Mormon malls: rethinking philanthropy, tithing, and the separation of church and state

Earlier this week, I was surprised to discover that the Mormon church was using its money to buy a billion dollar mall in Salt Lake City.  Shockingly, the New York Times reports “When completed in 2012, it will encompass 900,000 square feet of retailing, including an outdoor pedestrian shopping mall capped by 115 apartments; 1.6 million square feet of office space in eight buildings; a grocery store; and five residential towers with about 600 condominiums.”  Yee-ikes.

My first reaction was one of outrage, my belief being that this project utilizes funds from its parishioners, who should be guaranteed proper stewardship of church property (while Deseret News reports that the funds came from Property Reserve Inc, the church’s real estate arm).  After all, when you pay 10% of your wages for the purpose of helping your particular ministry, you want it to fund something… holy.   But this is beside the point, since I’m not even a Mormon, which means I can’t hold them to Christian administrative standards, although those standards will be questioned later.  While there are certainly moral issues involved here, this massive expenditure raises serious questions about the separation of church, business, and state, the practical nature of philanthropy, and the nature of conservative values.

After I got over the original shock of the news, I began to wonder whether or not the investment in a rental space may be valuable for the church, since it would most likely provide a more-than-modest source of income over a long period of time.  Although the project will cost 1.5 billion dollars, the New York Times also reports that wealthy LDS church member are already buying the one-bedroom condominiums at a price of $900,000, and the Salt Lake Tribune reports condo pricing at upwards of 2 million dollars, since it overlooks the temple.  This leads us to wonder: if this project is highly likely to pull in far more revenue than it costs, and these revenues were used to fund church projects and feed the poor, can this decision be in poor taste, or an improper stewardship?

And this leads us into our next issue: effective philanthropy.  Since we’re in the middle of a major recession/depression, with people losing jobs willy-nilly and the people hurt the most–white males in construction–feeling hopeless, incapable of feeding their families, the truth is that while this project seems like a purely cold business decision, it will actually be providing many jobs for those hurt the most by our economic downturn.  So we need to wonder, is giving people jobs and providing city infrastructure more philanthropic than putting people on welfare, since providing a job also provides a person with dignity?  In this light, it seems the church’s decision may have been not only shrewd, but incredibly conservative in undertaking.  So we should ask ourselves whether or not we believe the church should be contributing to production and providing jobs with their funds, or merely giving their money away.

But this is where it gets dicey, because the church–while concerned with helping the community and blessing others monetarily–cannot become a business.  Once again, I’m not a Mormon, so I’m speaking for Christian churches instead, but we must be careful in our ambitious philanthropy to not replace our spiritual leaders with business leaders, since a church with excess business infrastructure will naturally lead its members to select leaders with more business experience than spiritual calling (not that a person can’t have both, but still).  While originally appearing beneficial, this could lead to an eventual capitalization of the holy, and we should be wary to steer clear of it.

Second, the value of a business property is almost guaranteed to lose function over time when owned/managed by an organization which will not allow it to fail.  An overwhelming number of government-backed business endeavors has proven this to be true (think Fannie Mae, our banking system, our auto industry, etc).  In that sense, the building of the mall is not supporting conservative values, unless the mall were scheduled to be sold to an outside party within the next 10 years or so.   If the business were to be sold, then perhaps the Mormon church could skirt both these potential downsides.

Third, we must consider whether or not this business should be eligible for tax breaks, since it is run by an official church.  This brings to light all sorts of questions, such as whether churches gaining income outside of donations and tithes should have their revenues taxed, and whether or not this taxation of church property could potentially lead to the state’s indirect control of church activity under threat of raising taxation.  If we are at all concerned with keeping the government’s hands off our churches, while at the same time ensuring that business leaders don’t enter or form churches to avoid taxation, this needs to be discussed, and discussed well.  Of course, the easiest way to avoid the problem is by keeping tithe money from funding businesses, but it looks as though not everyone is on board.

Most importantly, those who claim to follow Christ should be absolutely careful that church funds–especially those coming from tithing–are used for their intended purpose: providing for those called to ministry, and helping the poor.  While the Mormon church is absolutely building wealth for the downtrodden and blessing their area with wealth and infrastructure, it should be noted that these endeavors are bringing a whole new series of pitfalls along with them, and could potentially disrupt our separation between church, business, and state.  From what I can tell, although the Bible never specifically bans the use of church funds for building infrastructure, or from investing in real estate solely for income, it never gives the church a sort of constitutional authority to do so, and so we should steer clear.   If you really do believe you are in God’s church, you had better tiptoe those lines with utmost caution.

So is the Mormon church benefiting others with their funds?  Absolutely, and I believe their intentions are noble.  But just because something has a benefit doesn’t make it morally right (for a great example, see how our civil rights movement made some great gains and some even worse losses).  There is one thing we do know, however, and it is that Christ was more than happy to violently whip people inside His own temple for engaging in improper business.  Let’s not mess around.

This entry was posted on 15. June 2010 at 15:04 and is filed under philosophy, Theology, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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