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Actually the claim it is more like a 19th century American novel than a 1600 year old manuscript is horsecrap. Whoever said this has evidently not read many 19th century American novels. (I doubt Joseph Smith had either when he wrote it) It may not be like an ancient MS in certain ways but it does NOT come out of the mainstream US literary tradition of the time, anymore than Henry Darger comes out of American art tradition. This is not about whether it’s authentic or not, just about making generalizations.
The most obvious literary influence on the BoM is the Bible – again no way a novel. Even the King James Bible bears the hallmarks of Hebrew literature for all its faults.
Sheldon wrote:mackay11 wrote:The church also encourages members to reduce tithing accordingly. So instead of paying £10 per £100, you pay £8 per £100, knowing the £2 will be paid by the government out of your own tax bill.
Does anybody else find this stange? UK members only pay 8% tithing if they do it through the HMRC?
I had a members while I was bishop whose employer would match dollar for dollar his charitable contribution up to 5% of his salary. So he would pay his 10%, and I’d get a check in the mail from the company for another 5%. He would joke that he could just pay 5% tithing, and the church would still get their 10%, but he never took it beyond a joke. Next time I see him, I’ll have to tell him the church would have approved his 5% as full tithe!
No not at all. In UK we get around 32-40% tax/national insurance on our salaries (depending on pay). The point is that charitable donations are topped up by 20% out of our own tax bill, so the church still gets 10% of my earnings (but a portion is paid from my tax). If you’re a non-tax payer you can’t put add gift aid to a contribution.
Having said that there are some members in UK who feel that as an expression of righteousness they pay a full 10% anyway, so the church ends up with 12% of their salary. If that’s what they want to do, fine. But I’ve always felt like I was a full tithe payer by taking the gift-aid approach.
By the way, that’s not in any official publication that I’m aware of. It was how my Bishop taught it when they first did a 5th Sunday about it. So it may be that other units teach a 10% and let the church benefit from the rest.
It’s what we like to call “the priesthood leader lottery.”
SamBee wrote:Actually the claim it is more like a 19th century American novel than a 1600 year old manuscript is horsecrap. Whoever said this has evidently not read many 19th century American novels. (I doubt Joseph Smith had either when he wrote it) It may not be like an ancient MS in certain ways but it does NOT come out of the mainstream US literary
tradition of the time, anymore than Henry Darger comes out of American art tradition. This is not about whether it’s authentic or not, just about making generalizations.
The most obvious literary influence on the BoM is the Bible – again no way a novel. Even the King James Bible bears the hallmarks of Hebrew literature for all its faults.
Did you not hear about The Late War (and an earlier one called Napoleon something) hoohaa last year? Some book that was written in 1815 in the style of the KJV bible. Because it is a historical novel written in the style of Book of Mormon it reads spookily similarly.
I’m not aware of it… but the Book of Mormon itself certainly isn’t a novel, even if we take it to be fiction. It just doesn’t fit in that genre. The Gospels, funnily enough, work better that way, but predate the modern western novel by over a thousand years. The BoM is closer to a post-modern work – massive quoting, reworking and reuse, boxes within boxes within boxes, genre mixing, references to multiple time periods etc. There is a narrative arc, but only in the broadest sense.
Okay, that’s enough of the lit crit for now!
nibbler wrote:I guess my math is screwed up. If they pay £0.20 on the £1 then members would pay 8.33% tithing? £8.33 + £1.66 = £10? Anyway, that was my question as well. Tax rules make my head spin but as I understand it the British government takes that £0.20 from the individual paying the Gift Aid… so in the end you pay 10%, correct? Otherwise a full tithe in England is 8.33% with the other 1.66% being subsidized by the average British taxpayer.
Curtis wrote:it is obvious that the Church is doing what it can to REDUCE the burden on its members through legal methods.
And then take a hardline stance (debatable I know) on tithing on gross in the states. Makes it feel like the message is “as long as they get their 10%.”
Many (most) people would still calculate it on gross, especially when doing the gift aid calculation.
Regarding the calculation, I can’t work it out, but if you pay based on a 20% reduction of the planned donation rather than starting with the reduced donation and adding 20% to it.
Here’s explanation:
Quote:Under HMRC’s Gift Aid scheme, charities can reclaim an amount equal to basic rate tax (20%) on the amount of the donation plus basic rate tax already paid by that taxpayer on that donation. To do this, you need to use a ‘grossing up’ fraction.
Taking, for example, a donation of £100, the fraction applied to calculate Gift Aid is 100 x 20/80. This is 25% of £100 which equals £25.
Let me re-iterate: there’s no instruction from the church ‘head office’ that I know of. All they ask is whether you want to add gift-aid to your donation. The instruction on the calculation was (I think) a local leader’s recommendation.
Thanks for that clarification, mackay11. I appreciate it. Hawkgirl wrote: Quote:5 – The Illinois newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor had to be destroyed because it printed lies about Joseph Smith. Yes, I was taught this, but it’s partly true even if it’s not the whole truth.
Hope not to derail discussion but most all I have read here and from other thoughtful historically balanced Mormons do accept that there were basically no lies being printed. Only facts that were going to openly expose the constant subversion of actual polygamy/polyandry to the greater body of membership and town. Now I have heard reasonable explanations that state Joseph had the right to destroy based on being governmental leader (as well as spiritual leader) for fear of rioting in Illinois law allowed this. Can you help enlighten me on paraphrased quote “destroyed because expositor were printing lies, mostly or all true”? Perhaps I’m misinformed or misreading. Thanks for your or anyone else’s help on this.
I read this at MD, and I think it really sums up how I see this whole ordeal. I think Brad has about right, and I can respect this flavor or opinion. Quote:Brad Hudson wrote: I can only answer for myself. The lawsuit does strike me in a visceral way that surprises me. So, I’ll take a stab at answering the question.
I think it’s because I’m conflicted about things that I think are important.
A part of me wants Tom to win. Most of my contact with mormonism involves providing support for those who have lost their faith in mormonism and, as a consequence, have had their lives shredded. And I lay responsibility for that at the feet of the LDS leadership. Families should not be torn apart simply because someone decides to change churches, or not to have a church at all. And despite all the pretty words about not shunning those who fall away, the substance of mormonism is what tears the families apart. If fewer people sign up for mormonism in the first place, the pain it causes is reduced.
A part of me wants Tom to lose. I have relatives, friends and neighbors who are completely happy with their lives in mormonism. The lawsuit has the potential to fracture those families and lives. Pain and the tearing apart of families is an inevitable consequence of Tom’s lawsuit, especially if he wins.
And a significant part of me really, really wants the government to stay the hell away from religion. I live in a country dominated by Christianity of various flavors. As a non-believer, I can’t be honest about my stance toward religion and hope to be elected to any significant political office. It is critical for me to keep the government out of the religion business. And I see the application of statutes like the fraud statute to religion as being government regulation of the content of religious speech. And I don’t trust my government, which is dominated by theists, thinking it can wade into the business of regulating religious speech (which, in my book, includes anti-religious speech).
So that part of me just wants to hang a big sign on all religion that says “Caveat Emptor:” If you want to believe in some flavor of God, that’s fine, but don’t expect the government to bail you out when you change your mind.
Quote:I am moving into an area of complete and total speculation now, and I understand the danger of this sort of evaluation, but I also believe TP probably was a stereotypical, conservative hardliner while he was a local leader. I think he saw things in black-and-white and preached at or near the extreme lines. I think that perspective was shattered and that he now is the stereotypical opposite of his former position – jumping from the defender extreme to the attacker extreme. I don’t think he’s changed much, if at all; I believe his paradigm has changed.
I don’t believe that is all his fault, since the culture of his formative religious years in the Church tended to move people toward that kind of thinking, but I believe it is his natural, spiritual / intellectual orientation, if you will. I think he is a egomaniac and a zealot who believes what he believes passionately – and who believes that everyone who doesn’t believe as he does is deluded and/or ignorant. I think he is the opposite of Saul / Paul, since I think he went from a Paul-like stance to a Saul-like stance – being an active “missionary” in both situations.
This is the view of friends of mine from the UK who knew TP both before and after. Also, the kiwi bishop’s article, and articles from Hedgehog on W&T confirm that the culture in the UK was a very black & white, no questioning allowed stance.
My personal feeling is that I’d rather this didn’t go ahead. I’ve been frustrated by our church, about many things (the racism thing has never been properly dealt with), but I just wish there was another way. The problem in my opinion is the church being mealy mouthed about its problems.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Quote:I am moving into an area of complete and total speculation now, and I understand the danger of this sort of evaluation, but I also believe TP probably was a stereotypical, conservative hardliner while he was a local leader. I think he saw things in black-and-white and preached at or near the extreme lines. I think that perspective was shattered and that he now is the stereotypical opposite of his former position – jumping from the defender extreme to the attacker extreme. I don’t think he’s changed much, if at all; I believe his paradigm has changed.
I don’t believe that is all his fault, since the culture of his formative religious years in the Church tended to move people toward that kind of thinking, but I believe it is his natural, spiritual / intellectual orientation, if you will. I think he is a egomaniac and a zealot who believes what he believes passionately – and who believes that everyone who doesn’t believe as he does is deluded and/or ignorant. I think he is the opposite of Saul / Paul, since I think he went from a Paul-like stance to a Saul-like stance – being an active “missionary” in both situations.
This is the view of friends of mine from the UK who knew TP both before and after. Also, the kiwi bishop’s article, and articles from Hedgehog on W&T confirm that the culture in the UK was a very black & white, no questioning allowed stance.
The really good news is that the new generation of British Mormons are, on the whole, more moderate. Our parents and grandparents grew up in the Cold War and were spoon fed black and white, post-WW2 information via agenda-driven newspapers and TV stations.
Today, there are no black and white answers. There are only multi-coloured questions. Few of the 20-somethings and 30-somethings have a black and white way of thinking.
Moral relativism rules… which is alright for some things, but unfortunately there are some lines which should never be crossed. SamBee wrote:Moral relativism rules… which is alright for some things, but unfortunately there are some lines which should never be crossed.
What does this mean?
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Quote:there are some lines which should never be crossed.
I think everyone here agrees with that – although we would put the lines in different places in some cases.
Curtis wrote:Quote:there are some lines which should never be crossed.
I think everyone here agrees with that – although we would put the lines in different places in some cases.
Hmmm? I’m still not following what this means.
What lines should not be crossed?
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