posted
An LDS friend recently surprised me very much by saying that LDS is *more* top-down driven than my church (Roman Catholic): that everything in the local church must be approved by Salt Lake. Is he right? (In my church, everything local must be OK by the priest, who must follow the orders of the bishop, who must follow the orders of Rome. In practice, the priest directs it all in the parish, but supervision above that level is light I think.)
I had thought that LDS was pretty decentralized -- all that priesthood of the believer, heavy layman involvement, and nonprofessional clergy.
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I would say that while the RC church is very centralized and driven from the top, a lot of decisions on the local level are relatively independent of what Rome says. I read stories from people constantly that complain that their local churches aren't following what Rome has sat down, and complain when the priest makes any changes or deviates from the written structure for mass, or docterine, etc. I think that bishops and priests have a lot more freedom to deviate in small ways than people realize. Rome doesn't have the time or resources to keep track on all the priests and what they are doing.
I don't know about LDS church.
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quote:Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese: There might be a difference between structural hierarchy and functional hierarchy.
There is. I will say that most everything you do has a definite "chain of command." For instance: if a Nursery teacher wants to do something outside the normal guidelines/purview of the Nursery class, s/he runs it by the Primary Presidency, who consults with the Bishop, and if necessary the Stake Primary Presidency is consulted. For some things, they may choose to consult with the Stake Presidency. Usually it would stop there. In some cases a Bishop would run a plan past the Stake Presidency, who might speak to an Area Authority or a General Authority or the First Presidency (depending on the issue.) It all depends on the import of the issue at hand. Big changes and almost all curricula come from the First Presidency and are distributed church-wide, all at once (sometimes after a pilot program test in certain areas.) All Gospel Doctrine classes all over the world follow the same curriculum each year. Same with Relief Society and Priesthood lessons, and to a slightly lesser extent Primary classes. There are set rules for most situations likely to arise (although Bishops and Stake Presidents are likely to have a fair amount of discretion in making exceptions to many rules on an individual basis.) I'm not sure whether there is MORE "top-down driving"-- but there is at least as much, and there may be more, I just don't know.
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Plus there are the Church Handbook of Instructions, which include information for all the various auxiliaries and departments within the church at the stake/district and ward/branch level which covers most situations that can arise. Then add the training material...
In practical terms, it means that the structure of the church and the doctrine being taught in Sri Lanka is the same as it is in Regina, Saskatchewan, or Cincinnati, Ohio, or Japan, or Brazil, or...
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I've obviously never been a bishop (since I'm a girl) but I think that the allocation of funds is more top-down. I think that all donations are pooled and then re-distributed according to needs. (Since wards that have members wealthy enough to give a lot of money probably don't need as much given to them).
Doctrinally, we are given lesson manuals that are the same basic doctrine for everyone, but there is room to deviate in how they are presented. If anyone wants to do something really out of the ordinary, then it has to go through the chain of command. For example, my home stake tried to start a ward for young single adults, and the idea went all the way to the First Presidency for approval.
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Doctrinally the LDS church is very top-down heavy.
Day-to-day operations, however, are handled on a very local level with quite a degree of autonomy.
Incidentally, the entire leadership fo the church, from local Bishops through the various Authorities up to the President, are non-professional clergy. So even if the church is (doctrinally) heavily top-down, it's not the case that doctrine is being dictated by professional clergy. The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve are made up of educators, lawyers, businessmen, and other professionals who have essentially retired from professional life in order to fulfill their full-time callings within the church.
