Insomnia-Induced Fantasies

I'm writing this at 3:00am on a weeknight. I'm suffering from one of my occasional bouts of insomnia. And in this sleep-deprived state I had a crazy fantasy about how I would leave the church.

This train of thought began as I was contemplating the current state of our Relief Society presidency. The Relief Society president has been having really terrible health problems lately. I am not privy to what those health problems are, but they have caused her face to swell up so much that she doesn't even look like the same person any more. She has consequently been absent from church a lot. The other counselors have been having very spotty attendance as well because of health concerns or other reasons.

The absence of leadership has been causing a lot of confusion and problems in communication. There was a recent mix-up over the lesson schedule that caused me to teach two weeks in a row---and one of the lessons I had to make up off the top of my head just a few days before teaching it. Plus, there have been other problems with communications about activities that have made it so that no one has shown up for the Relief Society Activities Formerly Known as Enrichment except the people presenting.

Even though our current presidency has only been in for less than half a year, I have to wonder if it's possible they might get released. And in pondering that possibility, I began to have a fantasy in which the bishop called me to be the next Relief Society President.

Let me be clear that I've never wanted to be Relief Society President---I never really wanted to be that engrossed in the church even when I was a TBM. But I've also always felt in my heart that I would make a really, really good Relief Society President. Part of me is sad that I can never be one now because, in all modesty, I seriously would have ROCKED at it.

So here's how the fantasy goes:

Bishop: Sister, we would like to extend a release to you from your current calling as a Relief Society teacher.

Me (inwardly feeling a great sense of relief at having my last ties to the church finally cut): Thank you, Bishop. I gratefully accept this release.

Bishop: And the reason we are extending this release to you is because we have a new calling in mind for you. The Spirit has told me that you should be the one who should serve as our ward's new Relief Society President.

Me (chuckling with amusement): Well, Bishop, it's good that you are so in tune with the Spirit. I do think that I could do a good job as the Relief Society President. I'm a very well-organized person who puts 110% into everything I do. In particular, I would make it my mission to reach out to all the sisters in the ward. I would work my hardest to help every sister feel loved, appreciated and welcome at Relief Society. (Pause.) But I'm afraid that I cannot accept this calling.

Bishop: Uhhh... Why not?

Me: Because I don't believe in the church. At all. Not one bit of it. I haven't believed a word of it for at least a year now. I'm not even sure I believe that God exists any more. I've only been coming because I didn't want to make waves when I left. I just wanted to quietly recede into inactivity without anyone really noticing. But you've unfortunately forced my hand here. I'm sorry. What I'm going to do next will probably comes as quite a shock to you, but...

(At this point, I take out my temple recommend and walk over to the Bishop's paper shredder and run it all the way through.)

Me: From this point on, you will not see me here at church any more. I don't want you to try to talk me out of it. I don't want any home teachers or visiting teachers. I just want to be left alone. And I would also appreciate it if you never mention this conversation to anyone else. Sorry to drop such a bomb on you, but, well... That's how these things go sometimes. If you don't mind, I'd like to end this conversation here and I don't really wish to discuss it any further. And I do not authorize you to discuss this conversation with anyone else. Ever.

(Walks out of office.)

Ahhh, me.... Fantasies....

The Intimate Apparel Section

You knew it had to come some time: the blog entry about garments. As of the writing of this blog, I haven't been wearing garments for about half the day now.

For a long time now, I've sensed that taking off the garments would be the next logical step in my gradual extrication from the church and its culture. (The previous steps I've completed were to stop paying tithing and to start building a social network outside of the church.) This weekend I was thinking about the garments and wondering what was keeping me from taking them off. I certainly don't believe that the garments have any special protective power. And my temple covenants are meaningless to me. Furthermore, I never stopped wearing bras and underwear (I just wore them on top of the garments), so it's not like it was an issue of buying new clothing. What was really keeping me from doing it? When I would ask myself that question, I couldn't really think of an answer.

I guess I've just been waiting for a reason to take them off. I suppose that I imagined some negative event at church would make me upset enough to take off my garments (rend my garments?) in protest. After all, I put them on for the first time as part of a religious ritual, maybe I should take them off as part of a de-religious ritual?

But I've been entering a new phase in my relationship to the church. I guess you could call it apathy or just a general decrease in my personal interest in the church. Lately it feels like I haven't been as obsessed with the church and the level of emotion I've been less offended by my church meetings so much as I've been bored by them. I'm starting to adopt the attitude that the church as something that I used to do once,  but my life is changing now. And I'm developing new interests and I'm starting to find new things to occupy my time and thoughts. I guess I'm just gradually starting to let go.

Today I was changing from my work attire to more comfortable attire at home. The garment bottoms were riding up inside of my jeans as I was putting them on and it occurred to me that I should just take them off rather than bother to do the same old readjustments where I try to pull them down to make them comfortable again. So, off they went. And then I took the top off too, for the sake of completeness.

And it was just like that. No ceremony. No emotions. Just the mundane act of putting on underwear. It reminds me of a line from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper."

