As we conclude the month of September, I wanted to conclude with the full interview of Dr. Michael Quinn. He passed away unexpectedly April 21, 2021. To commemorate the September Six, I’m pulling an interview from the archives with Dr Michael Quinn. Of course he was also excommunicated in 1993. This interview comes from Nov 2017 where Dr Quinn had just released his book “Wealth & Corporate Power” by Signature Books. We also discuss his dealings with Mark Hofmann, LDS Succession, Women & Priesthood, and his role in the September Six. You won’t want to miss this conversation….

https://youtu.be/gpi76Ri8n4c

Michael Quinn Discusses Deseret Hemp Company

Introduction

I’m really excited to have Michael Quinn on the show.  In this first episode, we will get more acquainted with him.  We will also talk about the Deseret Hemp Company.  Yes, I said Hemp!  On the ballot this fall is a proposal to legalize medical marijuana here in Utah.  Michael Quinn will talk about a church-owned company that grew hemp right here in Utah!  Will they get back in the business?  Check out our conversation!

The Interview

GT:            00:00:33          Welcome to Gospel Tangents podcast. I’m really excited. I’ve got a real rare treat: Mike Quinn, historian Mike Quinn here in Salt Lake City. So, could you introduce yourself to the audience? Not everybody knows about Mormon history and might not know who you are. Can you give us a little bit about your background?

Michael:  00:00:52          I was born in California and while I was there, we were always told it was the mission field. I became interested in Mormon history as a hobby when I was 16. And then, when I was in the military and after I graduated from BYU in English literature, I had time to reconsider what I wanted to do as a graduate student while I was in the army for three years and I decided to switch to history because my hobby had become too consuming. So, when I came out of the military, I went to the University of Utah to get a master’s degree in history. And then I went from there to Yale. But before that I served as a research and writing assistant to Leonard Arrington while he was the Church Historian. After I got my Ph.D. in history from Yale, three months later, I was hired by the BYU campus to join it’s a Department of History and I remained there for 12 years and then have been freelance historian or the term is independent scholar in the field, aside from occasional appointments. I had a two-year appointment at the University of Southern California. And then I had a one-year appointment at Yale University and that was my last academic appointment more than a dozen years ago.

GT:            00:02:24          Oh wow, that’s cool. So, for those who aren’t familiar with your background, I know in the 1980s you wrote a chapter, I believe it was in Maxine Hanks’ book.[1] Is that right?

 

Michael:  00:02:39          Yes, it was actually 1992 that it came out. It was called “Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843.” And that caused a certain amount of controversy.

GT:            00:02:53          Yeah. Could you, could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Michael:  00:02:56          Maxine was excommunicated. I was excommunicated, and she was specifically told that she was excommunicated because of her book and I was told–I was given a list of three items showing my apostasy, a list provided by the stake president and the first item on the list was that essay.

GT:            00:03:20          Okay. So you’re one of the, I guess infamous September Six,[2] right?

Michael:  00:03:26          That’s correct.

GT:            00:03:29          So,  the one thing that I think would strike most people is a little bit odd, I know I listened to your Radio West interview[3] earlier this week and you mentioned that you’re still a believing Mormon. So, some people might think, well, if you’re excommunicated, why would you still believe in a church that would excommunicate you?

Michael:  00:03:44          Well, I’m a seventh generation Mormon. Nothing can take that away from me, but even, you know, there are many–well my children are eighth generation Mormons and they talk about Mormons in the third person. They couldn’t care less about the church. So, the fact that I’m an ancestral Mormon doesn’t determine my faith.  My faith is very basic.  But it’s basic in a way that I think many current members of the church might not understand. In many ways, I’m a 19^th-century Mormon believer. I believe in Joseph Smith meeting with angels and translating the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God, which at that time was a seer stone. And I believe that the leaders of the church from Joseph Smith to the current president of the church have the calling of divine prophets, seers, and revelators who have the right to receive God’s revelations.

Michael:  00:04:47          But they don’t always do so. And sometimes they are too passive in my view, and don’t seek those revelations in a direct way. But in my view, they have the right and the obligation to receive those revelations. I don’t agree with all the policies of the church and some of them I strongly disagree with and to that extent, although I did not seek excommunication, excommunication freed me from having to defend policies I thoroughly disagree with and that continues until today. So I maintain my faith in a private way. I am in some ways, like a Latter-day Saint, medieval mystic. I have had this feeling even since childhood that it’s just you and me, Lord against the world and a God. And my relationship with him was always preeminent. But the reason I always loved going to sacrament meeting on it and as I grew up Sunday school was that the communion was served each at each of those opening services.

