I’m sure you have heard that spiel about extended warranties plenty of times lately. You hear it when you buy a gadget from the electronics store. You hear it over and over on satellite radio. When you buy a car, the finance guy tries really really hard to add an extended warranty to the sale. With so much attention given to selling a product most of us don’t really want (hey, I’m buying a new car so I don’t have to worry about car repairs for awhile!) I’ll bet I’m not the only one to conclude: (1) They are making a lot of money off of extended warranty contracts; and (2) therefore, it’s probably not a good deal for me the consumer. If they’re making a lot of money off of these things, it’s coming out of my pocket.
Here’s another example: airline credit cards. It’s on their website. It’s in the pocket in front of your seat, along with the emergency exit brochure. Somewhere in the flight, the flight attendant gives a five-minute presentation blaring over the announcement speaker above your head about how you’ll get 50,000 free points if you get the card, plus extra points when you buy more airline tickets with the card, how could you possibly live without this new credit card? The consumer warning light inside your head is probably going off, telling you: (1) Wow, they really want to sell me their credit card, don’t they? and (2) They must be making a lot of bank off those cards, right out of my pocket. Hard pass.
Even if you buy the warranty or get the card, there’s no guarantee that the “promises” you hear pan out. They can deny your warranty claim for a variety of reasons. Airlines from time to time “readjust” the value of the points they give you, so suddenly that flight to Hawaii costs 125,000 points instead of 60,000 points. You can never really trust what a company or institution says, can you?
So what is the Mo app? Let’s look at what the Church is pushing in its messaging. Doctrines or services that get way too much attention in Conference, in the curriculum, and at LDS.org.
First, tithing. Sure, the Church has to pay the bills, like any other church, but there is just way too much emphasis on tithing. And the way it’s talked about should set off that Church warning light in your head, if you still have one: (1) Pay 10% tithing and you’ll actually have *more* money each month. Yeah, right. Like 0.9x > 1.0x. And you thought algebra would never be useful after ninth grade. (2) The stories about how a full tithepayer gets a miraculous check in the mail on the last day of the month so they can pay the rent. I suspect this is a very rare occurrence. And hey, if number one is right (you have more money from paying tithing!) then number two doesn’t make sense. The true way to justify tithing rarely gets articulated over the pulpit: Yes, it is a significant sacrifice, but it is worth it to you, as an active Latter-day Saint, to help build the kingdom — even if you have less money each month and sometimes you can’t make rent or your car payment because you sent the money off to the Church.
How about temples? The Church really pushes temples. Doing a quick check, eight out of fifteen news boxes at the LDS Newsroom site are about temples. Lots of mentions and talks in each Conference. There is a link to tithing, of course (to get in, you need a recommend; to get a recommend, you have to pay tithing) and “follow the money” is usually a good way to understand why corporations do the things they do, regardless of what they say. But there is more to the story, I think. The Church builds lots of stake centers and chapels, but they are rarely mentioned. A groundbreaking for a new stake center is not celebrated the way a new temple is. And every new temple generates a dozen or more news blurbs on LDS sites and press releases to the media: an initial announcement; a site selection; a projected drawing; a groundbreaking with a photo of a bunch of guys in suits and a shovel with a little dirt on it; a projected completion date; tickets for the open house; pictures of the open house; the blessed date when the temple is finally open for temple-going Mormons to attend.
Let’s be clear: I’m not criticizing LDS temples. Crowning LDS ordinances are performed there. A lot of you were married there. The idea of holy ground or a holy place is appealing in some ways. It’s just the overkill in terms of coverage and (like tithing) the exaggerated claims made for temple attendance. In the LDS scheme, sure you get blessings for attending the temple, but you get blessings for anything in church: going to church on Sunay, doing your calling, reading your scriptures, going on a mission. It’s not like you learn anything there (you’ve seen the movie several times before). You don’t socialize with friends like at sacrament meeting; you don’t even get the sacrament.
I suspect one reason temples get so much attention is because other Christian denominations don’t have them. Kind of like how Subaru talks incessantly about “symmetrical all-wheel drive” for its vehicles, although it seems like all such systems are fairly symmetrical. And really, if you want better traction, get an *asymmetrical* true four-wheel drive that puts more power to one side or one wheel where you really need it. I think the phrase “symmetrical all-wheel drive” was a marketing guy’s brilliant way of making a system deficiency sound like a good feature. Nothing wrong with Subarus, of course. My little Impreza was amazingly reliable along with being dependably symmetrical.