Things I've Said About Mormon Topics Recently

Used with permission from xkcd.com

This is just smorgasbord of comments that I've made in a few other forums (fora?) recently.

My Relationship to the Church

In response to an inquiry about my situations, thoughts and feelings about the church:

For me personally, the most difficult thing about the LDS church is that I feel like it wants to have a parent-child relationship with me. (The institution is the parent and I am the child.) In essence, it's an infantilizing force. Now that I'm a 30-something, I'm ready to graduate beyond "gospel principles" and wrestle with the more problematic aspects of the church as a mature adult. As an academic, I place a high value on 1) independent thought, 2) developing empathy for people who are different from you or who may disagree with you, and 3) the ability to recognize that no issue is purely black and white, that nearly every issue is more complex than you initially thought it was before you began to examine it in more depth. I believe that thoughtful, well-researched dialogue (argumentation) is usually the best means to this end. It's a messy, uncontrollable process, but, at the end of the day, it is one which produces better people and institutions once they have gone through that crucible. Unfortunately, the correlated, authoritarian structure of the church is not conducive to producing an environment in which thoughtful dialogue can occur (or even a type of person who is capable of that kind of mindset). As such, Mormons like me and my husband are going elsewhere for our spiritual and intellectual stimulation.

On McNaughton's Art

In discussion with a friend on Facebook about Jon McNaughton's claim he is being censored by BYU:

Oftentimes I find that Mormon culture is an extension or exaggeration of American's conservative culture at large. I am intrigued by the conservative impulse to read an "attack on conservative values" into what seems like a fairly a benign administrative decision. (It reminds me of the attack on Christmas that you hear about on Fox News every December.)

I think that framing the issue as an "attack" is meant to function as proof that one's particular religious and political beliefs are ordained by God. The logic is that if something is from God, then Satan must obviously want to destroy it. Therefore, the existence of strong opposition to your cherished beliefs is further proof that your beliefs are of divine origin.

Unfortunately, what these kind of "attack" paradigms really do is just create a red herring to distract us from any kind of meaningful, critical dialogue about the real issues at hand (e.g. does selling McNaughton's art mean that BYU endorses his political values and does it therefore constitute a breach of the church's politically neutral position, should BYU try to be considerate of a diverse range of political beliefs on its campus, analysis of the aesthetic value of McNaughton's artwork, etc.)

For me personally, I remember going to the basement of the BYU Bookstore to buy my husband some lab goggles and seeing McNaughton's painting so prominently displayed. I distinctly remember feeling a profound sense of alienation when I looked at it, a deep sense of how much I didn't belong in a culture that celebrated a painting like that. I never complained to anyone about it, but maybe someone else who had a similar experience did say something.

Perspectives on Inactive Single Women

This next one was in a comment on a blog entry I wrote nearly three years ago about why 20-something single women go inactive. It's in response to a recent comment from a reader who said she left the church because she was tired of the strict family culture of her parents, which was fueled largely by their Mormon beliefs:

A whole lot has changed in terms of my relationship to the church since I first wrote this blog entry three years ago. I'm going through a phase of transitional Mormonism where I am painfully aware of the church's "warts" that were completely invisible to me up until now. Some of those warts have been too big to ignore and have caused me to wrestle quite a bit over what I want my relationship with the church to be in the future.

As part of this transition, I've been hanging out with a lot of liberal Mormons, New Order Mormons, Liahona Mormons, inactive Mormons, ex-Mormons, etc. And I've discovered that the Mormon community is far more diverse than I could have EVER imagined. I used to think of ex-Mormons as angry, bitter folks who just want to rebel or sin, who are so prideful that they are easily offended by something a church member or leader did. I used to define the world in terms of Mormon, ex-Mormon, and non-Mormon. I used to think that a Mormon was someone who subscribed to a particular orthodoxy and orthopraxy (strictness in belief and practice).

I could not have been more wrong. Mormons, ex-Mormons---and all the many other shades of gray in between---are an incredibly diverse group of people. And they all have genuine reasons for believing and acting the way they do. Every single one of them. They're not being prideful. They're not ignorant. They're not sinful. Far from it. In reality, they're all decent human beings who are taking the course of action that makes sense to them in light of their life experiences and all the information that is available to them.

The experiences you shared in your comment make a lot of sense to me in terms of explaining why 20-somethings are leaving the church (and despite my previous comments, I think that the 80% statistic might not be that far off from the truth).

A few semesters ago, I received an email from the parent of one of my college students that was completely inappropriate. The parent told me he was convinced his 20-something daughter had been lying to him about attending my class. He demanded that I tell him whether or not his daughter was attending my class regularly and wanted to know what her current grade was. I emailed him and said that it would be a breach of the student's privacy to share that information with him, but I would be willing to meet with both him and his daughter if she gave her consent. (Incidentally, the student had not been attending my class for some time---and I never heard from either him or the student again.)

