Luke 16:13 reads:
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
This admonition hasn’t stopped the LDS Church from trying however. Anthropologist Daymon Smith, in The Book of Mammon, contends that the LDS Church tries to serve both God and mammon, prophet and profit. The result is an organization that is too corporate to be truly religious, and too religious to be truly corporate (members’ deference to ‘inspired’ church leaders makes competition and accountability difficult).
(What follows is my brief review of the book. I’d encourage you to read these more thorough reviews.)
The book recounts Daymon Smith’s experiences in the Church Office Building, where he worked as a media evaluator. Daymon gives us a rare inside-look into the church’s business practices, day-to-day operations, and office politics. Thread throughout the book are fascinating anecdotes about Mormon history and astute insights about Mormonism more generally.
The Book of Mammon is a must-read for serious students of Mormonism, but Daymon’s writing may deter the lay reader. Much of the book reads like an 19th-century exposé. It’s wordy, and flamboyantly so. I personally found it exhausting—initially, at least. It’s as if Daymon feels the need to prove his erudition on every page, lest the reader forgets he has a PhD. Thankfully, he does tone it down later in the book (or perhaps I just got used to it). The style wasn’t totally without its charms, however. It did occasionally make for fun and playful read.
My reservations about the style aside, I strongly recommend this book–especially to my Mormon friends. This is, in a sense, a vigorously pro-Mormon book. Daymon Smith is trying to rescue Mormonism from the LDS Church. Correlation and corporatism have replaced some of Mormonism’s finer truths. I have expressed a similar concern at this blog before.
Lastly, because many of you won’t read the book (it is, after all, 400 pages and $25 bucks), I want to share some of my favorite quotes and factoids from the book:
- “There is too much time given to corporations, stocks, bonds, politics, etc. by our leaders to please me. We are in all kinds of business interest.” — Brigham Young Jr., April 1890
- The LDS Church, as a church, doesn’t actually exist. It is a corporation, and was incorporated by Brigham Young in 1851.
- Eastern bankers found the LDS Church a sound financial investment, due to Mormons’ “sense of community,” “obedience to authority,” and “uniquely productive work ethic.” Similar attributes led sociologist Max Weber to compare Mormons to the German Army.
- Presiding Bishop Charles W. Nibley “made his fortune on stolen timber and child labor,” to quote his grandson, Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley. An entry from Charles’ journal reads: “It has become the custom in the church to give high seats in the synagogue to men who have made ‘money’.”
- President Heber J. Grant was the subject of a federal investigation in 1920 because of alleged war profiteering by the Sugar Trust (Mormons had a monopoly on beet sugar).
- In 1981, the LDS Church released the ‘Quad’–a combination scripture set (complete with footnotes and chapter headings) that many Mormons use today. Initially, sales for the new scriptures were sluggish. The CEO of Deseret Book worried that the new emphasis on Jesus was to blame (the 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon was subtitled, “Another Testament of Jesus Christ”). The more likely culprit was Deseret Book itself, which heavily advertised the pricey leather-bound sets to the exclusion of cheaper ones.
- Perhaps it’s no coincidence that, amid the Quads’ disappointing sales, Ezra Taft Benson made “flooding the earth” with Books of Mormon a theme throughout his presidency.
- Lorenzo Snow instituted the 10-percent tithe, and stripped bishops of stewardship over their congregations’ tithes.
- The LDS Church was working on (but eventually scrapped) a Mormon alternative to the social networking sites MySpace and Facebook.
- Of General Conference: “[T]he speakers seem to be conspirators in some extended Stanley Milgram study. How diminished can the content be, and still command silence, if spoken by a “prophet”?”
- The last year the LDS Church publicly disclosed its finances was 1959.
- Computers issue and sign mission calls. These computers employ an algorithm that sends missionaries primarily to those areas that will yield the most tithes. (Why the church presence in Latin America, then? The converts may be poorer, but they are also more numerous.)
- Half a million dollars are spent every year on vehicles for general authorities.
- The LDS Church once urged members to keep a one-year supply of food, but they suspected most members weren’t heeding this counsel. The church commissioned a survey to see how much food storage the average member has. The majority kept only a three-month supply, so the church lowered the bar and made that the new ideal.
- The LDS Church gives an estimated 1-2% of its annual revenue to charity (comparable to Walmart’s rate). “I would not be surprised if more was spent on PR than on those good works which are PR’ed before men.”
- “Even as early as 1962 David McKay expressed private doubts about Correlation, suggesting … that by these same means the early Christian church was made to stumble into darkness …”
- A group of African-American Mormons (the Genesis Group) submitted a script to the LDS Church for a play about black Mormons from the 1830s to the Civil War. The church approved the play, so long as they omitted the references to Elijah Abel’s priesthood ordination and Brigham Young’s polygamous wives, among other things.