Michael:  00:06:00          And that was always very important to me. And that’s one of the things that I miss deeply, as well as the temple. I used to be a temple worker in a variety of ways. I was a temple worker when I was a missionary. I was a temple worker while I was at BYU, a scheduled worker, and so the loss of taking the sacrament every Sunday at least once, and participating weekly as I used to in the temple ceremonies, that has been a deep loss. It’s one that I miss all the time. But because I’m kind of this mystic, I’m okay and I don’t worry about my relationship with God, but I’m no longer a member of the Church of record, but I’m still—no one can prevent me from believing what I believe.

GT:            00:06:56          So, you still call yourself a Mormon I guess?

Michael:  00:07:00          I do, but not a Latter-day Saint in the sense that I’m not a part of the LDS church. So, if people are attuned enough with the preferred language to ask if I’m LDS, I’ll say I’m not a member, but I am a Mormon believer.

GT:            00:07:13          Ok.  Have you ever considered the Community of Christ?

Michael:  00:07:16          I’ve gone to a lot of churches and communions and I love the people in the Community of Christ as I love people in Jewish synagogue. I used to attend Jewish synagogue every Friday and then go to LDS services as well. I love the communion of faith and heritage that is a part of synagogue, or the Jews say temple, going to temple. But, I’ve never been comfortable in any other fellowship and I really don’t need organized religion, for me to maintain my relationship with God. And so, I’ve never really seriously considered joining any other fellowship, although I’ve been invited to.

GT:            00:08:06          Well, that’s interesting. I’ll just a little confession. I actually, when I was on my mission, I went to South Carolina. Me and my companion attended Jewish synagogue for about a month. It was pretty fun on Friday night, so I got to meet the rabbi. He was very nice fellow.

Michael:  00:08:20          Well, they’re very welcoming people. Unless you try to go to Hasidic or Orthodox, then you’re one of the goyim. But it was very fun for me. Initially I started out as a teenager attending reformed synagogue, which was the only one in the town or the city I grew up in, but then when I was attending every week in the military, it was a conservative synagogue, but they welcomed me and they gave me a very, very nice silk yarmulke to attend the services in and always invited me to their Bar Mitzvahs, which you needed to attend by invitation. And they would invite me to those. And they were really, they were sweet people and I really value the fellowship of Jewish people I’ve known over the years. But I’ve also enjoyed the fellowship of Muslims and Catholics and of atheists and so I have a broad ranging acceptance of a variety of religious, professions, and religious ideologies.  I have a very broad sense of who God loves and who he doesn’t. And in my view, he dislikes no one. He loves us all. He weeps for many of us much of the time and for some of us all of the time. But, having felt that way, I feel that I have an obligation as a sinner to embrace all other sinners, even the ones who turn my blood cold. And so even if I don’t physically embrace them, I do emotionally.

GT:            00:10:07          Interesting. So, tell us why you’re here in Salt Lake this week.

Michael:  00:10:11          I’ve been scheduled by Signature Books to do a series of book talks and interviews like this, about my most recent book, which is called Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power.[4]

GT:            00:10:26          Well, I’m excited to talk to you about that. So actually, the interesting thing about that book is a narrative isn’t that long. It’s just three chapters. I was like, oh, I can, I can pound through that pretty quickly. I didn’t read all of the tables though. How many pages are the tables?

Michael:  00:10:41          The tables? I’m not sure. There are 17 tables and most of them take at least half the page. One of them or more, is a two-page spread. So, on average I’d say they can maybe take around 15 pages of that 150 or so.

GT:            00:11:03          Yeah, there’s only 150 pages of kind of narrative. And then there’s probably 300 of just appendices and tables and things like that. So the one thing I was leafing through and I thought that one of the businesses had a very unusual name, the Deseret Hemp Company. And I thought, well that’s interesting. So, can you talk a little bit? Do you know very much about that?

Michael:  00:11:32          Well, hemp was a textile and people grew hemp the way they grew (I’m trying to think of some other textiles) flax or other things that could be used to make clothing. And Joseph Smith, by some of his neighbors was described as a guy who wore a hemp trousers, which were made from the plant, which was grown in the south generally. And then its final products were shipped north to manufacturing centers in Massachusetts. But in Utah there was this idea that was economically wise, but it didn’t always work out in practice of Utah’s residents being self-sufficient. And so, in order to set up the self-sufficiency, Brigham Young as church president, and for a period of time as governor established a lot of missions with an economic basis. So, there was a flax mission, there was a cotton mission, which of course also caused the textile industry in Utah to grow. And then there was a hemp-growing process, although it wasn’t exactly a hemp mission, but there were general authorities who were involved in the growing of hemp and, and its use in manufacturing shirts and trousers. So that was similar. It was a similar kind of enterprise to the cotton mission that Brigham Young had established in southern Utah, but that lasted longer, and it was more successful. And as far as I know, I have no evidence of anyone smoking any of the hemp.

GT:            00:13:20          {chuckling} That’s what I was worried about.

Michael:  00:13:22          No.

GT:            00:13:23          Ok.  Do you know when that ended, that hemp?

Michael:  00:13:25          It was a kind of short lived. I’m not sure why it didn’t last as long.  The wool mission was an animal byproduct. But that lasted a long time. And so, did the cotton mission, which was a plant product both used for textiles, and manufacturing clothing. I’m not sure why, I don’t know the details of the hemp manufacturing. Perhaps it’s more difficult to do, and it may or may have needed more chemicals which they would have had to import and that might have diminished the appeal of trying to manufacture locally grown hemp into locally manufactured clothing.

GT:            00:14:06          Did they actually try to grow that here in Utah?

Michael:  00:14:08          Oh yeah. Yeah.

GT:            00:14:10          Ok.  Did it last into the 20th century?

Michael:  00:14:12          No, no, no. In fact, none of these did. The cotton and the wool church-owned businesses basically ended around the turn of the century in the early 1900s.  And so, the clothing manufacturing that did continue for a period of time with General Authority and Church investment, didn’t depend on church grown products, whether it was wool or whether it was cotton. By the time of the early 20th century, there was a secularization that was beginning. And so, the church products were often shipped to distant locations that had little or no Mormon population and they were importing products, raw materials as well. So, the effort at being totally self-sufficient really ended around the 1880s, not long after the death of Brigham Young.

GT:        00:15:17             Okay. Okay. So, 1880s, that’s good to know.

Are LDS Church Revenues really $50 Billion/Year?

Introduction

In our next conversation with Dr. Michael Quinn, we’ll talk about how much money the LDS Church earns per year.  Would you believe it is as high as $50 Billion?  Dr. Quinn breaks down how much comes from tithing and for-profit businesses, and also states how many church members pay tithing.  Are LDS General Authorities expected to pay tithing?  Check out our conversation.

GT:            00:15:20          So with your book, I think, at least for me kind of a big headline, that I think most people have noticed is how much tithing does the church make and what’s your best estimate on that?

Michael:  00:15:35          Well, the tithing has to be understood as a revelation that was dictated by Joseph Smith in a form of “Thus Sayeth the Lord,” and what he said the Lord was saying to him in 1838. But from 1838 to 1900 for most of the 19th century, the definitions of tithing changed. And the adherence to this commandment changed too. And initially it was very, very onerous for a convert to obey the law of tithing as it was defined in the late 1830s to early 1840s. Because what it required was a convert to donate to the church ten percent of everything he owned, or she owned, and then 10 percent of your annual increase after that. And despite that, thousands of people joined the church.  But then under Brigham Young, this was liberalized, although that’s a bad word for many Mormons today. It describes what he did and that is, he made it less onerous to live the law of tithing.

Michael:  00:16:51          And it was only 10 percent after the initial years of the settlement in Utah, when these poor people that already paid 10 percent of everything they owned, were expected to pay 10 percent upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley of what they owned at that point, which usually wasn’t much. And those onerous requirements were finally in the 1850s ended. And by the late 1850s, all that was required was to give 10 percent of your annual increase, which is the term of the revelation, or interest, which was also a term that was used. But most people from that time to the present, would think of it as your annual salary or your annual profit, the annual money that you made as income. And so, that was the requirement from the late 1850s onward, but few members of the church lived it and it wasn’t until 1900 when a president of the church was faced with more than $2,000,000 debts that the church needed to pay and had tremendous servicing of the debt, which meant that the church had to pay interest on these debts.

Michael:  00:18:15          And also I had to borrow to even pay the interest. Lorenzo Snow in 1900 made a dramatic push, you could call it, or dramatic appeal to the faith of the Latter-day Saints to begin to pay more regularly on a regular basis, their tithing so that it could be a source of income for the church that they could depend on and to more completely fulfill the 10 percent requirement. And from 1900 onward, this became a more emphatic requirement. But even then, by the 1920s, the Presiding Bishop of the Church announced in General Conference that only 25 percent of the church membership paid a full tithe. And the rest paid either what was called a part-tithe or no tithing at all. So as a membership of the church at no time, I think it’s fair to say, has the membership of the church totally adhered, even the devout membership of the church have they totally adhered to the requirement of paying 10 percent of their annual income.

GT:            00:19:33          So, it sounds like it was quite some initiation dues between 1830 and 1850 in order to even join the church.

Michael:  00:19:40          Right, and yet thousands did.  And then it was liberalized to 10 percent only on an annual basis. And eventually you have the annual interview with a bishop. And I don’t know exactly when that came in, but I think it was in the 19th century, not the 20th, when that became a pattern, whether it was required by church headquarters or not.

GT:            00:20:05          Tithing settlement is what you’re talking about.