Just for reference, off the top of my head, here are the individual professions of church leaders that I know:
President Hinckley- Publishing (for the Church) President Monson (1st Counsellor)- Publishing President Foust (2nd Counsellor)- Lawyer President Packer (President of the Quorum of the Twelve)- Educator (high school & LDS institute) and Politician Elder Perry- Business (Retail) Elder Nelson- Cardiac Surgeon Elder Oaks- Judge (Utah Supreme Court) Elder Ballard- Business (Automobile) Elder Wirthlin- Business (Wholesale Food) Elder Scott- Nuclear Engineer Elder Holland- University President (BYU-Provo) Elder Eyring- University Professor (Stanford) Elder Hales- Business Executive Elder Bednar- University President (BYU-Idaho) Elder Uctdorf- Commercial Pilot
* I had to cheat and look up Elders Perry, Wirthlin, and Hales
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In all fairness, all organizational changes such as new wards/branches and stakes/districts also go through the approval of the First Presidency.
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Tithing is all sent to Salt Lake and redistributed from the top down.
Fast offerings - offerings given specifically to be given out to those who are in need of help - are, I think, handled on a local level. So, any given stake (collection of about 8 congregations) only has as much money to give as they collect from others within the stake.
If there is a greater need for help than a supply, I think there is some flexibility and they can give it out, but then you get talks in sacrament meeting telling everyone to up their fast offerings - our stake is giving out more than we are taking in.
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quote:I had thought that LDS was pretty decentralized -- all that priesthood of the believer, heavy layman involvement, and nonprofessional clergy.
"Heavy layman involvement and nonprofessional clergy" do not negate "top-down driven". We have both. Nearly everyone who serves in any capacity in the church is a "lay" person in the sense that they are not paid*, nor is a degree in theology required. But the Church is still very much centralized, as has been explained here - doctrine and practices are the same throughout the world, and day-to-day decisions are made on a local level but based on the Church Handbook of Instructions that covers the guidelines for most anything that comes up.
*There are a few who are given a stipend or living allowance if they receive callings that require them to give up their full-time job but can't afford to retire yet (such as the highest leaders of the Church who travel most of the time). There are also some people who work for the Church in various functions, such as custodial and landscaping services, running the Church ranches and other businesses, etc. Teachers who work full-time as Church Education System instructors are paid (not just your ordinary Sunday-School teacher, but daily Seminary teachers for the teenagers, and Institute teachers for college-aged people). Of course everyone who works at Church-owned schools such as BYU are paid. So it's not true that NO ONE gets paid. But the local leaders (teachers, youth leaders, organists, bishops, stake presidents, missionaries), area authorities, and probably most of the general authorities receive no compensation.
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I'll also add that if any individual member were to write to church headquarters with a question/concern/complaint/problem, they'd be reffered back to their local leadership for answers and help, and a copy of the letter would be sent to the local leader (generally the stake president).
By this I just mean the leadership offices. Other church organizations in Salt Lake (such as the church history department) are generally good about answering queries.
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quote:Originally posted by JennaDean: *There are a few who are given a stipend or living allowance if they receive callings that require them to give up their full-time job but can't afford to retire yet (such as the highest leaders of the Church who travel most of the time). There are also some people who work for the Church in various functions, such as custodial and landscaping services, running the Church ranches and other businesses, etc. Teachers who work full-time as Church Education System instructors are paid (not just your ordinary Sunday-School teacher, but daily Seminary teachers for the teenagers, and Institute teachers for college-aged people). Of course everyone who works at Church-owned schools such as BYU are paid. So it's not true that NO ONE gets paid. But the local leaders (teachers, youth leaders, organists, bishops, stake presidents, missionaries), area authorities, and probably most of the general authorities receive no compensation.
Just an addendum to this disclaimer. The general authorities who receive a stipend are first asked to give up all their worldly possessions to the church. All property, money, investments, etc. They are literally living the law of consecration at this point because they only have what they get back from the church to live on. So it's not like they are getting a salary, only a portion of what (most of them) have already given first.
It is my opinion that this is why so many general authorities write books, so they have the residuals as a means of inheritance for their children.
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quote:I'll also add that if any individual member were to write to church headquarters with a question/concern/complaint/problem, they'd be reffered back to their local leadership for answers and help, and a copy of the letter would be sent to the local leader (generally the stake president).