So what do you think, readers? Any other advertising examples where way too much attention is given to products or services you and everyone else don’t generally want or need? Any other examples of Church messaging and emphasis that seem like overkill or oversell? Any examples of things in church that were way overemphasized in the past but now are almost never talked about?
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So much of so many of these observations are so strongly anecdotal in nature. Like just with the tithing example, I know that we’ve all heard those talks about finding the money just in time for something, or that their money stretched more than usual (which, to me, is quite different than the OP’s potentially tongue-in-cheek characterization of having more money each month). But I guess that’s my point – I don’t know that I have EVER heard anyone say that you would have more money when paying tithing; what I DO recall hearing is that what money you have could go further, whether it be from discounts that were unexpected previously, or someone giving you something you didn’t expect, etc.
But, and I want to be clear, this is not a defense of tithing promises. I in fact find more spiritual value and insight when other stories are told too: kind of like a continuation of the Hebrews 11 discourse. For some, they did find money when they didn’t expect it! Hooray! But for others, perhaps they paid tithing and the miracle they hoped for didn’t come. They missed rent; or they missed some meals; etc. The real question is what they (we) learned from it. Perhaps some learned that tithing wasn’t worth it. Perhaps others learned that the sacrifice was worth it, for some other seemingly intangible reason.
More generally, though, I agree that the distrust rises when something is pushed very hard. But I must also wonder – are we intellectually honest (or at least open) enough to be willing to entertain the idea that it could be good for me too? Airline credit cards? I’m sure they are making bank. But does that mean I didn’t get any benefit from it, assuming I would be using SOME credit card anyways? Why can’t both be true at the same time?
And I have to wonder – if the church’s website was drumming up service to others, lots of “helping hands” publicity etc, would that also garner criticism? In the spirit of this post, would the church’s push for it be seen cynically as a ploy by the church to get its members to raise the church’s profile in some social sense? It’s not like you get the sacrament doing that service. But one could talk about the personal benefits of service, of connecting with others. Why can’t that be a win-win?
Additional things I feel that the Church has overemphasized:
1. Family Home Evening. When I was younger, FHE was pushed very hard. Rather than having families figure out how best to have family time, you had to do FHE the Church’s way: Monday evenings, opening and closing prayer, sing Church hymns, approved Church lesson, etc. There were promises made by the Q15 how if parents faithfully held FHE that their children would always be faithful Mormons. I really haven’t heard much at all about FHE in quite a long time, which is strange given how hard it was pushed in the past.
2. Full time missions for young men. This was and still is pushed very hard by the Church. It may be a little better now, but young men had a hard time finding Mormon young women to date if they didn’t serve a mission. Is a 2 year mission really a good thing from every young man? If so, why isn’t it a good thing for every young woman? If not, why do we insist on it for every young man?
3. Church magazine subscriptions. After having the “ward subscription specialist” (or whatever they were called) give me a ton of pressure to subscribe to the Ensign, I finally decided it was worth it to pay the nominal yearly subscription fee just to keep them off of my back. I had long ago decided that I wouldn’t be reading the Ensign since the content was of such low quality. Thankfully, the Church now wants everyone to read this content online, so there’s no need to fear the subscription specialist any longer.
4. General Conference. We’ve already been receiving the messages about how lucky we are to be having a “spiritual feast” at the upcoming General Conference in October. We need to prepare now to receive the messages directly “from the Lord”. It will almost entirely be a snoozefest. It’s so long and boring that even many orthodox members won’t be able to stay awake. The 8 hour/2 day format may have worked well in the 1800s, but it has outlived its usefulness. Our EQ lessons are now all based on GC talks. Since the instructor rarely spends any time preparing the lesson anyway, why not just show one 15 minute lesson/address from Church leaders each week followed by 10 minutes discussion and call it good. We could then eliminate GC altogether, and watching the talks *for the first and only time* in EQ would be a better use of time than hearing a rehash of a talk each week. I think people could handle and digest one 15 minute talk each week much better than 8 hours of GC talks over 2 days.
I don’t know…St. Peter’s, La Sagrada Família, Salisbury and Westminster are much more impressive, imho. Mormon Temples? Not in that league. Also Chartres, Mont St. Michel, Notre Dame…last time I visited none of them had imitation French provincial lobbies…
Add Early Morning Seminary to the list.