Michael:  00:20:07          Yes, that’s now what it’s called. But the idea that it was decided on the local level, whether you were a part-tithe payer, or a full tithe-payer was in place in the 19th century. And so that has continued to the present. The General Authorities do not make that decision even for themselves. The General Authorities meet with their bishops in their local wards of congregations and like every other rank and file member of the church are asked, “Do you pay it a full tithing?”

Michael:  00:20:41          And they either can ask an answer, yes or no. And then the follow-up question is, “Do you pay a part-tithing,” yes or no? And then the follow-up question is, “Are you exempt,” Yes, or no? And people who are exempt are often–it depends on sometimes church policies which are varied. Missionaries have been exempted from paying tithing. People who are on church welfare have been defined as being on tithing, or pardon me being exempt from tithing. But those have typically been the only exemptions allowed. Somebody who is a church General Authority, for example, who has no other source of income, but what the church gives him, it’s still expected to pay 10 percent of that back to the church. Otherwise, and I’ve seen the PBO[5] reports. He is defined as a part or no tithe payer.

GT:            00:20:41          Do they take away his temple recommend?

Michael:  00:21:45          Right, it could happen and it wouldn’t be the first time that a general authority has been threatened with being dropped from office for one reason or another.

Michael:  00:21:57          But, in the tithing reports that I had access to from the 1890s to 1928, typically a general authority who said he was a part-tithe payer was only in that status for a year or two. And then he became a full-time payer. Whether there was pressure applied, I don’t know. But, sometimes it did last more than one year.

GT:            00:21:57          Oh Really?

Michael:  00:22:26          Yeah. But, typically the general authorities were recorded as full-tithe payers.

GT:            00:22:31          Yes, I would expect they should be.

Michael:  00:22:33          Anyway. The tithing has never been 100 percent in payment. And in fact, in the 1990s, a Deseret Book publication said no more than 50 percent in the ’90s, which would be a dramatic improvement over the 1920s.  But, it’s always been a part, even of devout members of the church who have paid a full tithing.

GT:            00:22:57          I would be surprised that it was as high as 50 percent because we keep hearing activity rates are about 50 percent and I wouldn’t expect everybody who came to be a full tithe payer.

Michael:  00:23:06          Right.  And this was only an estimate by a non-General Authority, but it was one that the Deseret Book allowed to be published under its authority. And so, its editors really allowed that to be stated whether it was accurate or not, I don’t know. But, the lowest level that I have reported by a member of the Presiding Bishop was 25 percent and that could be the area that it’s hovering around maybe 25 to 40 percent pay full tithing. But it depends, because I’ve heard praise given during the Cold War. For example, I heard praise given by General Authorities for the members of the church in East Germany, which was a communist, very repressive regime that they paid 80; 80 percent of its membership paid a full tithing of what little they had. And this was remarkable. And I saw no reports of the international church.

Michael:  00:24:14          And so I’m only going by what was said over the pulpit by general authorities in praising the devotion of members of the church in East Germany during those years, from the 1950s to the 1980s. But, that was something that was frequently I heard praised over the pulpit, not only at General Conference, but sometimes by visiting General Authorities who in stakes I attended would make a comment about that tremendous devotion. So, it varies and I’m sure it varies internationally and people who are very poor give the widow’s mite and this would be true of the poor in many developing countries who barely have enough money to feed themselves and their children. And yet many of them are not exempted from tithing despite that poverty and they do their best and then some succeed to pay 10 percent and still keep their kids from starving. So, I don’t think we should be flippant about the fact that many people don’t pay tithing.

Michael:  00:25:20          Many people who don’t pay a full tithing are just barely getting by. And sometimes it’s a matter of do I pay full tithing, or do I feed my children or clothe them or give them shoes? And that’s not just a problem in America. There’s poverty in north of Mexico as well. But in developing countries it’s a severe problem. And so, I think that those who do pay full tithing in the United States should not feel self-righteous about it because in the Philippines, for example, government statistics indicate that the average Filipino family can only provide one meal a day for every member of the family. And so those who do pay or struggle to pay a full tithing are really paying similar to the widow’s mite which Jesus praised.

GT:            00:26:20          So, what about church businesses? If I remember right in the book you said you believe that the church makes about $33,000,000,000, per year. Do you have any idea how much church businesses bring in?

Michael:  00:26:37          Well, I had the exact figures of church tithing paid annually, in the period down to 1928. Then again, in the period of the 1940s and in the 1950s up to 1962 and I could give you down to the penny how much church headquarters received in tithing from members of the church. After that point, I don’t have those kinds of figures and so I made a projection in the book based on the growth rate of tithing and it was growing at an annual rate during the 1950s and I felt that that was a conservative way of projecting because in the 1950s the church was sending missionaries to war torn Europe which was still rebuilding from World War II, to war torn Asia, which was still rebuilding from its devastation in Japan and the Philippines and elsewhere from World War II.

Michael:  00:27:39          And then sending missionaries and building churches, not only in those countries but also in Latin America where in the 1950s one percent of the population own 90 or more percent of the country’s wealth. And that was true in every Latin American country. And so, during that time period, the growth of the church still in that decade of the 1950s averaged 12.9 percent annual increase of tithing. So, I felt that that applied in the future would be a conservative measure of the future growth of the Church’s tithing. So, I applied that on an annual basis from 1960 to 2010 and I had an ability to check the first years to see how accurate my projection was because I had the tithing figures for 1961 and 1962. And what I found was that my projections in that table were significantly below the actual tithing that the church received in 1961 and 1962.

Michael:  00:28:52          And so I felt confident that I have chosen a measure that was conservative. Using that straight-line projection, the amount that comes up for tithing alone in 2010 is $33 billion (with a b) dollars. Now on top of that is what I call commercial: income from for profit businesses, which are by their definition are for profit; profit from sales of generally nonprofit businesses like welfare farms to the general public, which in those cases are made like Deseret Industries sells to the public and even though they sell at a very moderate rate, that is taxable income by state and national standards. And then there is the portfolio of the church which is stocks and bonds and how much they make or don’t make on that. And so, I have several measures jumping decades of what that was in 1900 and 1902, those sources of income, which I generally call commercial income, accounted for almost 18 percent of the Church’s total revenue those two years.

Michael:  00:30:25          And those were not years when the church’s businesses were doing wonderfully. Some were, many were not. Then again, in 1928, about 29 to 30 percent of the church’s total revenues came from businesses and from investments. Then in the 1960s and 1970s, N. Eldon Tanner, who was a member of the First Presidency was given responsibility for the financial life of the church, he told two different reporters for two different financial magazines, that in the late 1960s as well as in the late 1970s, the church was receiving about 50 percent of its income from tithing and the rest came from investments and for-profit businesses. And so, I estimate that by that it’s conservative or reasonable to assume that 40 to 45 percent was coming from those sources.

Michael:  00:31:37          And in the later interview he gave in the late 1970s to a Canadian financial and business outlet or magazine, he said that the investments of the church, he limited to blue chip stocks and bonds, which meant the highest pay, the most secure, the least risk involved, in those highest levels of investment. So, you can take your pick. The estimates from Church headquarters have been too low. They’ve been lower than any of those verified estimates of particularly church headquarters from the 1950s to the 1990s have said, five to 10 percent. That doesn’t match any of the figures that I have from 1900s to the 1920s to the 1960s to 1970s. So, whether you take the low-ball amount that I know is accurate in 1900s of 17 percent extra beyond tithing or N. Eldon Tanner’s estimate in the 1960s or ’70s of 40 to 45 percent, we’re talking billions of dollars on top of the Church’s, $33 billion tithing that I estimate, as commercial income. So, I think you could say $10 to $15,000,000,000 a year as of 2010. We’re coming from the various kinds of commercial investment businesses that are for profit by definition, nonprofit businesses that sell some of their products to the public and therefore are taxed on those sales. And then the very large portfolio of the church and to indicate how large it is, the investment houses, which again is a generic term I use, are scattered and they know about each of their own portfolios that they handle for the church, but they don’t know about the other investment houses and what they handle and how much profit or loss they have in a particular day or particular month or particular year. But the central investment house from the 1990s on to the present as far as I know, is called Ensign Peak Advisors and the president of Ensign Peak Advisors spoke with Deseret News in 2003.

Michael:  00:34:20          And he said that each day his company, handled billions of dollars and that’s only one of the investment houses of the church. So, I think that my estimate of tens of billions is probably close to the mark of commercial income from all sources, not just the portfolio, but also for-profit businesses and nonprofits like welfare farms that also sell some of their produce to the public and are taxed on that.

GT:            00:34:57          So let me make sure I’m clear on that. So, you’re saying roughly $33 billion a year plus another $10 to $15 billion on business income.

Michael:  00:35:07          So, I would say as of 2010, $40-$50,000,000,000 in total revenues from all sources.

 

 

Would LDS Church Income Ever Support a Paid Ministry?

Introduction

As we saw in our last episode, the church makes perhaps $40-50 billion per year between tithing and church businesses.  Dr. Michael Quinn has noted that church members no long pay building fund, ward budget, and many other expenses due to this large income.  Is there enough income to support a paid clergy?  Is there a scriptural prohibition against paid ministers?  How much money does the LDS Church spend in foreign countries?  Check out our conversation….

