When church members pay tithing, they have an expectation that the hard earned money they pay will be spent as the Lord has directed. These expectations are rooted in D&C 119:2, which gives us the scripturally-based purpose of tithing:
- "For the building of mine house [temples]
- and for the laying of the foundation of Zion [developing people who are of one heart, one mind and dwelling in righteousness with no poor among them]
- and for the priesthood
- and for the debts of the Presidency of my Church."
Here are some very basic questions about church finances:
Q: What is the church's income?
A: Today, the church receives as much as $7 billion in members' tithing each year. It is speculated that the church has over $100 billion in assets. [1]
Q: How are tithes allocated?
A: Here's the church's own statement, dated May 22, 2018:
"The Church's Council on the Disposition of the Tithes is composed of the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the Presiding Bishopric. Together, they establish and administer the specific policies and budgets guiding the use of Church resources (see D&C 120:1). Those policies embody the following principles:
- Expenditures will not exceed forecasted revenue.
- The budget for operating expenses will not increase at a more rapid rate than anticipated tithing contributions.
Budgets for the Church's efforts are specifically approved and funds are appropriated by the Church's Budget and Appropriations Committee, a subcommittee of the Council on the Disposition of the Tithes." [2]
Q: How are tithes audited?
A: Usually, large organizations hire outside accounting firms to audit their finances. However, the church has its own Audit Committee which does the job:
"Additionally, the Church Auditing Department, which is independent from all other Church departments, employs credentialed professionals to ensure that Church funds are administered and recorded in accordance with Church policies and standard accounting practices." [2]
Q: Do members get to see how the money is spent?
A: Apparently so. The following is a transcript of an interview between Pres. Hinckley and a reporter (which can be viewed in its entirety here):
"REPORTER: In my country the...we say the people's churches, the Protestants, the Catholics, they publish all their budgets, to all the public.
HINCKLEY: Yeah. Yeah.
REPORTER: Why is it impossible for your church?
HINCKLEY: Well, we simply think that the...that information belongs to those who made the contribution, and not to the world. That's the only thing. Yeah." [3]
This is interesting because the church published its last financial report in April, 1959.
Q: How is the money spent?
A: Here's The First Presidency:
"The vast majority of these funds are used immediately to meet the needs of the growing Church including more meetinghouses, temples, education, humanitarian work and missionary efforts throughout the world. All Church funds exist for no other reason than to support the Church's divinely appointed mission." [4]
D&C 119:2 (As Amended)
So, the Church's divinely appointed mission now includes the development of high-rise office buildings, luxury shopping malls, planned communities and other real estate developments, several businesses, numerous radio and television stations, an insurance company, cattle ranches, farms, stocks and forged documents.
I won't go into detail regarding these various investments; other articles have done an exemplary job of that (for example, see here). In response, the church has admitted that it "also sets aside funds each year for future needs. These funds are added to Church reserves, which include stocks and bonds, taxable businesses, agricultural interests and commercial and residential property." These "Investments can be accessed in times of hardship or to meet the emerging needs of a growing, global faith in its mission to preach the gospel to all nations and prepare for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ." [5]
The source if these funds? Again, church leaders disclosed, "the vast majority of its financial resources comes from the tithes and offerings of Church members." [2]
That means, by the church's own admission, your tithing money is spent on laying "up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt." [6] Anyone paying these tithes is therefore complicit, to one degree or another, in these anti-scriptural endeavors.
I could write many, many posts regarding the incongruity between modern-day church expenditures and what the Lord originally intended in D&C 119:2. But today, I'd like to focus on just one portion of the church's assets: its stock portfolio.
The Definitive LDS Church Stocks Tracking Chart
For 22 years, Ensign Peak Advisors has managed the church's reserve investment fund. For reasons the church declines to elaborate, [7] it never filed required government oversight paperwork until February 14, 2020 (although there is no evidence of intentional obfuscation, these are some pretty bright advisors who surely know the government expects these reports).
These reports - filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission - are here: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001454984
There, you'll see four reports, each filed on a quarterly basis in 2020. What you can't see is how these stocks have been traded from quarter to quarter. What stocks has the church purchased or increased, decreased or eliminated?
To see that, I have downloaded each of the four reports and converted them into spreadsheets. Then I imported all four spreadsheets into an Access database, using their CUSIP as a common index field. Then I gave each stock issuer (for example, Microsoft) its own row, with each quarter's investment amount in the subsequent columns. After quarters 2, 3 and 4, I also listed the ?, or the percentage change from quarter to quarter.
OK, enough of the technobabble.
Click here to access my Ensign Peak Advisors Tracking Chart
This spreadsheet has five tabs: Master Data, Top 20 investments, Winners (which stocks have increased), Losers (which stocks have decreased) and Pharma.
Top 20 tab: As of November 12, 2020, the church invested over a billion dollars each in Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. Both Apple and especially NVIDIA (a computer chip manufacturer) saw the church's stock purchases in them increase more than 20% between August and November, 2020.
Winners tab: between August and November 2020: Grocery Outlet, trucking company Schneider National, genetic testing company Natera then several pharmaceutical and therapeutics companies.
Losers tab: The church divested itself of over $79 million in stocks between August and November 2020. They're listed in the Losers tab.
Pharma tab: I list the 17 "COVID-19 RELATED" testing labs / vaccine developers which the church has invested in (red font; four of them are listed in the Top 20 tab). 72 other "CONFIRMED PHARMA" companies are listed in a blue font. Finally, 45 other Therapeutics companies are in a black font.
As you will see, the church is investing over $1.6 billion in tithed funds into COVID-19 testing or vaccine developers. Another $1.7 billion is invested in non-COVID-19 related pharmas, and just under $100 million in other therapeutics companies. All totaled, the church invests almost $3 billion, or 4% of its total portfolio, in these three sectors.
All spreadsheets will be updated on a quarterly basis as new SEC filings are submitted.
In a future post, I'll detail how the church is staunchly committed to vaccinations, including COVID-19 vaccinations. We'll examine the implications of this stance as it relates to these investments, the church's employees and members.
"Furthermore, I want to say to you, we may not be able to reach it right away, but we expect to see the day when we will not have to ask you for one dollar of donation for any purpose, except that which you volunteer to give of your own accord, because we will have tithes sufficient in the storehouse of the Lord to pay everything that is needful for the advancement of the kingdom of God." (Joseph F. Smith, Conference Report, Apr. 1907, p. 7)"
QUESTIONS
Based on the aforementioned facts, I have the following questions:
- How does the church's investments in these various sectors (see italicized text above) square with the scriptural definition of tithing found in D&C 119:2?
- When was D&C 119:2 amended to include real estate and other investments? When was this revision presented to the church for a sustaining vote per the Law of Common Consent?
- What interesting points did you find in these spreadsheets?
- Why did Pres. Hinckley say that budgetary "information belongs to those who made the contribution," but the contributors (tithe payers) haven't seen that information since April, 1959?
SOURCES
1. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jan/30/from-book-to-boom-how-the-mormons-plan-a-city-for-500000-in-florida; https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/mormon-church-gets-7-billion-year/324727/
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20181010221649/https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-finances-and-a-growing-global-church
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGktXV346G8&feature=youtu.be
4. First Presidency statement, Dec. 17, 2019
5. Gérald Caussé, "In the Lord's Way: The Spiritual Foundations of Church Financial Self-Reliance," Mormon Newsroom, Mar. 2, 2018
6. 3 Nephi 13:19-20; Helaman 8:25; 3 Nephi 27:32
7. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/03/07/lds-church-discloses/
