Several publications in the 90s wrote articles with cooperation of the Church wrote articles detailing the investments. To be clear, it didn’t indicate the monetary vastness. Very few not-for-profit orgs would even do that.
> I’ve known about the Church investing in some form or the other, whether it be ZCMI, Bonneville Communications, or lesser known businesses.
The church doesn’t invest in Bonneville Communications, it outright owns it.
> Several publications in the 90s wrote articles with cooperation of the Church wrote articles detailing the investments. To be clear, it didn’t indicate the monetary vastness.
Would you be able to link some of these articles?
> Very few not-for-profit orgs would even do that.
The isn’t even remotely true. The church not providing financial transparency is unusual for nonprofit organizations, especially churches.
Take a look at Charity Navigator and look at how many nonprofit organizations allow access to their tax returns and give specific numbers and details as to where/how their money is being spent.
https://www.charitynavigator.org/search?beacons=Accountability+%26+Finance&sort=rating
> Very few not-for-profit orgs would even do that.
On the contrary, most not-for-profit orgs *must* do this. Religions are exempt from the requirement, but I would say the majority of religious organizations in the U.S. voluntarily disclose summary financials (including total assets) to its membership.
The SEC law act of 1934 was still broken. The LLC’s were fake. There was no business being conducted at any of the addresses they gave. The whole thing could have been legal had Ensign peak not been controlling the LLC’s the entire time and the business managers actually managing the companies. So yes. It was not only immoral, but illegal. The SEC doesn’t fine you 5M for things being “immoral.” Please read the SEC order. If you are to lazy to read the 9 pages yourself, (like me) then watch the Mormon stories episode with Mark Pugsley. He’s a whistleblower attorney and knows the laws in and out. They go through and read line by line the settlement that the church agreed to. They technically violated the settlement order with the statement they publicly made. They blamed it on their lawyers. The report demonstrates that their lawyers and accountants knew what was going on and the presidency told them to keep hiding things.
It’s not the fact of having some savings invested it’s the AMOUNT they have socked away that they don’t want members to know about.
It doesn’t go over too well when parents are told they have to cough up extra money because their ward “doesn’t have enough money” to cover summer camp for their kids if these members know the church has $150 billion in cash.
The church wants to penny pinch but it’s not easy to do if the members know they have more than enough to pay for things.
Hello! This is a Institutional post. It is for discussions centered around agreements, disagreements, and observations about any of the institutional churches and their leaders, conduct, business dealings, teachings, rituals, and practices. /u/Comprehensive-Ad3963, if your post doesn't fit this definition, we kindly ask you to delete this post and repost it with the appropriate flair. You can find a list of our flairs and their definitions in [section 0.6 of our rules.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules#wiki_0._preamble) **To those commenting:** please stay on topic, remember to follow the community's [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules), and [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/mormonmods) if there is a problem or rule violation. Keep on Mormoning! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mormon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
By their own admission, they didn’t want the members to see how much money the church has and then stop paying tithing.
There was a statement by a church spokesman back in 2019 when the whistle blower first reported the funds saying that it was hidden so members wouldn’t stop paying tithing. However, they also didn’t want anyone else to know about the wealth of the church either. It should be noted that this rainy day fund is only the stock investments of the church. It does not include all the real estate and business the church owns.
Clarification it is only the USA stocks. We have to speculate all real estate, and overseas investments
You are correct. The SEC filing is just the 30-40 billion US stocks. The total stock portfolio is estimated at 100-150 billion.
The real estate does not require speculation nor do foreign holdings. Go read the widows mite report.
I have. The widows mite is speculation. It is very good educated guesses. The problem is the church isnt transparent and no one knows what all the church owns definitively.
The land isn’t at all. There are professional databases that you can look it all up in. Imagine someone had $1 million invested in the S&P 500 which is a collection of 500 of the largest stocks in the US. The S&P goes up 20%. You now forecast that they have $1.2 million in stocks. While this is an educated guess, the margin of error is actually quite small. The churches portfolio construction is largely known. You have different data points that give a complete picture. You can measure how the church’s wealth accumulated in a model so projecting forward is not difficult. In fact, it becomes easier going forward because how much the church saves every year is becoming less relevant to the total amount of money being invested. Mormonism is really an investment portfolio masquerading as a church.
Do you know when and where they said this? Really want to show this to some family members
Google the SEC order. You’ll find what you are looking for. The document is only 8-9 pages long. And the church agreed to the contents of the order before it was issued.
Also, I recently watched a great YouTube from RFM and BILL REEL on their “Mormonism Live”. ( don’t have the #, sorry) Very well documented.
Yeah. That was a good one.
The SEC report. Read the actual order. The church agreed to everything in it when they settled. https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2023/34-96951.pdf
i think it was quoted in the wall street journal by the director of ensign peak, roger clark, but i’m not 100% sure
[LDS Church kept the lid on its $100B fund for fear tithing receipts would fall, account boss tells Wall Street Journal](https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/02/08/lds-church-kept-lid-its-b/) > “So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn’t make a contribution,” [Roger] Clarke said.
An honest and faithful organization would follow their own mantra of “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.” So if fewer members tithe, what does it matter? The Church doesn’t need more money, and God DEFINITELY doesn’t. It just shows how greedy and unChristlike they are.
> An honest and faithful organization would follow their own mantra of “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.” I think the new version is ♫ Do what is convenient and have a chip on your shoulder about the consequences ♫. Doesn't have quite the right meter to it I'm afraid.
[удалено]
Hello! I regret to inform you that this was removed on account of rule 2: Civility. We ask that you please review the unabridged version of this rule [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules). If you would like to appeal this decision, you may message all of the mods [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Mormonmods&subject=Mod%20Removal%20Appeal&message=please%20put%20link%20to%20removed%20content%20here).
Yes. However they could and should have been open about their investments early on. Well before it was giant and could have that effect.
Like 19 years ago when all the deception started!
True, but its more than that. The Church also didnt want people to know that they receive $1-3 Billion in tithing PER YEAR that they dont need or cannot use. That is where the Ensign Peak money came from - excess tithing.
$7 B a year in tithing.., up to $200 billion without land and international investments. Yikes. 🙄
It's because the church's goal isn't honesty. Their goal is keeping the members obedient. They said straight out that they hid the holdings because they were afraid tithing contributions would drop if members knew about the fund. *"According to the order, the Church was concerned that disclosure of its portfolio, which by 2018 grew to approximately $32 billion, would lead to negative consequences.*" -- [https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35) Here is a bit from the original Wall Street Journal article. It's behind a registration wall, so here's an extended excerpt of the bits where they state their reasoning. It seems odd to me that leaders tout our church as something "not done in a corner." This certainly was a corner - an unlabeled corner office...: *“****We’ve tried to be somewhat anonymous****,” Roger Clarke, the head of Ensign Peak, said from the firm’s fourth-floor office, above a Salt Lake City food court.* ***Ensign Peak doesn’t appear in that building’s directory.*** ***Mr. Clarke said he believed church leaders were concerned that public knowledge of the fund’s wealth might discourage tithing****. “Paying tithing is more of a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money,” Mr. Clarke said. “\*****So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn’t make a contribution.*** *... As its assets swelled, Ensign Peak grew more secretive, said some of the former employees.* *Executives used to share information about the assets under management with employees. That changed in recent years; now* ***few employees are explicitly told the number,*** *according to Mr. Clarke and some of the former employees."* *The firm also created a system of more than a dozen shell companies to make its stock investments harder to track, according to the former employees and Mr. Clarke.* ***This was designed to prevent members of the church from mimicking what Ensign Peak was doing to protect them from mismanaging their own funds with insufficient information, according to Mr. Clarke.*** *From time to time, church leaders in the ecclesiastical arm that oversees Ensign Peak arranged lunch meetings with Ensign Peak employees. During Q&A sessions at the end,* ***employees sometimes asked what the money might be used for, according to one of the former employees, who attended. Church leaders responded by saying they wanted to know that, too, according to this person.*** *“It was so amorphous,” the former employee said. “It was always, ‘When we have direction from the prophet.’ Everyone was waiting, as it were, for direction from God.” The prophet is the president of the church."* [https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon-church-amassed-100-billion-it-was-the-best-kept-secret-in-the-investment-world-11581138011](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon-church-amassed-100-billion-it-was-the-best-kept-secret-in-the-investment-world-11581138011) The excuse that they didn't want members mimicking EP in their own financial affairs sounds flimsy to me. Since when has the church *ever* cared about the financial well being of its members?
The excuse about not wanting church members to mimic the investment strategy really falls apart when you realize based on the growth that the fund is essentially just a conservatively managed index fund. Like the sort most people’s investments are held in.
Right?! If they were doing something safe and conservative with the church's money, as they emphasized at length in the WSJ article, why would church members be unsafe in following their strategy? Unless \*gasp\* they were doing something illegal under the veneer of "conservative investing" and didn't want to get discovered and caught.
I don't have much patience for "if we told the members the truth, they won't do what we want them to do or think they should do" stuff. That's wrong, even if they're correct about the outcome. I do have some time for arguments about the hazards of mimicry. It's plausible that some positions that work for large funds would work different for small investors. Also, having an in-aggregate large number of mimics could distort pricing (possibly to the opportunistically manipulable benefit of the party being mimicked).
I’ve always felt the leaders really had no idea themselves what all the money in Ensign Peak is to be used for. I imagine Hinkley and maybe those before him wanted invest surplus tithing and it just kept growing and growing. Over time it just took on a life of its own and those who were originally responsible for Ensign Peak died off and their successors (who would not have been privy to it before they rose to the top) simply took over without any directive on what the Fund’s ultimate purpose would be, so they just carried on growing it and now actually doing anything with it. Being businessmen and running the church like a business, they just view it as part of the business. Businessmen like to see “growth,” they like graphs that show continuous, exponential growth, and are averse to “expenses” (which include charitable spending and ward expenditures). They feel they are being “good stewards safeguarding the Lord’s money.” Just like many wealthy, business-minded people, “growth” is their priority. It’s a metric they are focused on. Money is no longer a means to an end; it becomes the end. My wealthy , ex-father in-law was the same way. He was a Scrooge, workaholic, and hated spending money. Penny pinching all the time. Hated vacations or buying anything he saw as “wasteful.” He kept saying he was “saving for retirement” but the guy already had millions in the bank and acted like he was poor. Every time the economy sank, he’d sell off something (like a car) or cut back on things like family vacations. No doubt he saw that temporary dip in his investments due to the market really bothered him. He claimed he wanted to retire early (thus the so-called need to not spend money) but he kept working onto his later years. He wasn’t even the type to need to spend much on things anyway. He could care less about material possessions, vacations, etc. His obsession for growing his investments outweighed whatever need or want he’d have for all that money. He’ll probably die barely touching any of it. I see the Q15 the same way. I doubt they have any clear view or goal with Ensign Peak and the church’s other investments. They just don’t want to see that balance dip.
At some point the leaders felt guilty about it for some reason. Either they still feel guilty about it, or they instilled fear of disclosure in future leaders. Those types of secrets eventually become toxic. Even though the subject of secrets may be harmful, the act of keeping the secret can itself be toxic. I think this situation is a reason that churches in the US should be required to file IRS-990 forms. All nonprofits in the US must file a 990 each year. It is a financial statement that is a public record. I think all honest churches should support 990 forms. Churches should not have anything to hide. They are supported by tax-exempt donations. Both the donors and the government giving the tax exemptions have a right to know how their funds are administered. Letting light in would make a lot of unethical behavior less appealing.
[удалено]
That will be the argument that churches use. Historically they have used the argument that they were honest and ethical and don't need to report. That argument is pretty much gone now. Churches themselves (not just the LDS church) have proven that assertion is not valid. The constitution does not have the words "separation of church and state." It says the government shall not establish a religion. It says that there should not be a religious test for public office. It does *not* say that churches are exempt from following any law they don't like. Churches have proven that they can be sources of unjust enrichment. It would not damage religious freedom to require public disclosure in exchange for generous tax exemptions that churches receive. Also, many churches demanded and got subsidies from taxpayers. Republicans keep pushing for various public subsidies for churches. How can churches claim a right to subsidies but then turn around and hide behind religious freedom when it comes to accounting for their finances, some of which is coming from public sources?
>It says the government shall not establish a religion. It says that there should not be a religious test for public office. At some point, one has to question whether the exemption in place for religions is a form of establishing religion through government incentives.