Michael:  00:35:16          However, having said that, a huge amount of the annual revenues of the church goes into paying for the services of the church to the rank and file.  As many people outside the church know, and all Mormons know, the church has primarily an unpaid ministry, volunteer ministry of people, men and women who work, and provide for their own wellbeing outside any income that they might receive from the church.

Michael:  00:35:53          They are, essentially what you know outside the church is called a lay ministry. Only a very few, I’d say less than five percent, ninety five percent being unpaid, less than five percent receive what’s called a living allowance. And these are the General Authorities who serve for 24-7 for life in most cases, or a few of them serve for a five-year to six-year basis for 24-7. And then also temporary appointments, like the General Authorities who serve only five or six years, mission presidents serve usually a period of two to three years. Temple president serve usually a period of five to six years and they are also 24-7 during that period of service. And they receive living allowances. But what’s called the church administrators, those are paid jobs. That’s a part of what outsiders or people like me would call the bureaucracy of the church.

Michael:  00:37:02          The church preferred term is church administrators, but they receive salaries and those salaries are subject to taxation. Those salaries include benefits and retirement benefits and health and hospitalization benefits because these are paid employees of the church, but they’re not paid to minister. They are paid to handle administrative things such as handling the Church’s fleet or being in charge of the architectural designs of the church. And they receive their paychecks from church headquarters, but they’re doing “secular” kinds of jobs. They’re typists. They’re accountants, they’re programmers, they’re truck drivers. There are a variety of capacities that receive their pay from the church and they are expected to pay 10 percent of that to the church if they’re an employee of the church. And if they’re reported to headquarters by their local bishops as not paying a 10 percent tithing, eventually the church bishop or stake president will be told by Church headquarters to inquire why is this church employee not paying 10 percent? And that’s true of BYU Faculty. And that was my case when I was on the BYU Faculty for 12 years. I was expected to pay a full 10 percent and actually worked out with all the other things Mormons were required to pay at that time, contributions to the missionary fund, contributions to church welfare, the fast offering fund and budgets for maintenance of local buildings and all of that. That added up to anywhere from 12 to 15 percent total of one’s income. And because of the financial growth of the church, not just tithing, but dramatically because of its commercial income. By the 21st century, the church had ended all of those additional contributions except tithing so that all of those are now paid by central headquarters for members of the church in Canada and United States as well as for members of the church in other countries, including the developing world.

GT:            00:39:29          Yeah. So, I remember as a kid growing up, my dad did pay budget. And I also remember one of the interesting things was, I lived back in New Hampshire. When I was 10 years old, we moved there. We actually for church, met at high school, Merrimack High School and did that for a couple of years. And then, we built a church in Nashua, New Hampshire. And I remember we had to raise money to build the church. Like that was not tithing and all that. And we had moved from Utah. And I remember, this was kind of funny. My mom knew how to make corn dogs and we made, you know, a few hundred dollars selling corn dogs and everybody in New Hampshire was like, what’s a corn dog? They’d never heard of that. And so, it was kind of like an exotic food almost.

GT:            00:40:22          But I can remember we did fun runs and it was all for the building fund.  And so, the stake center there in Nashua, New Hampshire, I remember at the time, it was the largest church in New England. It was considered gigantic and you know, it was just regular size stake center. You wouldn’t think anything of it here in Utah.  And it was nice when, you know, that was probably 1980, I believe when that happened.  and it was nice when all of a sudden, the church says, well, we’re going to start paying for all the buildings and we didn’t have to do these fundraisers and things like that.

Michael:  00:40:56          Members of the church who have either joined the church in the 1990s or became reactivated in the church after years of being away may not recognize this because they’ve not been required to pay maintenance for their local buildings, which was called ward budget. They have not been required to pay for building the buildings, which was a building fund and that was in operation as long as the building was under construction and sometimes when they had to make a replacement, repairs, or buy a new pipe organ that also had to be a separate budget. Well, when I was moving around as a graduate student, graduate students as well as people in management of businesses frequently move. I knew families, some of whom were students and others of whom were in executive positions in stakes, mentioned to me that they had paid a budget, a requirement for building a new chapel, building fund where they had previously moved. They moved into the stake that we now lived in and they were hit with another building fund from a new church that was being built for their ward. And so, in the space of a year they had paid for two different buildings, one of which they were not even able to use because they’d moved before it was completed. But they’ve paid into the construction of it and those kinds of things don’t exist anymore.  And that is because of the financial stability that has come to the church since the 1980s in particular.

GT:            00:42:44          And I think that’s great. So, in a sense, we’ve gotten a break since the 1980s, you know, on just paying tithing. We don’t out to pay anything else.

Michael:  00:42:53          And that also applies to supporting missionaries because it used to be that the amount that your families were expected to pay for you and were told that they would need to pay on a monthly basis as a missionary was based on the cost of living where you lived.  And so, people who went to developing countries paid very little for the missionaries and people who went to Paris or London or New York City as missionaries had to pay a much higher amount. And in the 1990s that was standardized for all missionaries throughout the world are expected to pay a very reasonable amount. And in developing countries, in many cases that the church pays that for families who are really too poor even to pay that modest–from North American, north of Mexico, point of view, modest amount of monthly support for a missionary even if his requirement or her requirement in New York or Paris or Tokyo might be stratospheric for the living allowance. The family only pays very moderate amount. Well even that moderate amount in the developing world is beyond the ability of parents of these missionaries. And so, in cases, that are known to the local leaders’ mission presidents, missionaries who want to serve in their own countries typically serve for 18 months or two years.

Michael:  00:44:29          Most of their living allowance is paid by the church for these missionaries. And so, members of the church in North America, north of Mexico, United States, and Canada have a relatively easy payment requirement or donation requirement. I mean, it’s not a requirement in the case that someone’s going to come with no neck, men dressed in black at your doorstep and {in a gruff voice} “we know how to deal with you people.”

Michael:  00:45:05          But, it’s a requirement for the faithful and the faithful feel an obligation when they’re asked to do something voluntarily to do it. Well so many of these–which would amount in many cases to about five percent of their income, they no longer have to pay. And now all that’s required is tithing, and the fast offerings that were required are in a sense not—there is kind of a tradeoff. You give the value of the money you would’ve spent on two meals and you give that to the church. And so, it technically is not an additional requirement beyond tithing. And so, you know, I think that this is a wonderful thing that the church is able to do that it was not able to do for more than 150 years of its existence and because of the financial stability and the commercial income of the church, that’s no longer an expectation.

GT:            00:46:12          Well, let me ask you another question. You know, one of the things in the LDS Church that we kind of pride ourselves on, and I don’t know if we should pride ourselves on it so much, it was the fact that we do have a lay clergy.  You know, I’ll tell you what. I went to the Community of Christ back in August and Lachlan MacKay, an apostle for the community of Christ gave a Sunday school lesson. It’s one of the best Sunday school lessons I’ve ever had. It was on the Word of Wisdom.[6] At first, I was rolling my eyes. It was fantastic. But my question is, you know, like with the building fund that we don’t have to pay anymore because that all rolls into tithing. Could you ever see the church paying clergy, even down to the level of a bishop to do that? If we’ve got enough income to do that, could you ever see something like that happening?

Michael:  00:46:58          Well, this is one of the ironies. Even though the 19th century church frequently used the insulting phrase “hireling priests” for Catholic and Protestant ministers, the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants which maintain these “thus sayeth the Lord” documents that Joseph Smith provided during his lifetime. They provide for a paid ministry. They say the laborer is worthy of his hire and that could justify having a thorough paid ministry all the way down to the local level. However, there has always been this discomfort with providing for the living of the leadership of the church, whether it’s general leadership or the local leadership. And so, for a period of time there were no salaries given to the general authorities. They had to live by what they could receive as voluntary offerings, unsought for by the local members or what they were able to earn. Brigham Young, for example, was a painter and a carpenter. He brought in some money that way as an apostle. Other money just given to him as a free donation, freewill offering is the phrase.

Michael:  00:48:21          But because of this really unpredictable amount that they received, some of the general authorities, some of the apostles, we’re simply on the edge of poverty and most of their lives. A set salary system was finally established after the deaths of Brigham Young in 1877 in the fall, October actually. And there has been a sort of salary system. Again, the preferred term is living allowance from that time to the present. And initially it was set up on a stratified basis. The president of the church received the most each month, and that would translate to a year, but they had monthly payments. His counselors received the next most, the senior apostles received the next, the junior apostles received the next. The Presiding Bishop received the next. His counselors receive the next. And then the senior members of the Seventy received the next and the junior members of the Seventy received the next.

Michael:  00:49:26          And the lowest always wants the Patriarch to the Church, but that office discontinued in 1979 and no longer is a part of the leadership of the highest leadership of the church. And in the 1960s, the president of the church finally did what other presidents had been moving toward gradually and that was equalizing the living allowance given to all general authorities and that has been in place since 1966 and continues today where the president of the church receives the same living allowance as the most recent appointment as General Authority. Now, some of these men are independently wealthy before they accepted an appointment as a prophet, seer and revelator, or a member of the Seventy.  And in such cases, they choose on their own to donate their living allowance or not to accept that at all, but those who are not wealthy, they need that living allowance.

