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Comment by starskublue | Hacker News Reader

It's important to note the historical context around this. The LDS church used to be constantly in extreme debt and close to having their religious buildings taken away due to it. Then in the early 1900s they instituted a simple financial policy that could also be an example for members.

1. Spend less than you take in. 2. Save/invest a portion of what you bring in for a rainy day.

Thus over a hundred years that builds up. I'm a Mormon and personally don't have an issue with it as I know that wealth doesn't go to church leaders (they all get the same stipend which for many is less than they made in their professional lives) and is simply fund available to the Church for times of need.

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> available to the Church for times of need

Or, perhaps, to finance a massive interstellar spaceship a few hundred years from now... [0]

(In my ideal reality this should be the goal of _all_ investment funds. Also, everyone who enjoys the higher levels of the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness [1] should watch The Expanse.)

[0] https://observer.com/2015/12/the-expanse-recap-1x04-mormon-s...

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien...

> they all get the same stipend which for many is less than they made in their professional lives

It's weird how much this is being repeated in this thread. It's clear this opinion didn't form on an individual level but rather is directed by the church to their followers to repeat. It's an odd way of justifying position is all.

Ex Mormon here. Yes, it is drilled down into our brains. The same exact phrases.

And the stipend is 6-figures per year (most members don't know this though, it was leaked a few times now on paystubs). But all travel and room is also paid for. Plus most leaders of the church that receive this stipend are 70+ years old, so they are already living off healthy retirements in addition to now free housing and a healthy stipend. Church leaders are all successful businessman, doctors, and lawyers. Basically you pay your way to the top. So all of these people have incredible riches before they start taking these stipends.

Church members like to pretend like our leaders are scraping by... but they are in top 1% of income earners. Further, you should hear those same leaders talk about tithing to members. Even encouraging their poor members to pay up because "they can't afford not to".

It should also be noted that the church pays these top leaders, but chooses not to pay anyone at the congregation level. From the bishop (equivilant to a Pastor in most other religions), to the people teaching sunday school, the people cleaning the buildings, the bookkeepers, etc are all asked to do it for free. These are generally lower-income or middle-income members with full time jobs, asked to do this in addition to normal jobs... oh and they have to pay 10% of their pre-tax income to the church that they make from their job.

> No bishop [aka 'Pastor'], no missionary should ever hesitate or lack the faith to teach the law of tithing to the poor. The sentiment of “They can’t afford to” needs to be replaced with “They can’t afford not to.”

That quote is direct from their official prophet.

Source: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference...

Note: If you click that link you will see that the title is "Tithing - A commandment even for the destitute", this man had the hairy balls to stand up with a straight face and say that no one is too poor to pay his church. While he flies private jets everywhere from these poor family's sacrifices.

It seem to me that humans who does advance to the top are either greedy, combative and out of touch. The question is whether the selection criteria favors such people or the position itself engages part of human nature that are such. I incline to the former, it's sad to see there's no other way to make decent leader other than have everyone's eye fixated on any mistake he might have made.

One more argument for AI overlord.

I think having your members tithe is a big part of it. I know some wealthy mormons that have always given their 10%, at least that's what they tell me. I also know a couple of really large mormon families, like 12 kids large - they all tithe.

> at least that's what they tell me.

Assuming the countless anecdotes on /r/exmormon are to be believed, nobody really gets a choice. Your local leaders will browbeat you and try to look over your financials if they don’t feel you are tithing appropriately.

> try to look over your financials

If this happens it's against church policy. At the end of each year your Bishop asks if you are a full tithe payer or not. They record your answer and that's it.

Also my experience that they won't try to dig into your financials.

However, if they have any suspicion that you're lying about it, prepare for the guilt trip of the century. You do want to live with your family in the celestial kingdom, right? You wouldn't lie to god, would you?

Effectively they take advantage of the beliefs they taught you. It doesn't matter that they don't subpoena your tax returns...its coercive all the same.

Local leadership quality in the church varies wildly, since there's no formal training and they're unpaid positions. My bishops growing up were all great guys, but there are absolutely exceptions, and I'm sure that happens.

Also, as other people have mentioned, /r/exmormon isn't exactly a representative sample of exmormons. It was useful to me as someone who was questioning my faith and later dealing with family as I was leaving the church, but now that I'm in a healthy place, there's no reason for me to spend time there and I haven't been on in years. That's pretty common, and the end result is that the majority of long-time active posters are people who've been out for years but are still bitter/angry/whatever and need that outlet.

That has never been true in my experience. I’ve been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for most of my life and I have always struggled with tithing and offerings and nobody has ever said much to me about it.

In my now 50+ year experience, the ONLY time tithing has ever been brought up is at the end of the year when the bishop asks if I’ve been a full tithe payer. I say “No,” and he writes that down on the little paper and then we’re done. I’ve never been browbeaten or had anybody look over my financials. I’ve never been extorted or ridiculed. I’m not saying that some misguided bishop somewhere hasn’t done that to members of his congregation. I just know it isn’t church policy and isn’t something I’ve ever experienced.

> I say “No,” and he writes that down on the little paper and then we’re done.

...and then he withdraws your temple recommendation, because that privilege is only reserved for full tithe payers. If he doesn't, he's going against church policy, and letting you off the hook nicely. Congrats, you won the local leader lottery.

/r/exmormon is a distillation of disgruntled exmembers. It's extremely biased and not representative at all of nearly anything.

Not all exmembers are disgruntled. The ones that aren't disgruntled don't hang out in /r/exmormon.

It's like distilling all of the people in the world who had a bad experience with the police to /r/fthecops and then using anecdotes in there to make assumptions about all police.

Or using anecdotes in /r/atheism to make assumptions about all religion.

It's always the term "disgruntled" that is used when attempting to discount the experiences related by people who left an organization. What exactly does "disgruntled" mean to you? Take me, for example. I've spent decades of my life as a true believing member of the organization, willingly giving an incredibly significant amount of income, time, and work toward it. And then I discover on my own decades later that I had been indoctrinated to believe in a lot of false stories. This discovery was a very slow process that involved a lot of time, energy, and research. The psychological toll of reframing your entire worldview is large. I benefited a lot from online communities where a lot of people were going through the same journey. I'll always be a person shaped by my previous decades of experience as an active believing Mormon. Did any church members personally treat me badly? No. I've always fit all the right demographics, had the right behavior, and am the correct sexual orientation. Outside of being quizzed and shamed for masturbation as a child, I generally had it pretty good in the church, and I loved it. Did any church members treat me badly after leaving the church? No. They've been respectful enough about it, and I've had some good conversations with some of them.

And yet people like you constantly come along and want to categorize me as simply a "disgruntled exmember" with no opinion worth listening to, for the mere fact that I still participate in conversations about it online and in person with people who have had similar experiences as mine. This is a perfect characterization and example of what people who leave the church have to deal with. Even I, who never had it badly in the church, and was able to leave without too much drama from the local ward, will be labeled as an untrustworthy disgruntled apostate the moment I try to give a different perspective on this organization I was heavily invested in for decades. Online communities like /r/exmormon have a very large portion of people like me who have not had bad experiences in the church or leaving the church, but yet still have plenty to talk about for what should be obvious reasons.

And who are the people whose opinions we should trust about the Mormon church? Why obviously the believing Mormons of course. Trust the people who have been taught and trained consistently their entire lives to be "member missionaries" and put the best possible spin on their church to outsiders. They're not disgruntled, so therefore their opinion matters more. Trust the used car dealer to make the most honest assessment of the car they're selling.

This comment crosses into flamewar territory, especially the personal part ("people like you constantly come along and want to categorize me"). Please move in the opposite direction when commenting here. I know it's hard on topics like this where emotions are understandably high, but that's why the site guidelines include:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I disagree with this categorization. Rephrasing to "people constantly come along..." could make that sentence less personal, sure, but is there anything else about the comment that you would say is not substantive or thoughtful?

Yes—the last paragraph, for example, which talks about an entire class of people in a belittling and ultimately ("used car dealer") pejorative way.

I'm sure that wasn't your intent, but these effects are always much less obvious to the person making the comment than they are to many outside readers.

I don't see how the metaphor was pejorative, and I don't see how that could be worse than "a distillation of disgruntled exmembers", which has been the constant categorization of people who have left the church. That being said, I don't think either the comment I responded to or my own comment was out of bounds, insulting, or crossed into "flamewar territory". Rather, the impression I'm getting is that any disagreement over a topic such as religion will be categorized as a flamewar here simply due to the topic. I have not insulted anyone nor do I ever intend to insult, and I do not take offense either, especially since the growth I've experienced as a result of leaving religion has taught me that taking offense to criticism is an instinct that stunts learning.

You are the moderator here, and so ultimately what you say is the law on this forum. I can respect that, and I like that you're active here. Moderation in a discussion community is invaluable. I'm disappointed that you have read into my comment antagonism and anger, and I cannot agree with the assessment.

"Used car dealer" is a pejorative metaphor; it connotes self-interested deception of others.

I didn't mean to read anger into your comment. What I'm concerned about is how such comments land with other people who happen to be reading the thread. When there are well-known patterns of provocation in a comment which are likely to trigger others and lead to a predictable flamewar, that's flamebait, and it needs to be avoided for fire safety reasons.

There are ways to express your views and to disagree without being gratuitously provocative, so it's not the case that any disagreement would get moderated in this way. But to reach that requires being willing to hear where the gratuitous provocations are, learn from that information and adapt.

Using a metaphor of "used care dealer" is gratuitously provocative according to you? Does that standard apply consistently? It's not a flattering comparison, but it is not even remotely gratuitous. Used car dealers are real people earning perfectly acceptable livings. It's also a perfectly apt metaphor. I understand that used car dealers have a job to do and that it involves convincing me to buy a used car. I also understand that they may not see it important or relevant to their situation to tell me the bad along with the good, and that it is in my best interest to have the car inspected by someone with no skin in the game. It's an obvious case of making sure incentives do not align against you.

It applies perfectly well to Mormonism. If you had only trusted me to tell you about my religion when I was a missionary for 2 years in South America convincing people to become Mormon, you would have gotten a very whitewashed and carefully selected story. This is not because I intentionally deceived people. It was not out of self-interested deception. It was because I felt it important to my God-sent mission that people learn to love the church so that they can be baptized. There were so many facts that hadn't been taught to me, and in addition there were plenty of facts that I didn't see necessary to teach people.

You think I'm demonizing my own people and myself when I use the used car dealer metaphor? That is simply an incorrect and strangely motivated interpretation of what I said.

> Online communities like /r/exmormon have a very large portion of people like me who have not had bad experiences in the church or leaving the church, but yet still have plenty to talk about for what should be obvious reasons.

Well, the problem is that reasonable people like you get drowned out and dominated by the people on there that just want to vent or otherwise have an axe to grind. Sometimes I'll pop by just so see what's on the front page and I'll be disappointed to see memes dancing on the graves of dead people (anytime a general authority dies).

It would be like a moderate liberal claiming that there are a "large portion" of other moderate liberals on /r/politics. Probably true, yet, /r/politics is dominated by the hard left, and you'll rarely see balanced viewpoints there; it's an anti-right echo chamber with zero nuance.

I see the problem of /r/exmormon differently. Since I'm no longer at a point where I feel personally attacked when Mormonism is criticized, I can appreciate some of the more harsh stories that people have to tell, and can understand the anger that results, even though I did not experience nearly as much of the abuse as others have. I think the ultimate problem with /r/exmormon now is that a lot of the good content (personal stories, community support/advice, discussions and debates) is drowned out and dominated by people that just want to lolvote at memes all day. It's the natural result of all undermoderated large Reddit communities that the content eventually serves the lowest common denominator and so the front page is largely a bunch of lazy memes lazily upvoted and zero discussion.

/r/exmormon has a very particular perspective, largely driven by the people who are active there are usually the ones who genuinely had the worst experience.

This is pretty much true of any online community built around the opposition to something. People that had a positive or simply ‘meh’ experience don’t tend to spend time talking about it online.

The r/exmormon subreddit has 155,000 members. The r/exchristian subreddit has 60,000 members. When you compare as a percentage of global population of members of their respective religions, it looks even larger.

You're right that people who have had "meh" experiences don't tend to talk about it online. What is it about being mormon that makes exmormons so bitter, in comparison to more benign religions? Try reading the subreddit and you'll find out.

I'm not a Mormon, admittedly know very little about the religion, and don't want to make any statements criticizing or defending it. But it is a mistake to assume that the size of a subreddit is anything but a tiny representation of the real phenomenon. Reddit is not reality. The overwhelming majority of people don't use it or even know what it is.

It may simply be the case that Mormons are more tech-savvy as a group than Christians as a whole and thus they gravitate to online communities.

That's true, it's very hard to conclude anything about a religion by subreddit size, but it is actually pretty simple to infer it.

The largest ex religion communities online (former scientologists, mormons, JWs, adventists, and muslims, in my experience) all have a few things in common. They are from religions with significant control over your life when you are a member, and significant pain and anguish when you decide to leave. For some, that may mean losing your family and friends and professional colleagues (as I have). For others (such as scientologists), that may mean lots of harassment and legal difficulties. For others (such as muslims), that may mean being put to death.

I have no qualms with calling /r/exmormon a very bitter community. We're bitter...with lots of reason to be so. This isn't anything like giving bad reviews on twitter...this is a very active community of thousands of people who have had very negative impacts on their lives due to their association with a religion that controlled large parts of it. They're trying to cope in the only way they know how, by commiserating.

I would say that that should be a very valuable source of information to anybody who is investigating a religion. Sure, if you ask a question, you're going to get very biased answers. But they aren't one off problems, and they aren't dismissible simply because they're bitter.

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