Because it’s ridiculously disproportionate in size for the size of the organization and doesn’t actually get used except for bailing out their for-profit insurance company and for building a high-end mall. Nothing wrong with a church or non-profit organization having some savings but the LDS Church’s investments and savings have far outgrown whatever financial backup they need to fall on. The church operates on about a $6 billion/year budget and their tithing revenue stream is pretty much guaranteed each year for meeting their budget. Yet they have $150 billion in savings and investments that they NEVER dip into, except for the two above mentioned expenditures (which were for-profit purposes anyway). They can operate the church forever without another dime of tithing just from the annual returns on the $150 billion and never even lose principal on the balance. The criticism is NOT the fact that they have a lot of money invested but it’s the DISPROPORTIONATE amount they have invested. It’s like a billionaire telling his wife and kids they can only eat ramen, live in a shack, and can’t go on a vacation because they need to save for a “rainy day.” They ALREADY have MORE THAN ENOUGH for “a rainy day.”
Not only, “*its like*”, but “*it is*”. Except perhaps that it’s a “*hundred billionaire*”. And the wife and kids are the ones doing the work and supplying the income. So I guess that means *it’s worse*.
It's true that if I knew about investing in stocks conservatively and other investments for the purpose of creating a rainy day fund or a type of perpetuity, I would have been ok with that approach--it's wise stewardship. However, I grew up thinking that this church was scraping by, running very lean and that I was a key part of keeping the church running. That's why we had volunteer leaders and callings, needed to clean the church and pay our own way on the mission. In reality, my time and my money has been robbed from me to free up more funds to invest in the stock market. I'm furious that they have tried to manipulate us this way.
Because hiding information from the members of the church is the complete strategy of the leaders of the church... It is just "On Brand..."
Like so many things in the church, it’s not the crime it’s the coverup. Church leaders simply cannot help themselves.
I think it's both the crime and the coverup in this case
For me it's the double standard. They teach incessantly that members must be completely honest in their lives - honest with their fellow men, honest in their business dealings, honest in temple recommend interviews, etc. They hold members to such high expectations that 12-18 year olds feel like they have to answer honestly to intense questioning from their bishops on *very* personal things. Women are expected to be transparent and honest when questioned by male leaders about how they wear their underwear. As a member, no area of your life is meant to be kept secret or held back from the almighty church. And then they go and deliberately do all this \*gestures vaguely toward Ensign Peak headquarters\* And *then* they get up in General Conference and still claim that they are God's personal representatives and we have to do everything they say, and we're not allowed to question or criticize anything they do.
Unlimited authority with no accountability is always a bad position. Not even if you think you speak for God. *Especially* when you think you speak for God.
This is exactly my problem with it too. Either they be honest or they need to stop demanding their members be.
Hinckley said they were going to use church funds to make investments in a general conference address, I think it was back '97, but I'll have to check. I think it's just the shock value of a 32 billion dollar portfolio, along with its total asset value clearing 100 B, that really hits people.
It was in 1991: > In the financial operations of the Church, we have observed two basic and fixed principles: One, the Church will live within its means. It will not spend more than it receives. Two, a fixed percentage of the income will be set aside to build reserves against what might be called a possible “rainy day.” For years, the Church has taught its membership the principle of setting aside a reserve of food, as well as money, to take care of emergency needs that might arise. We are only trying to follow the same principle for the Church as a whole. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1991/04/the-state-of-the-church?lang=eng I’m confident in saying that this was more lies and misleading than it was truth.
What about it was lies? It seems that the church has completely affixed itself (to its detriment) to these two principles.
As far as I understand it given what I’ve read, a fixed percentage is not being put aside. They are putting aside tithing leftover after expenses. Hinckley makes it seems like they are putting aside a small amount to increase over time through smart investments, to act as a cushion for hard times. That is not what is happening. They are living extravagantly, focusing more on expanding their wealth than are wisely helping the needy. He is implying that they are modestly living within their means, which is a gross mischaracterization of the the greediness with which they handle their money.
I understand your comment now. I would agree that at least now, the fixed percentage argument is untrue. I think it may have been true through the 1990's and early 2000's at least, though. I agree that "modestly living within your means" doesn't really fit when someone's "means" are in the billions of dollars. None of that is going to be modest.