The problem with this kind of parenting is the locus of both morality and control is in the parent. In a my-way-or-the-highway model of parenting (a strict, authoritarian, father-knows-best model of parenting), then, as Jane Nelson says, "it becomes the adult's responsibility to be constantly in charge of children's behavior." She writes: "The most popular form of excessive control used by parents and teachers is a system of rewards and punishment. With this system, adults must catch children being good so that they can give rewards and catch them being bad so they can dole out punishment. Who is being responsible? Obviously it is the adult; so what happens when the adult is not around? Children do not learn to be responsible for their own behavior."

It makes sense that a lot of Mormon parents would try to be controlling parents because that is essentially the relationship the church currently has with its members: a parent-child relationship in which the church is the father-figure who tells us what to do and provides for our needs in return for our obedience (social needs being chief among them). The problem is that the church becomes the locus for control and morality---in other words it fosters a dependent relationship in which its members are not free to think for themselves, to act for themselves, and to define morality for themselves through their own experience and insights. This, to me, is one of the most disturbing aspects of the contemporary correlated church. And I don't begrudge anyone who chooses to leave that kind of an institution or that kind of a family.

Coping with Bad Relief Society Lessons

My experiences attending church are often very bipolar, meaning that they go from one extreme to another. For example, I'm usually really bored in sacrament meeting (or too distracted trying to wrangle kids). But a few weeks ago, my favorite professor at BYU happened to be our high council speaker and it was simply awesome to hear him speak again. Best sacrament meeting I've been to in a long time.

I find that fluctuations in my mood swings are most commonly caused by Relief Society. Typically I'm most positive about the church just after teaching my own Relief Society lessons---perhaps because I am largely in control of the discussion. And a few weeks later my mood crashes after a particularly bad lesson. I've had two "zingers" in the last two months that have been difficult to cope with.

The first one was a 4th Sunday lesson a few weeks ago when we discussed Elder Packer's very infamous Conference Talk "Cleansing the Inner Vessel." If you read the edited Ensign version of the talk, it really says very little about homosexuality at all. It says perhaps a little bit about pornography and mostly talks about the importance of being chaste. As a teacher, you wouldn't have to talk about homosexuality at all. Not my teacher! She jumped right in and talked about homosexuality from the get-go. About half the lesson was spent doing some heavy media-bashing (a big pet peeve of mine since I am a film scholar) and the other half of the lesson was spent gay-bashing. Some of the worst anti-gay comments were things like: "We cannot tolerate that which kills us," and "The idea that homosexuality is a born trait is the biggest lie of our time." Ummm... no, it's been pretty well proven to be caused by biological factors. The lesson was just horrible, frankly. There was no civility. No compassion. No tolerance for nuance. No room for thoughtful dialogue.

Later that night, I tried to engage in a dialogue with a sister whom I have a fairly good relationship with. (She made some of the more flagrant comments during the lesson.) I put out the feelers to see if there would be any way to have a thoughtful conversation about some of the points she brought up. Although the conversation was very respectful, it became quickly apparent to me that I was on a fool's errand because she was incapable of changing her mind about this issue. It depressed me greatly.

It's been about two months since that episode and I was really starting to recover. I was starting to feel good about being in the church for a while. And then---WHAM!---I got hit by another awful Relief Society lesson last Sunday.

It was a lesson about modesty based on General Relief Society 1st counselor Silvia Allred's Ensign article entitled "Modesty: A Timeless Principle for All." Here's a few highlights:

• My favorite quote from the teacher was: "When you dress immodestly, you become walking pornography." First of all, I think a more accurate term would be erotica, not pornography. In my mind, there's a big difference between the two and it bothers me when they become conflated.
• Another great comment was: "We need to make sure our little baby and toddler girls don't wear those little strappy sun dresses, because at what age are you going to tell them they can't any more?" Seriously, there was a Sugar Beet article parodying that mindset once and so it really made me laugh to hear that kind of comment.
• And there were several comments that were just generally catty and judgmental. Comments about being "shocked and dismayed" at what people wear to the temple ("I can see her garments through the slit in the back of her dress!"), comments about men taking off their garment tops to mow the lawn and setting a bad example for boys, comments about how teenage boys say girls with expensive jeans are "high maintenance."

There were a number of things that bothered me about the lesson. One is how lessons about modesty are purely targeted at women. Incidentally, the teacher said that this talk was chosen by special request of the Bishop as a follow-up to the Stake Youth Chastity Fireside a few weeks ago. But my husband informed me that the Priesthood had a talk about achieving balance in their lives instead. (The Elder's Quorum counselor rode his unicycle as an object lesson!) When I heard that, I became truly upset. The stark double-standard is all but too apparent. I agree that a woman who dresses provocatively can have a Pavlovian physiological effect on men that is partially beyond their control. But it's still a two-way street at the end of the day. Taken to an extreme, it turns into that "Well, she asked for it" mentality that bothers me to no end. Having seen the devastating effects that rape has had on two women in my class this semester, I can guarantee you that no woman asks for it. Men bear a responsibility to exercise their sexual impulses in healthy and considerate ways and these lessons do not promote that mentality.