- In 2009, the LDS Church not only vicariously baptized the late St. Damian of the Roman Catholic Church, but also married him to a spiritual wife.
- The FBI consulted with the LDS Church after the 9/11 attacks to model some of their security systems after the church’s genealogical software.
- The LDS Church initially declined to purchase the domain name Mormon.com. When its owner turned it into a porn site, a wealthy member bought it for upwards of a million dollars and donated it to the church.
- The LDS Church attempted to trademark the term ‘Mormon’, but were denied by the U.S. Trademark and Patents Office.
- The author was asked to evaluate church media geared toward ‘Latinos’. He ruffled feathers when he responded that ‘Latino’ is a fictitious demographic, imagined by advertisers to conveniently lump Mexicans, Chileans, and others into a single group. His boss threatened him with probation for being “too academic, too verbose.”
- A church contractor from 1997 to 2000 bribed the Argentine government to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to expedite national identity cards for missionaries. Other documents that were needed to legitimize the church’s presence in Argentina and were harder to procure were forged.
“threatened him with probation for being “too academic, too verbose.”
FINALLY, a post I can understand about a book about a book about a book I can’t really seem to grasp… and I’m working on a PhD too, dang it.
Your post makes me want to try to read it now though… thanks for the bullet points though… fascinating!
Whoops – forgot to comment on the quote – I thought it was amusing, as I have so far avoided the book precisely because it seemed “too academic, too verbose.”
Lol. And it is. But if you want a good read from Daymon Smith that is less verbose, I’d recommend his dissertation on polygamy and correlation: http://bycommonconsent.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/daymon-smith-dissertation.pdf
Jon,
We occasionally disagree, but I think this post is way below your standards. A couple things…
The first five bullet points you list undercut a lot of the legitimacy of the book (at least in my mind). All are designed to sound nefarious, but each (with the limited exception of 4) is totally irrelevant and misleading. They’re Michael Moore style tactics.
The comment on President Benson and the Book of Mormon is offensive and problematic. Most members of the Church, pre-Pres Benson, studied the Bible more than the Book of Mormon. This was true from the earliest days. So the comment about “too much focus on Jesus” is mistaken to say the least.
However, let’s assume its true. If that’s the case, then you focus more on the Bible if you want to sell quads, right? The Bible is the issue. Increasing focus on the Book of Mormon to a group of people you are claiming objected to the focus of the Bible is not a great way to sell quads. Once again, very misleading.
The comment on mission calls is outright false. Apostles assign every mission call.
Do they use computers? Of course they do.
Do they determine how many missionaries are needed in an area based on a variety of factors? Absolutely.
Does the church determine where missionaries are sent with much emphasis upon tithing collected? No. If they did, missionaries would rarely, if ever, leave the United States (and a majority would stay in the Western United States). We certainly would not send missionaries to Latin America, the Phillipines, and Africa. Conversion rates, not the amount of tithing collected, play the largest role.
“The comment on President Benson and the Book of Mormon is offensive and problematic. Most members of the Church, pre-Pres Benson, studied the Bible more than the Book of Mormon. This was true from the earliest days. So the comment about “too much focus on Jesus” is mistaken to say the least. ”
Jon pretty clearly said that it was a NEW focus.
“The comment on mission calls is outright false. Apostles assign every mission call.”
I’m actually pretty curious about the role of computers in mission assignments. What exactly do they do and how does Smith know this?
Nowhere did I suggest that Mormons didn’t buy the new Book of Mormon because of its reference to Jesus in the subtitle. That was the CEO of the Deseret Book’s concern, not mine! I stated that the more likely reason was that Deseret Book was marketing the expensive Quads and hiding the cheaper ones. So you misunderstood my point.
Moreover, your point about members studying the Bible over the BoM before Benson is not lost on me. I made that very point in a post where I reviewed Terryl Givens’ “By the Hand of Mormon” a few months ago.
I’m not in a position to know how mission calls are assigned. How do you know the extent to which apostles are involved, if at all?
Re-reading the relevant section about the computer system behind mission calls, I might not have been fair to Smith’s point. He may not have been saying tithing was the only variable, but the primary one. Judge for yourself, though:
“The mission system since the 1960s has been driven by deficit-spending economic models. We figure it’ll cost a lot of money to send these kids out, but that they convert so many on average, and on average these converts will contribute so much per year. These numbers are calculated by region, by country, and so on, and I suppose they send out more missionaries to areas where members contribute more, fewer to areas where everyone is poor. Unless they can convert the folks in bulk … [I]t’s economy of scale that justifies the continued presence in Latin America.”
Regarding Latin America… the church loses money there. I suspect what he is referring to is that the church considers the percentage of members who are paying tithing in an area when deciding whether to build a temple. This makes perfect sense since paying tithing is a requirement for a temple recommend and the tithes are what pay for the building.
