It’s Not Taxes

April 2, 2022 by

A popular legal Twitter personality has an evergreen tweet: “It’s not RICO.” See, RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) has become a super-popular rhetorical crime. Trump violated RICO; antifa violated RICO; I’m probably violating RICO just by posting this!

The thing is, RICO is a very narrowly-tailored law. There are specific criteria a crime has to meet to violate RICO and basically, if you hear someone say that somebody else violated RICO, you can be about 99% sure not only that they’re wrong, but that they have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

I thought about that the other day when a friend pointed me to a clip from a popular Mormon-themed podcast.[fn1] In the clip, the podcaster makes a blockbuster announcement: the podcaster has just discovered why the church builds so many temples. Specifically, the podcaster was told by an “inside source”:

It turns out that for the church to maintain its tax-exempt status, for the Mormon church to maintain its tax-exempt status as a charity or as a church, it has to do something with its money. And so building temples is one of the major ways the church can spend a boatload of money with all this cash that it keeps collecting and stay in business and be perceived as a charitable institution.

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Filed Under: Current Events, Internet & Social Media, Modern Era, Mormon, Rants, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Gender and the LDS Church in the Global South, Part 2

March 16, 2022 by

Participants in various geographies valued their church membership for helping them differentiate themselves from the ‘outside’ culture. Fijian participants valued the church’s progressiveness (see Part 1); US and NZ participants valued the church’s respect for motherhood. Furthermore, responses to the 2019 temple updates reveal a gap in priorities between Fijian, US, and NZ participants.

An ethnographic introduction to issues of gender and religion in the Global South.

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Filed Under: Children, Church Programs, Doctrine & Policy, Family, Gender & Sexuality, Marriage, Men, Modern Era, Mormon, Mormon Studies, Women Tagged With: , , , , ,

Your Sunday Brunch Special: Temple Dedication

November 16, 2014 by

I served a mission during the Vietnam War. This was a problematic thing on several levels. For one, the Church had wrangled selective service deferments and parsed them out to wards so that two ward members could be in the mission field at any one time, more or less. Our ward’s quota was in play, so that when I decided I wanted to try mission before war, there wasn’t much chance of doing so. After high school, I became a ski bum for a year, working in a ski shop, installing bindings, making adjustments, fixing skis, etc. As my 19th birthday approached, the bishop informed me that another ward had a free slot, and it was mine if I wanted it. I said yes.
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Filed Under: Mormon Tagged With:

Out of respect for them

October 17, 2011 by


The Provo Daily Herald reports “Authorities break ground for new LDS temple in Payson”:

Following his remarks and the closing exercises, Oaks invited the four general authorities in attendance to shovel a scoop of dirt from the shallow trench, followed by the 26 stake presidents in the Payson Utah Temple District, then local government officials, and lastly, any 12-year-old ordained deacons.

Oaks noted that he purposefully excluded women from the ceremonial shoveling out of respect for them because of the muddy conditions in front of the podium. He didn’t want their shoes to get soiled.

No comment.

Filed Under: Gender & Sexuality, Mormon, Women Tagged With: , , ,

The Illuminated Matsby, Vol. 13

April 13, 2011 by

New picture of the Rome Temple just released…

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Filed Under: Art, Film & Television, Media, Mormon, Pop Culture Tagged With: , ,

The Kirtland Temple Turns 175

March 28, 2011 by

“Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna to God and the Lamb! Amen, Amen, and Amen!”

There’s nothing quite like singing “The Spirit of God” with a congregation in the Kirtland Temple.  I’ve had the opportunity three times — the first time was at the dedication of the new Temple Visitor Center, the second was at a meeting of the John Whitmer Historical Association, and the third time was yesterday.  However, yesterday was the first time the congregation also gave the “Hosanna shout.”  (I’ve heard a lot of reviews of lackluster Hosanna shouts — I’ve never before participated in one, so I have no basis for comparison —  but I thought this one was pretty good.)

Yesterday was the 175th anniversary of the dedication of the Kirtland Temple and I traveled there for the weekend to participate in the commemorative events.  Beginning Friday there were a series of special meetings, services, seminars, lectures, and tours.  There were three services on Sunday itself — an LDS service in the early morning and one in the evening, and a Community of Christ service in the mid-morning.  To preserve the temple, the number of attendees for each session was limited to 300 (over a thousand apparently packed in for the original 1836 dedication), so I was only able to attend the Community of Christ service, but by every account, all three were very special and moving. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Mormon Studies Tagged With: ,

Mormon Temples: How They Work. Part 4.

November 22, 2010 by

[Part 3 here.]

Temple Ordinance Worker Leadership Structure

Once an ordinance worker is set apart by a member of the temple presidency, he or she may function in any number of positions in the temple leadership framework (without any other special ceremony). In this, temple service bears a relation to missionary organization. In larger temples, internal leadership may be organized along these lines:
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Filed Under: Mormon Tagged With: