Let’s talk money for a second.I recently heard a Mormon claim that the LDS church gives more
Let’s talk money for a second. I recently heard a Mormon claim that the LDS church gives more charity per capita than most organizations. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this from a member of the church. First of all, you can’t make claims like that when your finances are not public, transparent records. It’s all hearsay at that point. The one statistic this person did point out was humanitarian aid, which he said was listed on Mormon.org. So I looked to see what Mormon.org had to say about how much the church gave to humanitarian aid. This screenshot from Mormon.org was taken on 5/1/2014. It says quote “The Mormon Church has donated more than $1 billion in cash and material assistance to 167 different countries in need of humanitarian aid since it started keeping track in 1985.” Let’s break that down for a second shall we? If you divide $1 billion by 29 years (1985-2014), you get $34,482,758.62. So, roughly $35 million per year… And they say that this is cash AND material assistance. The church is estimated to have 15 million members (we won’t argue the basis of that right now…), but at that rate, that’s roughly $2.30 per member, per year to humanitarian aid. Two dollars and thirty cents. As a Mormon, I gave thousands of dollars in tithing to the church each year. You are required to pay 10% if you want to enter the temple. So for a household with say a $40,000/year income, that’s roughly $4000 in tithing money each year. So .06% ($2.30) of a $4000 tithing donation would be used for humanitarian aid. Less than 1%. The City Creek Mall project is part of a $5 billion revitalization project and cost roughly $1.5 billion. My questions are: Why doesn’t the church give more than $2.30 of donated membership tithing per person each year to humanitarian aid? Why don’t they spend more money on humanitarian aid than they do to build mega-malls? Why doesn’t the church choose to be transparent about their charitable contributions? Why do members of the LDS church make claims that their church is one of the most giving organizations per capita when there’s no way of knowing that, and from looking just at the humanitarian aid statistic, it’s clearly not the case? I’d really like to know. -- source link
#exmormon#ex-mormon#ex lds#tithing#mormon