Well, the point of all of this is to say that I have good days and bad days at church. It's all an emotional roller-coaster. An ex-Mormon friend of mine theorized that leaving the church is like going through a divorce. Everyone will go through at least one of the stages of grief during the process. If it isn't obvious from my chart above, I'm in the bargaining stage. I try to find ways emotionally to make it work, but then they all implode on me eventually. I'm not sure how much longer this will be emotionally sustainable.

The Double Consciousness of the Non-Believing Mormon

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

             ---W.E.B. Dubois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" from The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

I want to borrow W.E.B. Dubois's term double consciousness in my essay today. My intention in using this term is not to imperialistically appropriate black identity or to diminish the very real conditions that this term was originally coined to describe. Rather, I want to describe a peculiar sensation that I feel as a non-believing Mormon: a strange sensation of simultaneously being both inside and outside Mormonism, of belonging to both worlds and belonging to neither. I use Dubois's term because I just can't seem to find a better term to describe this condition. So, I use it as an homage to Dubois's keen insight in describing a condition that I can empathize with---even though I am not black myself.

As I've stated before, I no longer believe in Mormonism. It might seem odd, but this last year as I've made my intellectual journey out of Mormonism, I've found that I express my testimony in terms of percentages---meaning the percentage of myself which sincerely believes in the possibility that Mormonism is the true church of God. For example, prior to the October 2010 General Conference, I remember distinctly feeling that my belief was hovering at 30%, meaning that 30% of me still believed there was a chance that the LDS church was the true church. Today I would place that number at a mere 2-3%. In other words, I feel fairly confident that the church's truth claims are improbable.

And yet I still attend church and outwardly appear to be the exact same person I was a year ago. This duality of orthopraxy vs. orthodoxy (conformity in practice but not belief) leads me to feel a great deal of inner conflict. It has also caused the strange sensation of "double consciousness" that I want to describe in this blog.

Most of the time I consciously self-identify as a non-believer. But there are occasionally times when I talk about Mormonism with believing members in which I must perform Mormonism in order to maintain the appearance of being a believer. That is to say, I adopt the codes and conventions of speech that Mormons use to describe and perceive the world.

On some level I am consciously aware that I am only performing Mormonism as I am speaking with these individuals, that there is a dissonance between who I seem to be and who I really am. But sometimes as I'm talking, there is suddenly a strange transition in which this dissonance fades away and I start to feel like I really do believe, like I'm the old me---that I'm just putting on a familiar, comfortable old coat I haven't worn in long time. Here's some specific examples:

• My husband's family came to visit us a few months ago. As we were sitting around watching the kids play with toys in our basement, we started to discuss what my brother-in-law (who is a member of the high council in his stake) might say the next day in his talk about teaching children the gospel. At one point, the conversation turned to a discussion about the Atonement, and I began to argue very strongly that we should remember we are ultimately saved by grace and not by works alone. And I really meant it at the time---even though I had ceased believing in Christ's Atonement several months prior to that conversation.
• I most frequently experience this sensation of double-consciousness when I teach Relief Society. Two Sundays ago when I was teaching my lesson about the Word of Wisdom, I got to the section of the lesson in which I asked them to list some words or phrases that would describe the temple. Then I read the line from the manual that says "our bodies are temples" and asked them if they ever use those words to describe their own bodies. The discussion we had was phenomenal. We discussed how women's perceptions of their bodies evolve as they grow from childhood into adolescence. There were some really good discussions about how we can counteract the negative messages about women's bodies in the media or at school. We talked about how parents can teach their children to find the balance between caring about their appearance but not obsessing over their physical imperfections. Everyone was weeping when it was over. I got hugs and pats on the shoulder when the lesson was over. I got phone calls later thanking me for the lesson. And it's hard for me to say that I didn't feel sincere when I helped guide that discussion and talked about the difference between the message of "the world" vs. the Lord (a binary construct I have long rejected). Despite not fully believing in what I was saying, my eyes got moist during that discussion too---and moistened eyes tend to be a signal of sincerity.

At any rate, it's a very odd sensation. And I don't think it will ever go away necessarily, even when I leave the church. I've known other ex-Mormons who have described this sensation too. I remember reading a comment by a man on the Exponent blog that said something to the effect about how he was a gay, Marxist, feminist atheist who hadn't attended church in a decade. And yet he said that part of him will always feel Mormon. I could see myself experiencing that too. When you've been raised in a certain religious culture and you've sincerely believed it at one point, it's probably largely impossible to fully leave it behind, to fully extract it from your identity. (Nor am I sure that I would want to.)

Although up to this point I have been describing a different kind of double-consciousness than the one that W.E.B. Dubois used, I also experience some of what W.E.B. Dubois was talking about when he coined the term "double consciousness." He meant it to refer to the sensation of being despised (and internalizing that contempt so that you begin to despise yourself on some level) while at the same time knowing that you are not a despicable being.