Having said that, there is a huge difference between the percentage of tithe payers and the amount of tithing that is paid. Even if Latin America had 100% of members paying tithing, that money would probably still not come close to the return that 50% of Americans paying tithing would.
Why is this relevant? Smith is trying to imply that church leaders view tithing and missionaries as a cost / benefit and are running the missionary department like a business. The problem is that they will send missionaries to places where tithing payment, even in bulk (which, by the way, doesn’t happen in Latin America) simply is not a good return on investment.
What makes more sense, and is more consistent with what they’re doing, is that they are assigning missionaries based upon where they can do the most good and bring the most people into the church (while still offering people in every nation the opportunity to find the missionaries).
While I’m offended by the suggestion as a Mormon, I’m far more upset by the lack of coherent thought in his argument.
I also confirm the way mission calls are issued. Ive heard personally from multiple general authorities ( all from the seventy) and 1 in particular that personally accompanied president eyring to assign missions. Tylers comment is true.
Did they mention what was involved in assigning missions? Did they say whether it was mostly rubber stamping what computers put out or was there more involved?
I could believe that computers determine how many to send where (and perhaps suggest who goes where) and that church leaders are involved somehow in directing who goes where, though I have a hard time accepting that they prayerfully consider over 25,000 per year.
I rather doubt they “assign” the mission calls. That’d be way too demanding of their time. Are you sure they don’t just sign off on the mission calls that the computer generated?
Here is how the mission call process works. I’ve heard it from a few general authorities, including Quinton L. Cook (while he was a seventy and running the missionary dept), and others who work in and around the church office building.
Each week, 2 apostles are assigned the responsibility to assign mission calls. Elder Cook says they consider this one of their greatest responsibilities, and they typically fast in preparation for it.
In the room where they assign mission calls, a huge map comes up with a list of missions and the number of people needed in each. The missionary’s picture and relevant information is brought up on the screen. The apostles have the option to place the missionaries in any mission or to defer for another week.
The President of the Church is then read every call and occasionally makes changes by inspiration.
Like every process in the church, seventies are assigned to oversee the groundwork, but the inspiration comes from the 12 and the First Presidency.
Jon,
I didn’t mean to be so harsh. I apologize.
I have no doubt that Smith wrote what you summarized. I doubt him, not you. There is far too much in what you have noted that is inconsistent with everything I have known of the Church’s operations. To be clear, my grandfather used to help write / review the church’s budget. I have many friends who have worked in the Church Office Building and been involved in other ways.
The church is a bureaucracy and does not operate perfectly. It does; however, operate under the guidance of inspired leaders who make it work much better than can reasonably be expected (or is by any organization of comparable size / scope).
Some of the things you are writing are technically true, but they are written in a way that is deceptive and leads people to believe something else that is false.
For instance, the Church is a corporation… Why? So they could maintain the rights to the Book of Mormon and there wouldn’t be a financial feud following the death of each prophet (like Brigham and Emma had following Joseph Smith’s death). It is a true fact, but the way Smith (and you by extension) present it makes it sound nefarious.
I know you are writing it correctly, but I’m skeptical of this writer. And, to be honest, I would have thought you’d see through this guy.
From where I stand, it the LDS church seems no better or worse managed than a typical corporation of comparable size. If anything, it seems to fare pretty well because of it’s tax-exempt status.
I agree the corporation issue is trumped up, but it reflects a truth about the corporate culture that has come to pervade Mormonism. Even I in my short life have noticed how the church has changed. It doesn’t feel as much like a community anymore.
See through this guy? Smith’s book has been pretty well-received within the Mormon blogosphere, from what I can tell. (Though that community consists of disproportionately liberal Mormons.) I’m probably not giving you a fair snapshot of the book, given that I am attracted to those bits that are more controversial. Most of the facts I cite above are placed in their appropriate context in the book. For example, Smith doesn’t make the incorporation of the church into anything nefarious. He adequately explains why the church had to incorporate. So Smith’s problem isn’t that the church is incorporated so much as that it sometimes acts like a corporation.
As for the mission process: That makes more sense. But that’s not a far cry from what Smith was criticizing. Church leaders exercise judgment over what missionary goes where, but the “where”s from which to choose were determined by an uninspired computer.
Daymon Smith has commented at this blog before. Hopefully he’ll drop in on this conversation. I’m not in a position to know how fair or true his observations are, so I can’t really defend him.
I went to Seattle for the mission. Seattle is known to be a “medical” mission. I knew several missionaries who had some serious medical issues and I was one of them. From this anecdotal evidence I think at least some calls are come by some kind of reasoning and not necessarily by inspiration.