Hmmm. Things the church used to talk up a lot that have perhaps come under some scrutiny:
– Families. You could say that temples are a push for “forever families,” but they are actually pushed with or without the emphasis on families, and I grew up in the era where that was the one thing the church was talking about (during the Reagan era), that families are the center of our lives and we should spend time together. It was a fine enough message. It does seem, though, that the critique I hear in ex-Mo circles is totally valid, that for a church that centered on families, it also sucks up a lot of the time you *could* be spending with your family, does nothing to support families in terms of pushing for family-friendly policies politically, and literally tears families apart over things like LGBTQ family members and even just routing differences in belief. So I suppose that’s evidence of the purchased warranty not really paying out.
– Home Study. This is a new focus that started under Nelson and is increasing with the blink-of-an-eye church meetings that just started this month. The message is that church is just a place to discuss what you are learning in your study at home, but of course, you can’t really have a discussion in 25 minutes after everything else that is crammed in, especially videos done by leaders. I don’t really know how to characterize this home-centered approach exactly, but it seems like one of Nelson’s hobby horses because he must be a deeply introverted person who finds community irritating. Otherwise I have a hard time understanding why he doesn’t see the downside of all this focus on “individual” rather than “community.” I guess it’s also cheaper, but it completely eliminates the point of church. The reformation taught this clearly in saying that anyone can receive revelation, not just through the church. It seems like a slippery slope, but whatever.
Regarding warranties, I will only add that we recently rented a moving truck from Home Depot, and when we were parking this unwieldy ginormous vehicle, it felt like we ran over the curb in the parking lot. Nope, we apparently ran into a branch that cut a gash into the side of the truck. Fortunately, when we signed the paper, we hadn’t noticed that they opted us into their $5 extra coverage, so the damage (which for sure will cost more than $5 to fix) was completely 100% covered. Whew!
When I was growing up, keeping a journal was a religious obligation right up there with daily prayer and scripture study. That seems to have been completely forgotten.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
mountain climber, yup Church magazines were a big deal. Now they’re sort of a legacy product, still out there but rarely mentioned.
E, journals. This was such a big deal about thirty years ago. They just sort of went away, didn’t they?
What about one year of food storage? Oh how many good LDS families had barrels of wheat and beans and rice down in the basement thirty years ago, only to have the kids throw it all out thirty years later when cleaning out Mom and Dad’s house. That was preparation against the evil days of Armageddon, and that too has pretty much gone away, just like it did in the early Christian church.
Hawkgrrrl,
I’m of the opinion that with fewer people getting married these days–plus the horrendous fluidity of family life among cohabitating couples–that the “families are forever” message is still relevant even though the church hasn’t been as vocal about it lately.
It was 45 years ago, not 30. And one of my kids is interested in taking them off my hands when I downsize next month.
45 year old food storage? Yuck.
Dave B: you’ve just touched upon the ONE THING that (I perceive) should be the greatest condemnation upon “the Church”; even over and above so much of the useless doctrine, human created – performance and purity expectations and the much over-hyped promise of “eternal blessings on high – for all eternity” – and that is the distasteful and stomach turning belief that “Christ’s one true Church upon the face of the Earth – not only should have, but is Holy and Blessed as a result of, vast Investment and Real Estate holdings; well over $300 Billion Dollars. For them there should be an 11th Commandment: “Thou Shalt Make as Much Money as One Possibly Can, and Hoard It, through the Course of One’s Life -for This is Fulfillment of an Earlier Commandment to Not Hide Your Light Under a Bushel”.
Aside from some good friendships, a handful of good people who conduct themselves as decent human beings; and a kindness here or there – “The Church” is chuck full of marketing spin, empty promises and “pretty words that drip with emotion – but, ultimately deliver nothing.”
Yeah, things come and things go. Some things maybe I like and some things maybe I don’t. No one asks me.
I wonder if the push to home learning (instead of church learning) is an abandonment, or a withdrawal, like with other things the church used to do. The church has been vastly reducing support to families and members — no more family home evening manuals or other resources (not even any more felt cutouts for storytelling in the library), no more meaningful and consistent youth activities, almost no family activities, very few ward activities and socials, no more adult recreation, and so forth. We cannot compare today’s Liahona with the 1970’s Ensign, or today’s Come Follow Me with curriculum materials from long ago. Other than more temples being built and staffed, it seems the Church has been drawing inward for many years, vastly lessening its spending on members and vastly reducing opportunities for members to associate together.
And always, the saying has been that families are responsible for covering the slack — families are responsible for their own recreation, their own socialization, and now their own learning, as the church withdraws and leaves us on our own.
And it isn’t just the church — all organizations in our society seem to be doing similar things.
Maybe in some areas, the church did take on too much responsibility. Maybe individuals and families should be more independent. But, as I said, no one asks me.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
ji, that’s a great point. It does mirror what’s happening with a lot of institutions: compared to fifty years ago, you now pump your own gas, scan your own groceries and bag them, you even have to enter your own order on a screen at McDonalds. That’s all largely to substitute capital for labor, lowering labor costs.
In the Church, we now generally pay our own tithing online and clean our own buildings. It’s not like I’ve heard anyone complain about two-hour church, but it does allow three or four wards in one building, cutting new construction costs in some places.
What is a little surprising is that more active LDS haven’t connected the dots yet: Hey, if the Church is giving us less and less in terms of services and activities, maybe we should be paying them less for tithing? The Church is a non-profit entity. They can’t play the “cut costs to increase the bottom line” game. The bottom line for a non-profit is providing services to constituents or customers. If they cut services and cut costs, they should cut donations rather than amass a hundred billion dollar portfolio.
First Comment: As a retired career military and airline pilot I will say that when I was flying for the airline and deadheading or commuting to work in the passenger compartment, I HATED it when the flight attendants would start their spiel about the credit cards, especially if they were lazy flight attendants doing the minimum required service. It is important to know though, that they receive a stipend for how many takers they get. That is why they push it so hard. If you do a considerable amount of airline travel, get the card and use it for every purchase you make to rack up points for discounted travel. The one catch though is that you need to get the card with the airline that services your living area the most and if you are traveling internationally go with one of the “Big 3”, American(the one I spent 25 years with), Delta (Wasatch Fronters, MoVille), or United.
Second Comment: “The Covenant Path” can be a pretty hard path to stay on economically. Someone here said that the church is for the middle class and up, because of tithing and the time commitment required to be “card carrying.” I certainly don’t disagree with that thought. It is important to note though, that nowhere does the church officially state how you calculate your 10%. If a member can consider themselves “full tithe payers” by paying on “their increase” or money left over after all expenses, that is between them and the Lord. The question on the interview is “Are you a full tithe payer?” Some members just want to make it hard on their bishop or stake p. by asking what that means. Just answer the dang question!😜
Ward Social Functions: Agreed, they are not as plentiful as they once were. Life is busier now. I guarantee your bishopric, RS Presidency or EQ Presidency is “tapped out” and they know that many members are as well. If you want a social function, go to your bishop, rsp or eqp and let them know you’ve put together some volunteers that want to put on a social function. Find out what the ward budget will allow and run with it from start to finish without asking them to do anything else but sign the check. You will forever be their hero!
My 3 cents worth – Cheers
Grizzerbear55, Great comment.
I think you’re getting at something much deeper here: “Christ’s one true Church upon the face of the Earth – not only should have, but is Holy and Blessed as a result of, vast Investment and Real Estate holdings; well over $300 Billion Dollars. For them there should be an 11th Commandment: “Thou Shalt Make as Much Money as One Possibly Can, and Hoard It, through the Course of One’s Life -for This is Fulfillment of an Earlier Commandment to Not Hide Your Light Under a Bushel”.
“This idea that material wealth is the result of, even evidence of God’s favor for righteousness, is perhaps the shadow cast over western Christianity that it simply won’t see.”
I think LDS rhetoric about the “Pride Cycle” actually illustrates the problem pretty well. We describe the cycle as something like:
righteousness → prosperity → pride → bondage → humility → repentance → righteousness → prosperity
And then we wonder why we can’t seem to break the cycle.
But if we believe that obedience produces material prosperity, haven’t we already built the mechanism that keeps the cycle going? If economic success is interpreted as evidence of God’s favor, then wealth naturally becomes evidence of righteousness. And once that happens, it becomes pretty easy for prosperity to turn into pride, because now our success isn’t just success—it has been given theological meaning. And this is where I think some of the rhetoric about poverty and tithing gets especially problematic. We’ve had prophets teach that obedience to God’s commandments, including tithing, is part of the answer to poverty. But that seems to flip the biblical storyline around.
With Abraham, God blesses first—not because Abraham has accumulated enough righteousness to earn prosperity, but because God is good. And then Abraham is supposed to become a conduit of that blessing: “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” In other words, the blessing isn’t supposed to terminate in Abraham as evidence of Abraham’s righteousness. It’s supposed to pass through him.
