I am among what is most likely a vanishingly small number of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: from a purely fiscal perspective (so laying aside any “spiritual” benefits), I’d say I have gotten a good ROI from my tithing dollars. I was a mission presidents’ kid. The Church flew me internationally to a pretty cool place and home again. It paid for my room and board and school tuition for three years where I picked up another language (this becomes important later) and generally benefitted tremendously, all before I had paid little more than a few dollars in babysitting money in tithing.

My family got home from the mission, and only a few months later it was time to go to BYU (Provo). Whatever else is true about BYU then or (especially) now, I had incredible mentors and got a flying start in my profession. I left with two degrees that were entirely paid for, in no small part due to graduate fellowships funded through, ultimately, the Church. I even got one from the State Department for speaking that language the Church paid for me to learn when I was a teenager.

I did my PhD at a good state school on nearly a full ride and found work before I was even finished with the program. I’ve had steady well-paying employment ever since, and I’ve dutifully paid tithing for most of that time. If I had to estimate how much I’ve paid in tithing, the number is definitely in the six figures.

When I look at what I’ve gotten, how crazy in debt kids are today for a comparable education, when I consider the three-year immersion experience I had in my teens fully funded by TCoJCoLDS, the money I’ve spent on tithing, in purely financial terms, has been a solid investment. I’ve totally come out on top.

Then there are the intangible things that tithing has given me: the sense that I am a steward of my resources has been a very healthy thing for me. I don’t have some of the yucky hangups around money that I see in our culture. Tithing, at least as it was taught to me by my parents and especially my grandparents, gave me a very healthy sense of what money is for: it’s for getting things you need and some of the things you want, but if you have it, it also exists to be in service to others. I learned it was the height of hubris to think of your money as yours in an absolute sense. It is a communal good, and if you have it, it’s your good fortune and responsibility to use it for the benefit of others. And that ethos has served me incredibly well throughout my life.

All of this to say, that for me, by and large, tithing has sort of worked out.

However (and wow is that conjunctive adverb doing some heavy lifting!), I have serious concerns.

My concerns around tithing as we practice it systemwide are largely ethical, and they are well-documented. Tithing is a regressive tax, disproportionately affecting the poorest among us. (And disproportionately benefiting privileged people like me.) Tithing, as practiced today, was supposed to be temporary(1) but even though the Church is now rich as Croesus, we are, if anything, doubling down on the tithing policies and rhetoric. It’s shameful. Or maybe it’s just inertia. And unlike paying taxes or donating to a host of other charities, there is precious little transparency around what the money goes for. I mean, thank you, to all of the tithe-payers out there reading this, for funding my three years abroad—it was awesome—but I’m not sure that’s what you thought your dollars were doing. And maybe you are okay with sponsoring a loveable, curious fourteen-year-old as she sees the world, but malls, and ranch land ripe for data centers, and NVDIA stock aren’t really what you had in mind. And yes, I get that those things are investments and that you have to park money somewhere—but do you need to have quite that much money to park? And this is what we want to invest in?

The fact of the matter is that I’m not a financial expert, and it may well be the Church does need more (vastly more) money than I think is reasonable to operate. We are, still, an apocalyptic/millennial religious movement, near total financial ruin is living memory for our (very very old) top leadership, and nothing solves problems or confers power and influence like money. But I do feel they owe us all more rationale than we are getting. It’s the Lord’s Church, but it’s also ours. That’s the way the Doctrine and Covenants says it’s supposed to work.

And then there’s the fact that tithing, whether or not it explicitly fits the definition, is experienced as coercive by many, many members. One of the many reasons I decided against pursuing employment with the Church is that I didn’t want my livelihood tied to my tithe-paying status. But you don’t have to be a Church employee to feel the pressure. It’s that time of year again, the annual shakedown known as tithing declaration formerly known as tithing settlement, where the man you look to for pastoral care guilts you into his office to ask if you’ve been adequately lining the pockets of your billionaire ecclesiastical overlords. My bishop is a fundamentally good guy. But I refuse to participate. (I dare him to release me.) I am happy to discuss, in good faith, my philosophy behind the stewardship of my resources, and that currently includes donations to TCoJCoLDS. But I no longer want to engage in what feels like a declaration of my fiduciary fealty to the corporate machinery of the Church. It’s gross. And I feel it is completely inappropriate to deputize bishops as the annual agents of their collective year-end squeeze.

So yeah, I have some mixed feelings about tithing. It’s done great things for me personally, and I think it’s doing more harm than good as currently practiced.

What about you?

  • Do you feel that you have benefitted in any way from tithing? Been harmed?
  • What could be done (if anything) to reform tithing as a system, or is it irredeemable?
  • How has your relationship to tithing changed, if at all, over the course of your life?

(1) And it’s not just the President Smith quote; well into the twentieth century, folks paid tithing only on their interest/increase (leftover money after all necessary expenses were paid). The flat ten percent on your net-or-gross is a relatively modern invention.