While this may be generally true (I don't know, but I could easily believe it), I know that it is not universally true.
I know of one case where somebody contacted the headquarters and they just told her the solution (which was "don't worry about it") without referring her to her local leaders.
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quote:I'll also add that if any individual member were to write to church headquarters with a question/concern/complaint/problem, they'd be reffered back to their local leadership for answers and help, and a copy of the letter would be sent to the local leader (generally the stake president).
While this may be generally true (I don't know, but I could easily believe it), I know that it is not universally true.
I know of one case where somebody contacted the headquarters and they just told her the solution (which was "don't worry about it") without referring her to her local leaders.
And on rare occasions the prophet or apostles might actually request that they be able to answer the question at general conference. Usually the question relates directly to a sermon he wishes to give at conference.
Missionaries are certainly instructed to not write the first presidency but to refer all doctrinal questions to their mission president.
Also the curriculum given by the church is designed to help give guidance to sunday school teachers around the church, as its quite hard to start from scratch week after week. And it also standardizes what is discussed each week so that members are at least being taught the same things. But there is still plenty of room for discussion and creativity.
Believe me I've been to my fair share of sunday school lessons where unorthodox ideas were given plenty of floor time.
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quote:Believe me I've been to my fair share of sunday school lessons where unorthodox ideas were given plenty of floor time.
Which is just what they're trying to prevent with all their "Use only Church-produced materials in your lessons!" mantra.
quote:Missionaries are certainly instructed to not write the first presidency but to refer all doctrinal questions to their mission president.
Who, presumably, gives them their answer straight from the handbook ... or if it's really a unique question, they go higher up themselves to get an answer. So it's still top-down driven.
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Well, that's kind of the implicit question, isn't it?
I'm not sure I understand why having "non-professionals" at the head of your church -- whether they draw a salary or not -- is considered an asset and not merely a value-neutral fact. Is the suspicion that theologians are less well-equipped to understand theology, or merely that paying people to be full-time counselors corrupts their understanding of theology?
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*shrug* I suppose you can always ask. I didn't think it was a terribly polite way to word the question, though. If someone else is willing to talk to someone who is deliberately incredulous, they are welcome.
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"Is the suspicion that theologians are less well-equipped to understand theology, or merely that paying people to be full-time counselors corrupts their understanding of theology"
Among many Latter-day Saints theologians are not well or less equipped. That would be a value-nuetral education. However, there is the idea that theologians are, by their nature, biased toward the educated views of theology and therefore more likely to be dogmatic or too prone to speculations based on worldly standards.
As for the second part, paying people to be full-time concelors is considered a corruption of pure motives. The Scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon warns about getting gain for gospel teaching. This does beg the question of paid seminary and institute teachers; a discussion that comes up in LDS circles at times.
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The general policy is to refer all questions from the general church population back to local leaders, regardless of whether the person writing is a missionary or not.
This does not make the church leaders insane automatons. They still consider the actual content of the letter, and the reply is generally not a form letter (Dear Sir/Madam . . .).
In some cases, particularly when the letter is regarding the church leader who the letter would be sent to, they might choose another way to handle it.
As for letters being read in general confrence: Often, if you'll notice, the letters that are read in confrence are not of the type that it would make sense to refer back to local leaders. If someone writes President Hinkley and says, "Here's my story, in case you can use it to help other people . . .," or "President Hinkley, please discuss XYZ in confrence, it's more serious a problem than people realize . . .," that's not really the kind of thing where the church offices would say, "Please refer all such future inquiries to your local leaders."
But if someone writes in saying they know where the gold plates are buried or asking what the Urim and Thumim looks like or to ask for specific help with a problem, they're generally reffered back to their local church leadership, and copies of the letter are forwarded to that local leadership.
This has nothing to do with whether the local leadership or the General Authorities know the doctrine better. It has more to do with who knows the person writing the letter better. In other words, who gets to handle the situation is whoever is more capable of helping.