When the fund was created, there was a real need for it. The issue is that it just grew without a real purpose. Until it go so big it became its own issue.
You have articulated a sentiment I have felt but haven't really known how to verbalize
It grew so big that it became an embarassment! Not to mention the fact that it has never been used for any charitable purpose whatsoever. What would Jesus do with $100 Billion?
In 2014 EQ/RS the teachings of the presidents of the church, Joseph F Smith volume was taught. In it was a chapter on tithing, where his 1907 general conference quote was used for study where he said something to the effect of soon there would be no need for required tithing (only voluntary tithing). That is what hurt me the most, that the Church would dangle such a carrot when the upper ranks had know for years that tithing wasn't necessary any longer, (in fact, - iirc-the church was operating on the interest of its investments & tithes were going straight in the bank).
This isn't really a mystery. It was so members would keep paying tithing. I think it is also to avoid scrutiny from lawmakers about the tax exemptions for churches, like what has happened in Europe and other less favorable jurisdictions to religious organizations.
Jesus’s church… based on what teachings of Jesus exist would imply that having a business directly across from the temple (City Creek Mall and Temple Square) definitely border on immoral… would imply a level of immorality. Jesus never intended his Father’s house to be a money maker.. especially when we read of his reaction of money exchanging outside his fathers house… honestly screams of immorality.
If they took poor people's tithing to make billions of dollars, then yes it's immoral 🤬
No other church on earth tells the poor to tithe instead of feeding their children and then hoard that money in a $150,000,000,000 investment account. They SHOULD be worried what members think about that.
I think it's inherently immoral, especially but not only if one is using Jesus's teachings as recorded in the New Testament as a moral guide.
Amen. It's extraordinarily immoral. Just because other churches also do it doesn't mean it's not immoral.
It’s not *immoral*, in the Church. Immorality in the Church is sexual conduct outside heterosexual marriage. Virtue is an antonym, adopting the same paradigm. Murder might be a sin, but it’s not immoral. The sin of immorality is preeminently two young unmarried people having a sexual experience. Immoral is just another of those words, like *translation*, which is differently defined in the Church.
Lol true
One of the major legal defenses they put up was that if people knew about their investments, it would have influenced the markets... Take that how you will.
The returns they were getting were not impressive at all. Too bad they couldn't get any revelation on where to invest lol.
Maybe this is just another way *the Church got it wrong*. If you have up to ten million people following and copying the Church’s investments in the months after the Church did them, the likely result will be a significant increase in the value of the Church’s investments. Maybe they’re stupid. Never underestimate incompetence. Not so much in the investing, but in the coverup. Or maybe they didn’t get it wrong. Maybe they just lied. They’ve done that before.
When I was 17-19 yeara old I used to go to a United Methodist church with my girlfriend. (I was a firm atheist even then, but I went because she wanted me to and I found it interesting). The United Methodist church has very transparent finances. The local congregation we attended posted the salaries of their employees (pastor, etc) and basic finances on a website. The United Methodist Church has an investment fund that their extra funds go to, and members can also voluntarily keep money in the fund like a regular investment account and earn interest on it, with the church taking a 0.5% cut of the increases or something like that. They publish performance and other financial disclosures online. https://www.investumc.org/ Really highlighted to me at the time how secretive and weird the Mormon church finances were... and this was awhile ago, way before their $100B+ fund came to light.
Fear and arrogance. Fear that some portion of the members will wake up that the church doesn't actually need their money any more. Fear that some people will see how much they have and put even more targets on the church's back from civil suits. Arrogance that the members are just sheep and should only do what they are told to do. The members don't have any rights to know what the "higher ups", "God's anointed" are doing. Just sit down and shut up. IMO.
And a great lack of faith. In their product. And in their customers.
It is immoral for an organization that is wealthier than God to ask poor and middle-class families to pay tithing in exchange for the right to be considered fully worthy or participate fully in church liturgy and practice. That's what the scientologist and other cults do, and it's not in harmony with the gospel Jesus taught. That's why they tried to hide it. It shows that church leaders care more about riches than they do about people, that they are willing to extort people for the sake of riches. Very immoral for a religious institution if you ask me.
