Tithing Settlement: What is the point?

[Anonymous]

What is the real purpose of tithing settlement?

[Anonymous]

Cnsl1 wrote:

What is the real purpose of tithing settlement?

This article explains it. Simply put, there are three reasons:

1. ensure that the ward record of tithing matches the member’s record,

2. declare whether full tithe or not according to the member’s own decision, and

3. have a few minutes to meet with the bishop

the first two are the essential reasons.

[Anonymous]

I think the point in its inception was to increase revenues for the financial health of the Church. However, like most organizational habits, this has taken a life of its own, and spiritual reasons have been attached to it to make it supernatural, etcetera. The article makes it sound like tithning settlement is a satisfying, glorious event where members leave satisfied….

VERY INTERESTING OBSERVATION. I had once posted here on this forum what I read was the FULL TEXT of the 1970’s letter defining what a tithe means. After I had posted it, I came back to it, and the last sentence of the letter had been removed by a computer glitch or one of the Three Nephites. I know not which.

I put it down to the fact that perhaps my source was wrong, and proceeded with my analysis of tithing without that sentence, not at all perturbed (seriously, I wasn’t)..

Now, Behold, I find in the article you quote, that sentence that was removed is quoted front and center!!! The statement is a sentence which DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE CHI regarding tithing. And here it is, in all its glory:

Quote:

“Unless a member meets with the bishop or branch president, the leader has no way of knowing whether or not the person is a full-tithepayer. This was emphasized in a 1970 letter from the First Presidency to members of the Church as follows:

“Every member of the Church is entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord and to make payment accordingly.” (March 19, 1970, letter from the First Presidency.)

(boldface mine).

Now, the preamble to this is that “increase” is taken to mean “income”, and “no one is justified in saying more than this”. You can find most of this in the CHI AND in Gospel Principles Sunday School Manual. However, this last sentence, now quoted in the Church News, puts the kind of self-direction and angst-reducing appeal to individual integrity and conscience that i think the membership as a whole might appreciate.

Interesting how it’s been left out of the CHI though!!!

Comments are welcome on this, by the way. I am very pleased you posted this article, as this nails down a missing piece from the 1970 letter that represents our modern day interpretation of what tithing means. I’m surprised that last sentence appears nowhere in the publications that are most accessible to the leaders and general membership. It’s as if the Correlation group was afraid people would use it irresponsibly, so they left it out. Is that deceptive — to quote only that part of the letter, and leave this phrase off it? Each person needs to decide for themself. Frankly, I’ve never heard that last phrase quoted in any talk on tithing my entire Church existence, which shows how its absence from various publications has allowed it to fade. And the fact that one of the Three Nephites removed it from my post a couple years ago makes me wonder if they had ever heard it either, and thought I was misquoting!

Am I ever glad you posted that article!!!! I feel liberated.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

I had once posted here on this forum what I read was the FULL TEXT of the 1970’s letter defining what a tithe means. After I had posted it, I came back to it, and the last sentence of the letter had been removed by a computer glitch or one of the Three Nephites. I know not which.

Quote:

“Unless a member meets with the bishop or branch president, the leader has no way of knowing whether or not the person is a full-tithepayer. This was emphasized in a 1970 letter from the First Presidency to members of the Church as follows:

“Every member of the Church is entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord and to make payment accordingly.” (March 19, 1970, letter from the First Presidency.)

… And the fact that one of the Three Nephites removed it from my post a couple years ago makes me wonder if they had ever heard it either, and thought I was misquoting!

I’ve always undestood it to be the case that a full tithe is a self-declared decision, and there are a number of references to the letter in cyberspace with those words.

However, the removal by one of the three is deeply suspicious to me. perhaps the moderators thought that it would bring too much attention by the SCMC or something. Allowing the perception to stand that members should pay 10% of gross income is a convenience the leadership responsible for church revenue would love to keep in place. Advising people otherwise would be a significant issue.

Now that we point out the quote on the Church News site, I wonder how long it will take the SCMC to remove that as well. Better make a copy.

[Anonymous]

I think it’s useful to see how much you’re recorded as paying. It’s useful for me to see that anyway, I am an awful accountant.

I’ve just paid for my heating, telephone and credit card (not electricity yet), which has eaten into about 60% of my increase. I have to pay for these, IMHO, two of them are “red letters” i.e. final demands, and I never paid my credit card last month.

[Anonymous]

My guess is the main reason for tithing settlement is simply to get members to pay up as much as possible. Basically, it looks like the Church has found that it can get people to do things they don’t necessarily want to simply by asking them to so they are going to exploit this approach for all it’s worth. What happens is that if you have local Church leaders expecting you to pay tithing or fulfill callings then it creates more external pressure and a sense of urgency beyond what basic fear of eternal condemnation can provide by itself and it makes people uncomfortable to say no and let others down.

Even if this approach works to some extent as far as getting people to pay personally I think it is too manipulative and it makes the Church look bad as if they are obsessed with how much money they collect. Actually, I think it is more about trying to get people to do what Church leaders think they are supposed to as if it is for their own good more than greed or concern for the Church’s financial welfare but the problem is that less faithful members will start to associate the Church with these high costs of membership and having other members hassle them all the time.

[Anonymous]

I think it depends on the level of management you ask within the Church.

If you ask a local bishop or a SP, it’s to help the members fulfill the supernatural requirements for salvation. You could be quoted that JS maxim that “a religion which does not require the sacrifice of all things can’t produce faith sufficient for salvation”. If you go into the minds of the people at the top, when tithing was redefined in the 1970’s, it was probably due to expansion plans or budget shortfalls. However, like most motivators in the Church, it was given a spiritual reason and justification. That has now trickled into the hearts and minds of most TBM members and is here to stay.

I know when I was a ward leader, I was constantly seeking spiritual reasons and a higher purpose for the things I wanted my quorum to do. Often it started with an imperative — the SP or BP breathing down our neck, or a HC with an over-active Church commitment gland. Sometimes it was just that I couldn’t handle the workload all by myself. Then, we would seek scriptures and GA quotes to back it up.

I realize now that most of the quorum was on “their own clock” and were smart enough to do just what they felt they could handle. It left me really frustrated with them half the time. But now, here I sit, one of them, from this new armchair of enlightenment!!!

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

I think it’s useful to see how much you’re recorded as paying. It’s useful for me to see that anyway, I am an awful accountant.

No need for a meeting to get that info. Just send me an email with the detail.

I think for some it is somewhat rewarding to go and say I sacrificed. For others it is another difficult guilt trip. What the real purpose is for the church I think it is rather obvious. It is to collect as much as possible. Of course it can be spun many ways for what the real purpose is, but in reality I can not see how it is anything more than this.

[Anonymous]

Cnsl1 wrote:

What is the real purpose of tithing settlement?

So, just for the sake of clarity, in a case where someone has made no financial contributions to the church in the last year and has not signed up for tithing settlement – what is the purpose of contacting this person and exerting pressure to set up a tithing settlement meeting? :think:

[Anonymous]

In my mind, there maybe several reasons:

1. Just to keep in touch on a personal level to see where you’re at.

2. If there are issues that come up: what can the Bishop or the ward do to help?

3. Is there a way to get you to make a commitment for the coming year?

For the many years I’ve been inactive, not one Bishop or Financial Clerk ever contacted me.

Mike from Milton.

[Anonymous]

I have also seen reference made to the 1970 FP letter about tithing on other sites and posts. Has anyone posted a copy of the letter or provided a url, book, magazine or other verifiable church resource to verify the contents and wording? I would be very interested in seeing that source.

~BoC

[Anonymous]

Good question. I have seen PARTS of it quoted in the CHI and Gospel Principles, but only in the Church news article do they quote the fact that everyoen should decide bewteen himself and the Lord what a full-tithe is….

I will see if I can piece it all together as best I can, as that was a very important letter for modern times in my view. Not doctrine, but more of a statement of policy that is now oft referred-to.

[Anonymous]

here is the text of the letter as I understand it, pieced together from an online source, a quote from Gospel Principles, and if you can find a copy of the CHI latest version, and WF’s link to the Church News article on tithing settlement:

Quote:

“”For your guidance in this matter, please be advised that we have uniformly replied that the simplest statement we know of is that statement of the Lord himself that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their interest annually, which is understood to mean income. No one is justified in making any other statement than this. We feel that every member of the Church should be entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord, and to make payment accordingly.”

However, the CHI seems to take personal judgment out of the matter, leaving only the first two sentences:

Quote:

“The simplest statement we know of is the statement of the Lord himself, namely, that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their interest annually,’ which is understood to mean income. No one is justified in making any other statement than this.” (First Presidency letter, 19 Mar. 1970; see also D&C 119:4).”

I welcome verification with the current version of the CHI, as I no longer have a copy of it.

I would like to pose the question — why didn’t that last statement which provides personal judgment on the part of the member make it into the CHI and Gospel Principles? That last statement was also quoted in the Church News article that WF quoted here or in another thread, so I believe fully it existed in the original letter. On an issue as important as this, I find it disturbing that the personal judgment portion of the letter was NOT put into the CHI. In fact, I only learned about it after the Internet was a live and well for 10 years, after 27 years in the Church. Personally, I think that is misleading, to leave out that sentence.

I feel the last sentence from the 1970 letter belongs in the CHI and the manuals and everywhere if we are really committed to integrity and “being honest with our fellow man (or woman)” — we are held to this high standard in temple recommend interviews — why can’t the authors of the CHI follow the same standard of reporting, rather than picking and choosing those elements that seem to serve current interests the best? Are we not a Church committed to principles of integrity?

[Anonymous]

The BP asked for our family to come in after church and do tithing settlement. I went in by myself, and I politely told the BP that we would not be participating. He took it okay, but started asking questions about if the kids paid etc etc. I finally got firm and just said that we are not talking tithing. He was “hurt” and I let him know that it was nothing personal, but no good was going to come from it at this point. He bore his testimony about tithing, and we parted amicably.

[Anonymous]

After what had happened with you a while ago, I think he was pushing it to ask about the kids. I’d be surprised if he’s going to ask you again.

At one time I used to think “bearing down in pure testimony” was the way to go whenever there was disagreement on principles. Now, it just seems desperate.

[Author]

Posts