Since that's almost always the people on the local level, that's almost always who questions and policies are reffered to.
It's the same way with mission presidents. Problems aren't reffered back to them so they can quote from a manual. Problems are reffered to them because they know the kid and can work with him more to either answer his question or help him with his problem.
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I do think that there is a difference that should be noted, that docmagik seems to hint at, between authority and doctrine. Mormons do not equate the two as the same thing. Just because you have been given particular leadership authority doesn't mean you are considered an authority on doctrine.
That isn't to say that leadership (such as Prophet and Apostles) doesn't exist that is considered authorities who can explain or receive revelation about doctrine.
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To really understand the church leadership model the way the church sees it, you have to think about some of the things Christ said.
What Christ advocated was that the whoever would be a leader in his church would actually be the servant of everyone they "led." He then illustrated this by washing the feet of all of the apostles.
Traditional leadership models look like a capital A. At the top is a boss, under him are some other bosses. Knowledge, wisdom and guidance flow downwards.
A Christ-centered leadership model looks more like a capitol V. At the bottom is the boss, not ordering all of the other levels around, but offering support and help--acting as a foundation, if you will, for all the other levels.
At the top you have all the members of the general church population--and, most of us would probably argue, all the people of the world. They're actually the reason the entire rest of the structure is there. It's all there to improve the lives of those people.
This doesn't mean they get to make all the decisions, or that they get to ask for things that would take away from the structure's ability to support all the other people it's responsible for. It does mean that the structure is succeeding only inasmuch as its helping them with their problems and facilitating their ability to get what the organization is designed to give them.
In the case of the church, that's peace in this life, and eternal life in the world to come.
And we truly do believe that the boss at the bottom of all of that is Christ himself. The commandments are not arbitrary edicts, but the nuts-and-bolts day-to-day outline for how to get that peace and eternal life, the thing he most wants for us.
And he set the example for all leaders when he, in order to make those possible for those who would follow him, suffered and endured beyond what anyone could suffer.
Church leadership in any position--from the president of the church to a nursery leader--is not about getting people to listen to you. It's about making whatever personal sacrifices are neccesary to help the people you're serving to be able to live the gospel and deal with their own personal problems.
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I don't know about anyone else, but I only brought up the "paid and educated" versus "unpaid and uneducated" because there seemed to be an assumption in the first post that if the church was led by lay ministry (meaning unpaid and/or no degree in theology), it meant the church was "decentralized". I simply pointed out that although we do have a lay ministry, it's still centrally led and "top-down". (ETA: Or bottom-up, if you prefer docmagick's way of looking at things. )
I think that for a lay ministry, our leaders are pretty well-trained. There are a LOT of training meetings and materials.
There is some sentiment that unpaid means more "sincere" - or at least being paid has the potential to lead to "teaching people what they want to hear", for profit - but I personally don't believe most paid ministers are doing it for the profit. I don't distrust them just because they're paid. If I distrust any of them, it's for other reasons.
There are certain TV-ministers, though, that I do feel do it for the profit and fame.
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quote: Just because you have been given particular leadership authority doesn't mean you are considered an authority on doctrine.
While in theory I agree with this, in practice, particularly at General Authority levels, it's untrue with a vengeance.
quote:I'm not sure I understand why having "non-professionals" at the head of your church -- whether they draw a salary or not -- is considered an asset and not merely a value-neutral fact. Is the suspicion that theologians are less well-equipped to understand theology, or merely that paying people to be full-time counselors corrupts their understanding of theology?
Tom, two reasons: First, as Occ has pointed out, Mormons tend to be suspicious of trained theology; they tend to juxtapose it against 'revelation' and argue that when the former is present the latter is absent. Terryl Givens, a well-known (as far as these things go) Mormon academic has made this argument, and it's a phrase I'm hearing more and more. There's thus a strain of anti-intellectualism in Mormonism that stems, I think, both from its origins among lay working-class Christians and the infusion of evangelical fundamentalism it got in the 1940s and 1950s.
