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12 July 2012
The Church and Its Financial Independence
July 12, 2012
LDS Newsroom
Tithing is an ancient biblical principle and has been practiced by many churches through the centuries. Independent studies show, however, that nowhere else in America today is the principle of tithing so widely and faithfully followed as among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The vast majority of the income used to manage the Church comes from tithing, not from businesses or investments.
Tithing has thus proved to be an enormous blessing to the Church and its people, along with simple but sound economic principles such as avoiding debt, living within one’s means and setting aside funds for a rainy day.
The key to understanding Church finances is to understand that they are a means to an end. They allow the Church to carry out its religious mission across the world.
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-financial-independence
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Out of bounds: Businessweek cover story distorts
July 12, 2012
Deseret News
When Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Caroline Winter visited Salt Lake City to learn about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was on to a great story.
In this moment of increased curiosity about the LDS Church, she had a rare opportunity to help Businessweek’s readers understand how principles of thrift, self-reliance and volunteerism have transformed a small group of persecuted pioneers, relegated to the desert wasteland of the Great Basin, into a self-sufficient people and organization that meets, with increasing effectiveness, the spiritual and temporal needs of millions of families worldwide.
But Winter missed that opportunity, and instead delivered up, in today’s Businesweek cover story, an unbalanced and out-of-context caricature of the LDS Church’s investments.
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Bloomberg Businessweek cover mocks Mormon Church
July 12, 2012
ABC4
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is responding to next weeks Bloomberg Businessweek magazine cover depicting John the Baptist commanding Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdry to “build a shopping mall, own stock in Burger King, and open a Polynesian theme park in Hawaii that shall be largely exempt from the frustrations of tax…”
Church spokesman Michael Purdy responds that, “The Businessweek cover is in such poor taste that it is difficult to even find the words to comment on it. Sadly, the cover is a reflection of the bias and speculative nature of the article itself. It is narrow and incomplete, omitting, for instance, a good deal of information given on how Church resources are used. The article misses the mark and the cover is obviously meant to be offensive to many, including millions of Latter-day Saints.”
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Would Bloomberg Mock Islam Like That?
July 12, 2012
Commentary
Two years ago when the Ground Zero mosque controversy was at its height, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was not only among the most ardent defenders of the plan to put an Islamic center in the shadow of the site of the 9/11 attack, he was also among the loudest of those accusing the project’s critics of bigotry. Saying that those who questioned the appropriateness of the plan should be “ashamed of themselves,” the mayor proclaimed that nothing less than the principle of religious liberty was at stake in building the center. But as the cover of the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek demonstrates, squeamishness among our elites — even those who run a magazine that is named for the mayor’s business empire — about even the appearance of prejudice is often limited these days to things that might offend Muslims. When it comes to Mormons, anything still goes.
The cover, which takes a piece of Mormon iconography in which Jesus is depicted as speaking to Mormon prophets, provides a caption bubble in which he instructs them, “And thou shalt build a shopping mall, buy stock in Burger King and open a Polynesian theme park in Hawaii that shall be largely exempt from the frustrations of tax…” to which one of the prophets responds, “Hallelujah.”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/12/would-bloomberg-mock-islam-like-that-mormons-prejudice/
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‘Nothing exciting about me or any other black Republican’
July 12, 2012
CNN
Don Harwell has not spoken to his twin brother in 10 years.
“As I remember it, the discussion was (that) the Book of Mormon was a lie, ” Harwell said via phone.
His brother, a born-again Baptist, was speaking about his faith. Harwell finally got tired of trying to defend his own faith to his brother, and they have not spoken since that call. “It hurts, you know,” Harwell shares.
But, he adds: “I have real short patience with people who don’t have the knowledge of a book they have never read.”
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/12/politics/black-republicans/index.html
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Mormonism and My Coming Out
July 12, 2012
Huffington Post
I’ve always had a minor obsession with Mormons, but I only recently realized it’s been linked to my sexuality all these years. (The skeptical among you may be thinking, “Why do gays always have to link everything to their sexuality?” But I think this link is actually valid.)
I grew up in southern California and went to high school with a relatively large Mormon population. During senior year I became friends with a Mormon girl whom I’d known from afar all four years of high school, because she was from a prominent family of 13 children. She was a cheerleader, and she was in my calculus class — to me, that was an oxymoron. She was pretty in a traditional way, funny, charming, and had a sass to her that was intriguing. In short, I had a schoolgirl crush on her. To me, as a child of a Vietnamese immigrant mother, cheerleading represented the great American female archetype and defined traditional femininity — neither of which I felt I embodied but desperately wanted to. Being friends with her would bring me closer to those ideals.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-wallace/mormonism-and-my-coming-out_b_1662978.html
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Electrick Children: The Story Of A Girl’s Journey From Mormon Childhood To Rock Star Rebellion
July 12, 2012
Huffington Post UK
Did you know that there are approximately six million Mormons, including current high-profile presidential candidate Mitt Romney, living in the US and Canada, as well as eight million others dotted worldwide?
One of these until three years ago was writer/director Rebecca Thomas, who has made a film, Electrick Children, about “what I knew, basically” – the story of a young girl, Rachel, who has grown up in a fundamentalist community in Utah, and discovers a secret tape with rock music on it. When she becomes pregnant three months later, she is convinced that the two events must be in some way connected, so leaves her community behind to search for the man on the tape. In this quirky, sometimes comic drama, she heads to the nearest city, which happens to be Las Vegas.
Thomas is keen to point out that Mormonism sits on a sliding scale of day-to-day living that we might consider ‘normal’ (whatever that is). She herself wore jeans and went to film school, so not every girl is brought up in the kind of extreme community we see in the film.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/07/12/electrick-children-mormon-billy-zane_n_1668042.html
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