As discussed in an interesting article entitled The Believer and the Apostate, most religions treat apostates as contemptible. By necessity, apostates must be marginalized by the institution in order to minimize the threat of apostasy to the members who still believe. One of the strategies religions use is to argue that the apostate couldn't possibly have fallen away through any kind of rational process:

This strategy seeks to reduce the believer’s dissonance by assuming that the apostate fell away due to some unacknowledged sin, or some other flaw on the part of the former adherent. It is extremely important, for the believer’s state of mind, that the blame for the apostasy must fall squarely on the shoulders of the apostate himself. It is quite literally unthinkable that the fault could lie with the system itself. This line of reasoning must be avoided at all costs.

Our church is no different. We are told by our leaders that the only reasons people leave the church is because they are sinful, prideful, or easily offended. This is most certainly not true of all cases, as those of us who have come to doubt the church's claims through academic means are fully aware. And yet we non-believers cannot help but see ourselves through that lens of apostasy that other members of the church would apply to us. This has lead me to have a heightened consciousness of my public actions. I find that I look at what I do "twice," if you will. I look at my actions from my new, non-believing perspective and simultaneously look at it from a true-believing Mormon's perspective. ("If I say X or do Y, they will think Z about me.") And that does influence how I behave. It's strange because, on a strictly logical level, I realize how futile it is to try to control other people's perceptions of me. But, on an emotional level, I still care about what believing Mormons think about me.

My dad once sent me a quote by John W. Gardner that said something about how one of the lessons you learn in maturity is that a) most people are neither for you nor against you, they are just thinking about themselves and b) no matter how hard you try, some people will not like you---a fact that feels overwhelming at first, but eventually can become empowering. I think this sensation of double consciousness---the internal conflict of my inner duality---will hopefully lead me to internalize these truisms of maturity that Gardner spoke about. So, at least some good might come out of the resolution of this inner conflict.

Gospel Principles #32 - Tithes and Offerings (NOM version)

See my previous blog entry about how I taught the Tithing lesson in Relief Society.

Since around 2000 I always had a very strong testimony of tithing. My testimony of tithing first developed while I was in college. I had purchased my first car, which put me in a financial bind. It started getting difficult to pay rent, let alone tithing. Even though I kept meticulous track of how much I owed to the church, I was never quite able to catch up on my tithing.

Soon it was the summer time and my family was going on a trip to Hawaii. They wanted me to get my temple recommend so that I could do baptisms for the dead in the Hawaiian temple. With a heavy heart, I went in to see my bishop to confess that I hadn't paid my tithing. I don't remember what the bishop said to me but in that moment, I became convinced he had become transfigured and that I was talking to my Savior face to face. After a tearful half hour, I finally emerged with my temple recommend and a new resolve to pay my tithing. Later that week I was offered a job on campus that was in my field of study and that gave me a much larger income. I took that as a sign that the windows of heaven had definitely opened for me. From that moment forward, I never had a problem faithfully paying a full tithe.

Until now, of course. Looking back today, I interpret that experience differently. I think it's very possible that I could have psyched myself into having that spiritual experience because I was under emotional duress because of the shame of confessing my sins. And the fact that I got a new job the week afterward can easily be chalked up to post hoc logic.

While I definitely see value in charitable giving, I no longer believe that paying tithing meets that criteria. I'll explain some of the reasons why my thoughts about tithing have evolved in this blog entry.

The Church Does NOT Need My Money

One of the frustrating things about the church is how secretive they are about their finances. Most other religious organizations are very transparent about their tithes, even going so far as publishing how every penny of the congregation's money is spent in their church bulletin. The LDS Church's finances are a mysterious black box. No one knows exactly what the church's net worth is, although we can safely assume that it is very large.

We can get some hints about the church's wealth by examining their stated income in countries where charities are required to publicize their income such as Canada. According to a recent blog entry by Harrison Ames, an average ward such as the Lethbridge 12th received approximately $560,000 in donations from the ward members in 2009. About $67,000 was spent by the ward (with about half of that going to assistance to the poor and needy in the ward). The rest went to the church. That means the ward itself got 8.3% of what it contributed (with half going to charity) and the church took the remaining 91.7%.

This report seems to be fairly consistent with anecdotal accounts from ex-Mormons in America who had served as ward financial clerks. From their accounts, it appears that the average ward donates $500,000 to $1,000,000 to tithing per year, depending on the affluence of the area. Fast offerings ran from $25,000 to $30,000. Donations to other funds tended to add up to $17,000 to $20,000. And they stated that their annual ward budgets usually only amounted for $7,000 to $8,000 a year. That means the church took in quite a large amounts from these wards. Some estimates say that the church brings in roughly $6 billion of income per year.

Moderate estimates put the church's net worth at $80 billion. Some put it at $100 billion. It's important to note that the church has vast property holdings: it has 928,000 acres in North America, owns 0.7% of Florida, is the largest ranch land owner in Wyoming, is the second largest land owner in Nebraska, has the largest cattle ranch in 48 states, and is the largest foreign landowner in the United Kingdom. They also own several profitable business such as their own insurance company, radio and television stations, shopping malls, hotel chains, and the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii (the most popular tourist attraction in the state). The church also owns stock in several major corporations. Not to mention the three Brigham Young Universities as well as other small colleges throughout the Intermountain West.