Secondly, Mormonism is really a religion of right practice, not of right belief. The sort of careful distinctions about grace and predestination that divide Calvinists from Arminians are utterly foreign to Mormons; beliefs considered essential are two things: 1)few, and 2)simple.
This is not to say that Mormon theology is not complex and interesting; it is to say that thinking about Mormon theology is not part of day-to-day Church life. Much, much more emphasis is placed on *doing* the right thing; Sunday school classes use the scriptures to teach ethics, and even the recent _True to the Faith_ manual issued by the Church defines grace in terms of merit, which seems to me a contradiction.
Thus, leaders are generally lauded for their inspirational, rhetorical, and managerial skills, not the breadth and depth of their knowledge. This is not to say none of them are theologically sophisticated; it is to say that theology is not what they teach or write about.
I think this has made conversations with other Christians difficult (as demonstrated in the recent Trinity thread); most Mormons don't really think about theology that much, and don't quite get why classic trinitarianism is so important to most Christians, or that the knowledge of the Atonement that they believe Mormonism uniquely teaches is actually pretty standard penal-substitution theory.
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quote: There's thus a strain of anti-intellectualism in Mormonism that stems, I think, both from its origins among lay working-class Christians and the infusion of evangelical fundamentalism it got in the 1940s and 1950s.
Matt,
If you have a few minutes, could you expand a little on what you're talking about here, particularly in regards to the 'infusion of evangelical fundamentalism.' I've always wondered why some members of the Church (especially older members) seem to hold very fundamentalist attitudes, particularly when discussing politics, and science for example.
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BQT - A good book to look at here is Kendall White's _Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy_. (White's version of neo-orthodoxy is really fundamentalism, but he justifies the title by calling it a 'crisis theology,' getting Mormonism through the process of assimilation.) Anyway, in the 1920s, Joseph Fielding Smith was the only really prominant Mormon leader who believed in Biblical inerrancy and was adamantly against evolution; most others, like Talmage, Widtsoe, and BH Roberts, strove to reconcile science and theology, and were more open to reading certain scripture in terms of religious rather than scientific truth. There were a few titanic (and public) disputes among these men in the early 1930s, which the First Presidency responded to by forbidding everybody from talking about it. Sure enough, Roberts agreed not to publish his book _The Truth, the Way, the Life_, which espoused a form of evolution and an earth millions of years old. Widstoe also stopped writing about it, and Talmage and Roberts died soon after.
This left Smith as the most vocal leader who cared about this sort of thing remaining. And unlike Roberts, he published - _Man: His Origin and Destiny_, _Answers to Gospel Questions_, etc - all books in which he advocated a literal reading of Genesis and young earth creationism. His son-in-law, Bruce R. McConkie, advocated similar views in his _Mormon Doctrine_, which he published without the knowledge of the First Presidency (This ticked David O McKay off; he chewed out McConkie).
Now, as I mentioned before, most Mormon leaders have found it more prudent to remain silent about such things; and indeed, the official position of the Church on evolution remains that there is no position. However, since Roberts and Talmage died, the ones who have cared enough to write and publish about it are the ones who have been most sympathetic to fundamentalist viewpoints. The popular success of books like _Mormon Doctrine_ and _Man: His Origin and Destiny_ means that most Mormons have absorbed these viewpoints, assuming they are official doctrine.
Mormonism has also gradually absorbed the social ethos of conservative evangelicalism. Its leadership has, since polygamy, always been culturally conservative, advocating prohibition, opposing the feminist movement, etc, and the sixties shook them up. BYU still does not allow beards, a policy put in place due to fear of hippies.