Michael:  00:50:36          But again, it does not go beyond the general authorities of the church except those temporary full-time positions such as temple president, mission president. And it has not extended down to local stake presidents who have exclusively in their calling a religious obligation to fulfill of what is typically defined in Christianity as ministry. And, I think even despite the growth of the church, I doubt that there will ever be for these local officers over congregations, the kind of living allowance that would allow them to serve full-time. The tradition of the church, and it really is a tradition, it is not required by the revelations that the members of the LDS Church honor as God’s word. It’s not required that all of the service in the church be on unpaid. But I think the tradition of the church is strong enough, it has gone on for 180 years, to prefer an unpaid ministry. I think that will continue at the congregational level. And so, I don’t ever expect to see those local officers, whether in mission fields or in stakes, which is a distinction Mormons recognize outsiders wouldn’t. But, I don’t think that will ever change.

 

 

 

“The Church Makes No Distinction Between God and Mammon”

Introduction

There are many critics of the LDS Church’s wealth.  Is the LDS Church guilty of serving God and Mammon?  I asked Dr. Michael Quinn that question, and I think you’ll be surprised by his answer.  We’re going to talk about the City Creek Mall.  The LDS Church paid $1.5 Billion dollars to make it.  Michael Quinn says that this enormous income allows the church to spend enormous sums of money to support LDS Church growth.  It’s not just in poor countries like South America and Africa.  Quinn says that the LDS Church has deficit spending even in rich countries like England.  Is it true that the City Creek Mall is subsidizing churches in poor countries?    Check out our conversation….

GT:            00:52:18          Ok, interesting. So, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about some of the things that critics complain about with the church, the City Creek Mall, one and a half billion dollars. Now at least until I read your book, I had no idea how much the church made. So that sounds like a lot of money. But when, if they’re making $50 billion a year, one and a half billion, it’s really not that much money.  What would you say to critics of the Church that would complain and say, well, why are we investing into luxury apartments and high end [fashion] Victoria Secret, which isn’t even really [modest by LDS standards.]  With the modesty rhetoric Victoria Secret wouldn’t be a store that we would expect that most–that would uphold chastity standards, let’s say. So, what would you say to critics of the City Creek Mall specifically?

Michael:  00:53:13          Well, I’d say that in one sense, from the 1830s to the present, the business of the church has always been business. If members of the church look at revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, they’ll see revelations from the early 1830s about establishing a tannery, establishing a lumber facility, establishing merchandising in 1841, a revelation about building a hotel.  And so, these are built into the concept of revelation that God does not make a distinction between the temporal and the divine, between the moneymaking and the spiritual, that operating a lumber company or operating a store can be as spiritual as giving aid to the poor in the Mormon concept of reality. This is very different from other religious traditions, but it’s a part of the Mormon definition of reality. Brigham Young continued that. He dictated one time, he says, “Some of you members of the church,” and this was happening even in the 1860s.

Michael:  00:54:30          He said, “Some of you complain because I haven’t issued revelations. I could issue revelations every day.” And he announced a word of the Lord revelation to the conference of the church about building railroads.  And it was a “Thus Sayeth the Lord” kind of revelation. And, his successor John Taylor issued “Thus Sayeth the Lord” written revelations that have specific texts, although never added to the Doctrine and Covenants in the 1880s about investing in gold mines and silver mines.  So, this has been a part of Mormonism from its earliest origins to its pioneer time in Utah to the present. And so, I understand it can disturb people when they hear that a million point five, LDS headquarters has acknowledged, paying upfront for the construction and furnishing to the degree was necessary of the environment of the City Creek Mall. However, put this into context not only with the income of the church but with these expenditures.

Michael:  00:55:49          In 2006, the LDS Church headquarters gave a cash supplement to the church in the United Kingdom of nearly half a billion dollars, $450,000,000 and change. And that was in one year to one of the countries in which the church has had a significant presence since 1837. It is an industrial country. It is not a third world country. Its members are generally thought of as being comfortable. This is not the case in any country. Mormons can be poor even in the United States and there are poor members of the church who live on government welfare and church welfare in the United Kingdom. Well, the tithe payers in the United Kingdom couldn’t pay all of their responsibilities, all of the building and the maintenance and the missionary work and everything else, the aid to the really poor that occurs in the United Kingdom. And so in one year the church gave nearly half a billion dollars. I mean, I don’t know the total number, but I know it’s more than 100 countries throughout the world the church is in.

Michael:  00:57:08          In third world countries, and there are at least 50 and there could be far more than that. The church, and I have the reports to demonstrate this, is paying 90 to 95 percent of their expenses are being paid in cash from church headquarters on a year by year basis in the developing country or what in during the Cold War used to be called the third world. The church could not do this if it didn’t have billions of dollars, not only of tithing, but of commercial income from for-profit businesses, which the City Creek Mall is intended to be for. It’s stock and bond portfolio, which is totally separate from the investments in the City Creek Mall. So, the City Creek Mall wouldn’t be possible without all of this investment and profit, nor would the life of the church,