In short, the LDS church is ridiculously wealthy. And for that reason, I'm not entirely convinced they need my money any more. 

Now, let me be clear that I think that it's important to give generously to charity, especially since we Americans are the wealthiest 5% of the world's population. But, unfortunately, members often feel they have done enough after they've given to the church and rarely donate to other charitable causes. (I know I don't when I pay a full tithe. I can't afford to give to anything else after that.)

Rather than giving 10% of my income to the church's many capitalist ventures, I'd prefer that my financial sacrifice goes to helping the causes I care about: ending poverty and world hunger, environmental and conservation efforts, relief efforts after natural disasters, and supporting the very excellent programming on NPR. Those causes need me. The LDS church does not. [1]

Many Members Put Themselves at Financial Risk to Pay Tithing

A few months ago, a member of our bishopric gave a Powerpoint presentation about financial management on the 5th Sunday of the month. I was under the impression that he had used an official Powerpoint that he had based on the Family Finances section of the church's Provident Living website. What was the number one principle of financial management according to the bishopric member? No, it wasn't to save or to stay out of debt or live within your means. It was to pay your tithing! That feels a little backwards to me when I look at it from a common-sense, secular perspective. [2]

USA Today ran an article back in 2008 about how many Christians keep paying tithing even as they face foreclosure on their homes. Although the article was largely about evangelical Christians, I could easily see Mormons acting exactly the same way under similar circumstances. For many Mormons, paying tithing is an essential part of their budget---a non-negotiable expense they must budget for right along with buying groceries, paying the mortgage, or paying off credit card debt.

But in my opinion, giving to charity is a luxury. I think you should make it a financial priority, but if you come across hard financial times, then you need to cut back on luxuries like these. I think that paying off your debts and meeting your financial obligations is more important and frankly more moral than giving generously to charity. (Incidentally, a close reading of the definition of tithing in LDS scriptures seems to suggest that you should pay 10% of your tithing after expenses. I've read a few interesting arguments that the current apostles may potentially be misrepresenting this definition in their Conference talks.) [3]

It's sad to me that Utah probably has such a high bankruptcy rate because church members pay such a large tithe. [4] Bankruptcies and foreclosures don't just wreck your credit: they drain the financial resources of the society as a whole. For that reason, I think it's more moral to pay your financial obligations before paying a tithe. When hard times hit, I say one should be able to give to the church by donating their time instead. (Perhaps by volunteering to work at the temple or work as a volunteer at the Bishop's storehouse.)

Furthermore, it really depresses me to hear stories of church members living in poverty who pay tithing. Stories of destitute people giving tithing do not build my faith; they anger me to no end. How can there be any justification in requiring people living in poverty to give 10% of their very meager incomes to a $100 billion dollar corporation? Under what system of morality is that even remotely fair?

The Church Uses Some Tithing Funds for Morally Questionable Purposes 

Given that many members make very real sacrifices in order to give tithes to the church, I'm not terribly enthusiastic that these "widow's mites" are going to pay for $3 billion dollar shopping malls such as the City Creek Mall. I'm fully aware that the church has stated that tithing money is not being used for this project (rather it is being funded by for-profit, tax-paying arms of the church). However, at some point, these for-profit, tax-paying branches of the church corporation got their initial capital from tithing---maybe not from me personally, but most likely from my grandparents or great-grandparents. I don't think it's terribly easy to separate the two. Furthermore, even if they only pay for the project with interest from their investments, those investments were first made with tithing funds. [5]

It also upsets me that tithing records were used to identify potential donors to the Proposition 8 efforts.

And although we take great pride in having a lay clergy, the First Presidency, apostles, and First Quorum of the Seventy receive a very large stipend. It's difficult to nail down, but some rumors suggest that the apostles get a stipend of $600,000 a year and that the seventies get $120,000 a year. They also drive expensive cars, live in very expensive homes and have servants that are all paid for by the church. In light of the fact that most of these men were independently wealthy before becoming General Authorities, this feels a bit excessive to me. Especially when church employees such as my father get paid less than what they would get in the private sector because they are "sacrificing for the Lord."

For further study into the church's actions as a corporation, I'd highly recommend reading Daymon Smith's The Book of Mammon. Be warned that his strange use of language in the book makes it a difficult read. But the four-hour interview he did on Mormon Stories is very accessible and provides a good introduction into the topic. Pure Mormonism also had an interesting blog entry in which he reviewed The Book of Mammon.

Footnotes

[1] Some naysayers might point out that the church does give humanitarian aid, especially after natural disasters. This is certainly true, but most estimates argue that the church's donations to humanitarian aid only account for 1-2% of its operating budget. That's pretty moderate, in my opinion.