Until Roe v Wade, however, Utah was a swing state. It overwhelmingly voted for Lyndon Johnson, but has not voted Democratic in a presidential election since. This is, I believe, due to a growing identification of social conservativism with Mormon theology - in part related to its affinity for Mormonism's emphasis on right practice - and an increasing perception within Mormonism that obedience to the leadership means supporting conservative politics. Heber J Grant, president of the Church in the 1930s, publically endorsed Franklin Roosevelt's opponents and prohibition - Utah voted against his wishes both times. In the 1990s, the Church had to send the GA Marlin Jensen to hold a press conference announcing that one could support both the Church and the Democratic party.
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Thanks for taking the time to post that Matt. In some ways though, it left me with even more questions I'll have to see if I can find a copy of White's book.
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I'm might be the only forum member who can remember that far back, but, David McKay was active in the local Democratic party most of his life, as were most of his councilors. But, like Granpa Andersen used to say, "when he started hanging around with that damned Clark" he became less active. The move to the right in Utah politics, including the "capture" of the state Republican party by the right wing of that party during the late 70's, has been a source of disapointment to many members of the Church.
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Yes, please don't think all Mormons are socially conservative, or that we're all Republicans! Nothing could be further from the truth.
Women had the vote in Utah until the U.S. took it away. Then several Mormon women became prominent among suffragists.
The law of consecration is a form of communism. It is a higher law than the law we live now, the law of tithing. We're told by scriptures over and over that having large income differences between us is wrong. If we're not one, we're not his, God said.
As for fundamentalism, we're taught to study and learn as much as we possibly can about everything. Brigham Young said everything true is part of our religion. We're very much in favor of knowledge and learning. The Mormon church is definitely not anti-intellectual, as fundamentalist churches must be. Belief in a young earth, or denial of evolution can really only flourish when people are kept ignorant. We are encouraged to become as educated as possible, so such beliefs, though they may still be held by some members, aren't at all pervasive in our church.
There are many things in Mormon teachings that flatly contradict a conservative political agenda. Please don't confuse Mormons with Republicans. Plenty of us aren't. Thanks!
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Oh, sure, I'm speaking in generalizations. James E. Faust, who is now in the First Presidency, was Democratic leader in the Utah Legislature forty years ago. And despite the rumors to the contrary, Harry Reid is certainly an active Mormon.
However, there are plenty of Mormons - mostly in Utah - who believe that Mormonism and political conservatism necessarily go hand in hand. A one-time leader of the Utah Legislature published an op-ed to that effect in the Salt Lake Tribune a few years ago. Furthermore, I forgot to mention the influence of Ezra Taft Benson, president of the Church in the 1980s, who was a very outspoken right-wing Republican while he was an apostle in the fifties and sixties. He gave speeches condemning socialism as anti-God in that period, and attempted to persuade McKay to allow the founder of the far-right John Birch Society to speak in General Conference. Same rule as before - the last leader who was willing to vocally oppose Benson was Hugh Brown, who died in the mid-sixties. Benson's voice was simply louder, and if that's all Mormons hear from their leaders, many will follow. Thus the Marlin Jensen press conference, I think.
Tatiana, Young's exact quote is: "It [Mormonism] embraces all truth in heaven and on earth, in the earth, under the earth, and in hell, if there be any truth there." Journal of Discourses, 11:212.
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PT - to be fair, Benson _was_ unusually political for a post-World War II apostle; it was the issue he himself chose to write on, to speak about, and to lobby for. He believed conservative politics were important enough that he composed books about the topic, he gave Conference addresses railing against communism, and he used his leadership position to push for the Church to support movements like the Birch Society. It's a great part of what made him a significant figure in the development of Mormon history.
Now, granted, his presidency was significant for other reasons as well; he transformed Mormon religious discourse by stressing the Book of Mormon, for example. But to ignore a great part of what he himself believed was his life's work is to do him a retroactive injustice.
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I was saddened that the obits referred only to his politics, and only to the effect that "he was very conservative, now he's dead".
I'm not sure how you interpreted that as "He wasn't a conservative/I deny he was!"...but that wasn't what I said at all.