That seems to me to be a pretty important distinction. Biblically, righteousness isn’t necessarily what precedes material prosperity; it’s much more about what we do with whatever abundance we happen to have. And that makes the whole tithing conversation more interesting too. Anciently, the point wasn’t primarily to insulate ourselves from poverty or create a mechanism for personal prosperity. It was part of a system in which those who had were participating in the care of those who didn’t.
So, I keep coming back to the same question: if we teach that righteousness produces prosperity, while simultaneously warning about the pride and inequality that prosperity can produce, have we actually identified the source of the cycle?
Or have we simply gotten really good at describing the cycle without questioning one of the beliefs that helps create it?
I bought a new car a couple of months ago. I felt really good about it and felt it was a good car. After you conclude the sale, they always have you go into the finance room, and they try to upsell you on coatings and warranties. This guy wouldn’t stop with me until I said if he asks me one more time instead of saying no like I did five times before, I’ll walk out and the sale will be over. He then apologized, and we concluded the deal. I didn’t get it because you pay up front for something that “might” happen. It’s like insurance. If you can’t afford to have something happen and to pay for the consequences, you buy insurance. So the warranty should actually be called insurance. As for the church, I’ve heard many call tithing fire insurance. I don’t think it’s insurance at all. I think tithing is more “dues” than insurance. You pay it, and you get extra privileges like going to the temple.
Wow! Another spectacularly interesting discussion. “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
What makes this piece interesting is that the real subject is not extended warranties, credit cards, tithing, or temples. It is the power of repeated messaging to shape what people eventually perceive as necessary, valuable, or even morally important.
That mechanism exists far beyond commerce and religion. Governments, political movements, militaries, corporations, and institutions all understand that what receives constant attention gradually acquires importance in the public mind. Repetition does not necessarily make a claim true, but it can make the claim feel normal, inevitable, and difficult to question.
Your comparison between consumer marketing and institutional messaging is therefore worth considering carefully. The important question is not simply, “Are they making money from this?” It is also: “What behavior is the institution trying to produce, and what assumptions are being created around that behavior?”
I also think there is a deeper lesson here: whenever an institution repeatedly tells us that something is essential to our security, identity, success, or salvation, that is precisely when independent judgment becomes most valuable.
The strongest safeguard is not automatic skepticism or automatic belief. It is the willingness to ask what is being emphasized, what is being left out, who benefits from the emphasis, and whether the promised outcome actually matches the evidence.
That principle applies well beyond the church—or the car dealership. It is a useful rule for understanding institutions in general.
— Wahidullah Noorzai
Former Senior ANP/ANCOP Officer | Strategic & Security Analyst
Any examples of things in church that were way overemphasized in the past but now are almost never talked about?
The joy of service. We used to hear about the joy of service all the time, especially about women finding joy in service like taking in meals or basically providing hospice care. I guess all the pushback about burnout and having people take advantage of all that free labor has quieted that message a bit for both men and women. Is the EQ Moving Company even still a thing? Has anyone heard an entire Gen Conf talk or Church lesson focused entirely on how much joy we feel when we serve others? Note that’s a bit different from teaching that we need to serve, or that service brings blessings. We were specifically taught that service makes us joyful.
I appreciate Janey’s distinction and question about a talk or lesson focused on how much joy we feel when serving, instead of a talk or lesson telling us that we need to serve or should serve in some specific way. Imagine a RS or EQ leader, or Bp or SP, who wants to increase ministering. How about sharing the joy you felt when you ministered to someone? One can try to motivate people by guilt or shame, or one can invite by giving real examples of how you ministered and the joy you felt. Collecting stories from others and sharing them doesn’t work. Let me tell you what I did, and what joy I received, the end, maybe adding a testimony that you can probably find joy in service also. People will see that joy in you and might want to experience it. Don’t tell people what they ought to do: tell the people what you, yourself, did and how you felt. We should lead by invitation more, and by guilt, shame, and coercion much less. EQ moving is still real where I live, but RS meals for the sick is not.
“Is the EQ Moving Company even still a thing?”
Where I live, it depends. Buying a million dollar house (they are all million dollar houses here)? You can afford to hire movers. Underprivileged members moving apartments? Either happy to provide limited service or pitch in to hire movers.
I injured myself helping someone move when I was 28 an almost damaged some belongings in the process. I’m guessing a few folks have approached church leadership asking who is responsible in this situation for medical bills or replacing expensive breakables. We all know the answer: the church isn’t paying anything. Hence, less help in moving.
Meaningful service isn’t a one and done nor is it something that fits nicely into a one hour Wednesday night youth activity. But bless their hearts for trying.