[2] Incidentally, it was never tithing that taught me good principles of financial management. I would have to say that reading The Millionaire Next Door: Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy is what finally got me to make the changes I needed to make to my finances because it showed me that the true secret of wealth is living well below your means. I remember that it argued that a good defense (saving and investing) is better than a good offense (having a large income). Tithing does teach the principle of living below your means, but you unfortunately don't get to keep the fruits from saving that income because it all goes to the church.

[3] It's also interesting to note that there is a tremendous amount of debate within Christian communities about whether or not tithing is even a Christian principle at all. Just a quick Google search for the word "tithing" will quickly reveal lots of different perspectives on this debate.  

[4] Paying tithing probably explains why Utahns are such poor tippers (as my mother who recently quit her job as a server in the Salt Lake airport can attest). 

[5] For a further analysis of the City Creek project from a critical perspective, see Mormonthink.com.

Gospel Principles #32 - Tithes and Offerings (TBM version)

For reference, see Tithes and Offerings in the Gospel Principles manual.


Introduction to the Lesson
I usually start my lesson by just reviewing basic, key concepts about the gospel principle we are discussing that day. So I'd start by having someone read this section from page 185 of the manual:

In modern times the Prophet Joseph Smith prayed, "O Lord, show unto thy servants how much thou requirest of the properties of thy people for a tithing" (D&C 119, section introduction). The Lord answered: "This shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people. And after that, those who have thus been tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever" (D&C 119:3–4). The First Presidency has explained that "one-tenth of all their interest annually" refers to our income (see First Presidency letter, Mar. 19, 1970).

Interestingly enough, the word tithe comes from the Old English word tegotha meaning "tenth."  

(NOTE: I would just define tithing as 10% and not go any deeper than that in my lesson. It's a good idea to avoid getting into a discussion about whether "tenth" can be defined as "net" or "gross" or some other definition. The church has made it clear that these kinds of decisions are best left up to the individual under the guidance of the Spirit.)

This isn't a question that I have an answer for, but have you ever wondered why the Lord chose 10% rather than some other number such as 3% or 7%? Do you have any opinions about why that might be? Give the sisters an opportunity to respond to the question. (This question will probably elicit a couple of funny remarks about 10% being easier for those of us who are mathematically-challenged, such as myself.)

When everyone has finished responding, I'll mention that I once read an interesting insight from Lauren F. Winner about why the Lord possibly requires 10%:

A 2005 Barna study suggested that "the typical individual gave away about 3% of their income." That figure is significantly less than the biblical standard of 10%. Why do Americans only give away 3% of our income? Because, though 3% might pinch, it doesn't pinch very much. 10% is harder. A commitment to give away 10% of your hard-earned salary requires serious self-sacrifice---it might require buying a smaller home, with a smaller mortgage payment. It might require scaling back vacation plans, passing on that trip to Europe and renting a modest house at the beach instead.  It might require telling your kids "no" more often. It might require a family of two kids and two adults to own only one car, and that car might not be a shiny, new SUV.

I liked that insight. It lead me to consider that perhaps one of the purposes of tithing is to help us learn how to be more prudent, to live within our means, and to avoid becoming too worldly or materialistic.


We Should Give Willingly
Next I would have someone read this section from page 186:

It is important to give willingly. "When one pays his tithing without enjoyment he is robbed of a part of the blessing. He must learn to give cheerfully, willingly and joyfully, and his gift will be blessed" (Stephen L Richards, The Law of Tithing [pamphlet, 1983], 8).

The Apostle Paul taught that how we give is as important as what we give. He said, "Let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7).

So, as it says here in the manual, we should try to give our tithing cheerfully. One thing that I think is interesting is that prior to the turn of the twentieth century, the members of the church used to pay their tithing "in kind," which meant that they didn't always pay the church in cash. For example, if you were a chicken farmer, you paid the church with eggs. If you were a potato farmer, you paid with potatoes, etc. Back in those days, church members tried to pay the church with the best 10% of eggs or the best 10% of potatoes.

Since we give our tithing differently today, we don't have the same opportunity to give our "best" to the Lord. But one way we can give our best would be to give our tithing with a cheerful heart. (When I mentioned this to my husband, he jokingly suggested that perhaps you could write on the memo of your tithing check that it is "cheerfully given.")

Now, I don't know about you, but when I was a little kid and I was only making something like ten dollars a month, it was pretty easy to cheerfully give one dollar to the Lord. But now that I'm older and the checks I write are bigger, sometimes it's a little more difficult to give with a cheerful countenance. Maybe on occasion I murmur a little bit in my heart. Do you have any suggestions for helping to give cheerfully? Give the sisters an opportunity to respond to that question.