Focusing on exactly one element of a man's life doesn't seem fair at all, no matter how you slice it.
Nor does it explain why President Hunter's obits were even worse. Sure he wasn't the prophet for long, but I think his life could be summed up better than "Not as conservative as that other guy was!"
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Tatiana - The law of consecration is most definitely NOT a form of communism.
If you are fimilar with the general concepts behind the LOC and communism, they bear a slight resemblance to each other. Dig deeper, and you will discover the resemblance is very superficial; and unfortunate.
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I am enjoying this thread and am, for the most part, taking a back seat.
quote: Tatiana - The law of consecration is most definitely NOT a form of communism.
If you are fimilar with the general concepts behind the LOC and communism, they bear a slight resemblance to each other. Dig deeper, and you will discover the resemblance is very superficial; and unfortunate.
Wow. That is the first time I have heard that sentiment. Can you elaborate? I was taught in seminary, BYU, and Sunday School (which is actually the worst place to learn doctrine!) that functionally they are the same.
The two biggest difference is that the LOC is administered by the church/priesthood under God's direction and communism is run by a Godless state. The other difference is that the LOC is done by free will and communism is imposed.
Granted those are BIG differences (well the second one is, the first is only significant if you believe). Other then that they seem very similar, and to call the resemblance superficial seems...incorrect.
I was always taught that the best government would be a religious/benign dictator. That is the single reason I could never vote a Mormon for president. I remember those lessons and I see a conflict of interest rooted in the religion.
That is a different tangent and I accept there are plenty of Mormons who don't see or worry about a conflict and see Mormonism as a strong Moral compass without religious political influence.
Back to the LOC....superficial resemblance? Are you serious?
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I agree with Scott. It's like the difference between being mugged by or deciding to help out somebody who is down on his luck.
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PT - Fair enough, and I'm sorry if I came across as interpreting you incorrectly. What I suppose I was saying is that it's not particularly surprising to me if obituaries focused on Benson's politics, nor do I think he himself would have been especially disappointed with that. I agree that Hunter deserved to be characterized by his own life.
As to the Law of Consecration. It's definitely socialism. It's not Marxist communism, but has a great deal in common with other antebellum utopian socialist movements, like the Fourierists or New Harmony.
It's hard to peg in practice because it was invoked in so many different experiments in the nineteenth century - in a place like Brigham City, all it meant was that the city owned all the industry in town and paid equal wages. In Orderville, everybody lived in dormitories and ate in the same cafeteria, with no wages at all.
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How optional is tithing if you intend to enter the temple? Isn't it required for entry? I was under the impression that there is both administrative work and enforcement involved.
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The temple = more committment. If someone isn't comitted enough to pay tithing, then why take on more committment?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:How optional is tithing if you intend to enter the temple? Isn't it required for entry? I was under the impression that there is both administrative work and enforcement involved.
This is a familiar discussion...
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote: How optional is tithing if you intend to enter the temple? Isn't it required for entry? I was under the impression that there is both administrative work and enforcement involved.
Tithing is not optional to go to the temple. It is required for entry. There are interviews before you go to the temple and tithing forms to fill out when you pay tithing--I guess that is what you mean by administrative work.
I would not use a word like enforcement. That brings to mind active punishments or punitive consequences. It is more like, as Kathrina implied, 'a denial of blessings the person is not ready to commit.
Many blessings are considered commitments. The "punishment" is regarded as passive if someone chooses not to participate fully. If someone doesn't study for a test and fails the test, failing is a passive consequence that rests on the student's shoulders. If a student picks a fight and gets sent to detention, detention is an active consequence or punishment.
"Enforcement" brings to my mind an active role in punishment, and the church has no active enforcement that I can think of.
EDIT: Fair enough ScottR. We agree on how it is different from communism. I think the similarities that MattB pointed out are more then superficial. You are right, Free Will mean a lot!
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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