My understanding is that this information is available on the screens that they see. For instance, some missionaries are restricted from leaving the US / Canada because of health reasons. This is on the form doctors turn in before the review.
I kept meaning to get around to reviewing this book, but you’ve done a brilliant job. Kudos for the excellent summary.
My 3 older sisters also went on missions. The one who spoke fluent German went to Germany. The two who spoke fluent Italian, one went to Italy and the other Honduras.
I wonder how much influence the local leaders have, also.
I agree with Tyler’s central criticism, which is that Jon’s post is misleading and dishonest. By Jon’s own admission, he removed the appropriate context from each quote, thereby making its interpretation unfairly negative. If intentional, this makes Jon’s post dishonest and worthy of abuse. If unintentionally, this makes his post grossly negligent, as he acknowledges that he only cited those quotes he finds controversial.
I would also like to add that based on the book’s meritless central theme, it is probably unworthy of any earnest investigation. I’m sure, however, it’s a wonderful source if you’re looking to stoke the fire of dissent.
My understanding of the central theme, I acknowledge, is gleamed from Jon’s review, as well as the other reviews he linked. I have not read the book. That said, the central theme of Smith’s book is that the desire for mammon (riches) has replaced the use of spiritual guidance by the Church. He provides examples of the Church behaving like a corporation in the administration of its affairs as his primary source of evidence. From what I’ve seen, his primary source of evidence that the Church fails to employ spiritual guidance is his opinion that General Conference lacks profound spiritual insight.
To begin, no one has acknowledged the Church can behave like a corporation and still make decisions ultimately guided by spiritual inspiration. It is both plausible and rational that God intervene with revelation only when necessary. Indeed, its doctrine: “For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.” D&C 58:26.
This strikes me as a “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. If the Church were to operate on pure revelation, every decision made without regard to or employment of reason, investigation, analysis and the present state of affairs, we would be criticized for behaving stupidly, contrary to common sense, and idiotic. But when we employ reason, efficient organizational structure, and sound analysis to the extent it is useful, we’re called hypocrites and frauds.
If the Church is to be criticized for employing efficient organizational structure similar to a corporation, consider that in Exodus 18 we learn that Moses instituted a system of judges because it was more efficient.
If the Church is to be criticized for having a profit motive, please consider the parable of the talents found in Matthew 25. The servants who trade and labor and thereby increase the assets over which they were given stewardship are praised and rewarded. They are informed that their good governance over a few things indicates they are qualified for governance over greater things. God’s goal is to make us governors over great things – therefore our stewardship over fewer things must be tested. It cannot be tested if we are not given the opportunity to make decisions. Furthermore, desiring to make the most of the assets over which you are steward is a righteous motive; the converse is wasteful and wicked.
Appeals to the Bible probably won’t get you very far around here. I criticize the Church for its sins of omission. The Church could do SO MUCH MORE with its resources than to build a mall, etc. The Church has such a great opportunity to appeal to this subjective yet popular standard: “by their fruits ye shall know them.” Sure many say the Church does a lot. But in relation to what? If its charitable donations are no more than that of Wal-Mart, then following the logic of “by their fruits ye shall know them” … what does that really say about the Church?
When I said that I was taking those bullet points out of context, I didn’t mean to suggest that the points were somehow unfair or invalid. The points stand. Anytime somebody quotes a passage from the book, it is out of context (that is, removed from the totality of the book). All I meant to suggest was that the author might choose to sum up his book in a different way than I did, because those things that stuck most with me were the controversial points. I just didn’t want people to think that the bullet points necessarily reflect the tone or purpose of the entire book.
Chris,
When the argument criticizes the Church for behaving contrary to the principles taught by the bible, you must quote the bible. Furthermore your comment became borderline comically when you decided to quote the bible.
I would be interested to learn more of the “context” surrounding the bullet point regarding the Church’s charitable donations…If Jon is willing to oblige. I suspect there is more to it than the bullet point reveals. I may be wrong but I believe the quoted percentage is measuring the Church’s contributions to non-Mormon charities. Most churches lack the infrastructure, organization and finances to support their own charitable enterprises. This is not the case with the LDS church which operates it’s own welfare and humanitarian systems, the contributions to which would not be included in the quoted figure.
Hegji, I initially thought that might explain the low charity rate as well, but I believe Daymon Smith is including all the internal church welfare in that figure.
Here’s some context concerning charity:
“[M]embers give ten-percent plus, but their wards give around five percent of their revenue to their poor, and by the time the money comes back from the COB (Church Office Building), The Church has generously tithed to the needy from its multibillion dollar revenue stream something on the order of one percent, often in used, tattered clothing and rice and wheat and so on … For all its bluster and public relations about humanitarian aid, The Corporation, in other words, doesn’t follow its own rule of tithing. I would not be surprised if more was spent on PR than on those good works which are PR’ed before men.”