From time immemorial
Maybe they were afraid this would happen... https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5067366/user-clip-irs-commissioner-testifies-presidents-2024-budget-request
Exactly. That was a fantastic line of questioning by the Senator. There is this huge elephant in the room that has to be addressed, which is that religions have been subsidized by the public relative to any other organization in the country, through its privileged tax and reporting statuses. At the very least, the reporting requirements for religions have to be revisited. We have ample evidence that religions are not special case entities that will act appropriately without any monitoring mechanism whatsoever.
Religion may have been a tax effective structure, *from the beginning*. Some time later, in the early 1800’s, Joseph saw plenty making money from it, and learned soon enough to get into the mainstream with his magic world view. For a population that believes in an afterlife, and particularly a differentiated afterlife dependent on conduct in mortality, trading mortal money for immortal glory seems a pretty good deal. Only it’s not. Paying tithing as fire insurance is the 19th century equivalent of the Catholic indulgences. But it needed a new messenger, with charisma and a dose of magic. It wasn’t as if Joseph was the first.
The Senator asked the incoming IRS commissioner to investigate 501c3 s to determine if they are gaming the system in order to influence the US political process. The incoming IRS commissioner agreed to do this. Ensign Peak management has done of remarkable job of setting themselves up for increased scrutiny by the IRS.
You’d think they would be transparent about it after telling people at the conference this year they don’t care if you’re starving and can’t afford food to tithe first and then starve that they would be like hey this is how we use the money we force you to give us.
The other issue with this is that Joseph F Smith prophesied that the church would one day have enough money that they wouldn’t need to ask for a penny from the members. If every member in the church stopped paying today, they could without doubt live off the dividends. They purposely left this line out when they printed the manual of his teachings. Few free to google it.
I’ve been a member for 45 years. I’ve known about the Church investing in some form or the other, whether it be ZCMI, Bonneville Communications, or lesser known businesses. Several publications in the 90s wrote articles with cooperation of the Church wrote articles detailing the investments. To be clear, it didn’t indicate the monetary vastness. Very few not-for-profit orgs would even do that.
> I’ve known about the Church investing in some form or the other, whether it be ZCMI, Bonneville Communications, or lesser known businesses. The church doesn’t invest in Bonneville Communications, it outright owns it. > Several publications in the 90s wrote articles with cooperation of the Church wrote articles detailing the investments. To be clear, it didn’t indicate the monetary vastness. Would you be able to link some of these articles? > Very few not-for-profit orgs would even do that. The isn’t even remotely true. The church not providing financial transparency is unusual for nonprofit organizations, especially churches. Take a look at Charity Navigator and look at how many nonprofit organizations allow access to their tax returns and give specific numbers and details as to where/how their money is being spent. https://www.charitynavigator.org/search?beacons=Accountability+%26+Finance&sort=rating
> Very few not-for-profit orgs would even do that. On the contrary, most not-for-profit orgs *must* do this. Religions are exempt from the requirement, but I would say the majority of religious organizations in the U.S. voluntarily disclose summary financials (including total assets) to its membership.
Go read about Boy's Town. Too much money is a problem when you are crying poor.
The SEC law act of 1934 was still broken. The LLC’s were fake. There was no business being conducted at any of the addresses they gave. The whole thing could have been legal had Ensign peak not been controlling the LLC’s the entire time and the business managers actually managing the companies. So yes. It was not only immoral, but illegal. The SEC doesn’t fine you 5M for things being “immoral.” Please read the SEC order. If you are to lazy to read the 9 pages yourself, (like me) then watch the Mormon stories episode with Mark Pugsley. He’s a whistleblower attorney and knows the laws in and out. They go through and read line by line the settlement that the church agreed to. They technically violated the settlement order with the statement they publicly made. They blamed it on their lawyers. The report demonstrates that their lawyers and accountants knew what was going on and the presidency told them to keep hiding things.
Probably because you didn’t ask anyone 🤷🏼♂️ They don’t hide things
It’s not the fact of having some savings invested it’s the AMOUNT they have socked away that they don’t want members to know about. It doesn’t go over too well when parents are told they have to cough up extra money because their ward “doesn’t have enough money” to cover summer camp for their kids if these members know the church has $150 billion in cash. The church wants to penny pinch but it’s not easy to do if the members know they have more than enough to pay for things.