When everyone has finished responding, I might mention that I enjoy going to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival every year. One of the most popular storytellers at the festival is Donald Davis. He tells a story about how he got his first job as a young teenager and began to notice that the government was taking money out of his paycheck, so that he wasn't getting the full amount he had earned. He complained loudly to his parents that he didn't like the government taking his money. So one day his father brought home a gigantic book called the Federal Budget. His parents told Donald to read through that book and find something in the budget he liked and just imagine that all of his money went to pay for that one thing. And after days of skimming through that big, boring book, Donald finally found something he liked: the national park system. So, now when he pays his taxes, he just imagines that all of his money is going to the national parks. (He makes jokes about how he likes to travel the country to go look at his "properties," such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.)

Maybe that strategy could help us give tithing a little more cheerfully. Have the sisters come up with a list of the things that our tithing money helps pay for. Write their responses on the board as they come up with them. (If they get stuck while coming up with the list, they can use the list from the lesson manual on pages 186-187 for reference.) When the list is complete, ask: Can you find something on this list that you feel happy to have your tithing money pay for?

The sisters will probably put "temples" on the list at some point. Last year in one of my Sunday School classes when we were learning about Solomon's Temple, the teacher asked us why we make our temples so ornate, elaborate, and beautiful. It costs a lot of money to build a temple. Wouldn't it be better to spend that money on the poor? We ended up having a very thought-provoking discussion about that question (it's stayed in my memory and it’s been almost a year since we studied it). It might be interesting to have a discussion about that as part of your Relief Society lesson. For example, one of the interesting comments someone made was that we need to give first to the Lord. When we give Him our very best, He expands the usefulness of everything else we have and are.  When we give to the Lord first, we are more able to effectively give to the poor around us.


The Blessings of Tithing
As an introduction to this section of the lesson, I’d mention that the prophet Joseph F. Smith frequently spoke about the courage and faithfulness of his mother Mary Fielding Smith, the widow of Hyrum Smith. He told an interesting story about her faithfulness in paying tithes:

My mother was a widow, with a large family to provide for. One spring when we opened our potato pits she had her boys get a load of the best potatoes, and she took them to the tithing office; potatoes were scarce that season. I was a little boy at the time, and drove the team. When we drove up to the steps of the tithing office, ready to unload the potatoes, one of the clerks came out and said to my mother, "Widow Smith, it’s a shame that you should have to pay tithing." … He chided my mother for paying her tithing, called her anything but wise or prudent; and said there were others who were strong and able to work that were supported from the tithing office. My mother turned upon him and said: "William, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Would you deny me a blessing? If I did not pay my tithing, I should expect the Lord to withhold His blessings from me. I pay my tithing, not only because it is a law of God, but because I expect a blessing by doing it. By keeping this and other laws, I expect to prosper and to be able to provide for my family" (in Conference Report, Apr. 1900, p. 48).

Next, I would have someone read from page 187 of the manual:

The Lord promises to bless us as we faithfully pay our tithes and offerings. He said, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith … if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it" (Malachi 3:10).

The lesson manual says that the blessings of paying tithing are both material and spiritual. In what ways have you been blessed either temporally or spiritually by paying tithing? Have you put the Lord’s challenge to "prove" him on the principle of tithing? Do you have any personal experiences to share? Give the sisters an opportunity to respond to the question. I imagine that this will take up a very large portion of the lesson because nearly everyone has a tithing experience to share. However, if the discussion does stall, you might consider sharing one of your favorite stories from this Ensign article entitled “Not Room Enough to Receive It” in which many members throughout the world share their experiences getting blessings from paying tithing.

(NOTE: In this section of the lesson when discussing the blessings of tithing, I would try to avoid getting into "prosperity theology," which is the idea that people are wealthy because they are righteous or poor because they are wicked. It's for that reason that I would emphasize that some of the blessings that come from paying tithing are often spiritual, not necessarily financial.)

Another interesting side note to be aware of is that another instance in which God referred to opening up the windows of heaven was when talking about the Flood (see Genesis 7:11). So, when God speaks about opening up the windows of heaven and pouring out blessings in Malachi 3:10, He might mean that He will pour out a flood of blessings, a torrential downpour of blessings so great you will not be able to receive it. That's a cool metaphor, in my opinion.

If I still have time to kill at the end of the lesson, I really liked this question from the manual: In what ways is tithing a principle of faith more than a principle of finances? I think that could lead to a really interesting discussion.


Conclusion
I would conclude by reading this quote by Neal A. Maxwell:

I am going to preach a hard doctrine to you now. The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. It is a hard doctrine, but it is true. The many other things we give to God, however nice that may be of us, are actually things He has already given us, and He has loaned them to us. But when we begin to submit ourselves by letting our wills be swallowed up in God's will, then we are really giving something to Him. And that hard doctrine lies at the center of discipleship. There is a part of us that is ultimately sovereign, the mind and heart, where we really do decide which way to go and what to do. And when we submit to His will, then we've really given Him the one thing He asks of us ("Sharing Insights from My Life," BYU Devotional, January 12, 1999).

I would close by saying that it’s important to remember that everything we have is not really ours. They are things He has already given us. He asks such a small thing in return when he asks for our ten percent. But really, it's about training ourselves to become true disciples, to learn how to eventually give the bigger sacrifice of our wills.