Okay, let me walk that back: there’s a lot of hugely interesting things, if you’re interested in all the many ways a person can earn income, and all the many forms a taxpayer has to fill out when the taxpayer is broadly invested.[fn1] Still, there are a couple things that I thought I’d highlight:[fn2]

So How Much Did Romney Make in 2010?

Gross, it looks like he took in $22,213,866. But he did have some expenses associated with his income; taking those into account, he had $21,661,344 in adjusted gross income.

That doesn’t mean, though, that he brought home $21 million in cash, as we’ll see as we explore his tithing.

Is Romney a Full Tithepayer?

This seems to be the question of most interest to Mormons. The answer? Yes. I mean, I assume so, though it’s neither your nor my business. But his tax return doesn’t tell us.

What his return tells us is this: in 2010,[fn3] Romney donated $1,525,167 (in cash) to the Church. In addition, he donated stock with a fair market value of $1,458,807 to the Tyler Charitable Foundation, which appears to be a charitable foundation run by Romney. The Tyler Charitable Foundation, in turn, donated $145,000 to the Church. (It also made other donations, including to Boston charities, to Harvard and BYU, to an equestrian organization, to Deseret International, to the George W. Bush presidential library, etc.) So let’s say Romney donated $1,670,167 to the Church in 2010, out of $21 million in income. That comes out to 7.7%, which is less than 10-12%. So what gives?

It could be any number of things, from prepaying tithing to smoothing his tithing amount over multiple years. But there’s one possibility that fits very well with his major source of income, has to do with taxes, and hasn’t been mentioned as far as I know. And it’s this:

A lot of Romney’s money comes through investment partnerships (as carried interest or as a result of being a partner). The taxation of partnerships is complicated but, in a nutshell, partners are taxed as if they’d earned directly their share of partnership income. So, for example, let’s say you and I each own half of T&S LP, an investment partnership. Two years ago, T&S LP bought a share of BCC Inc. stock for $100. Today, T&S sells that stock for $200. As a result, I include $50 in my income this year (that is, half of the partnership’s gain). And I do this irrespective of whether T&S distributes the money to me. T&S can hold onto that money for another five years, reinvesting it or keeping it in a bank or under a mattress or whatever.[fn4]

Now, notwithstanding tax considerations, I doubt that I’d pay tithing on income I hadn’t yet received. Moreover, even if Romney does tithe his so-called distributive share before it is distributed to him, investment partnerships are often unable to let their partners know what the partners’ share of the income was until sometime after April of the following year. So Romney couldn’t know what some significant portion of his income in 2010 was until sometime mid-to-late 2011, far too late to pay tithing on it in 2010.

And How About That Super-Low Effective Rate?

In 2010, Romney paid an effective federal income tax rate of 13.9% of his adjusted gross income. That seems pretty low, especially given that Gingrich, with $3 million of adjusted gross income, paid federal income tax at an effective rate of 31.5% and Obama, with adjusted gross income of $1.7 million, paid federal income tax at an effective rate of 24%. So is Romney’s rate really low?

Yeah. I mean, many pay a lower rate, of course—a median-income family of four had an effective federal income tax rate of 4.7%, notwithstanding being in the 15% tax bracket. But that doesn’t tell us a lot about how much Romney should pay.

But let’s bracket the normative debate for now: how did Romney pay such a low effective rate? I mean, capital gains are taxed at 15%, so even if all of his adjusted gross income consisted of capital gains (which it didn’t), he shouldn’t be at 14%.

Charitable donations and other significant deductions. He donated about $3 million to charities, and had another $1 million or so of miscellaneous itemized deductions. We use these kinds of deductions to go from adjusted gross income to taxable income; he paid 16.8% of his taxable income in taxes, plus his tax was increased by $232,989 of alternative minimum tax.

Other Interesting Details

This is probably too long already, so just a couple more interesting details: in 2010, Romney was on the board of Marriott, and earned $113,881 in directors fees.

He has no Cayman bank account; he had a Swiss account in 2010, which he disclosed as he was required to do. Note that a U.S. taxpayer must pay taxes on her worldwide income; any interest Romney earned on his Swiss account is taxable to him at ordinary rates. The only reason such an account would be tax-advantageous to a U.S. taxpayer would be if that taxpayer was trying to hide money from the U.S. government. Romney didn’t, so I assume he had a business reason for having some money overseas.

Some portion of his income is from carried interest. There’s a big, long, fascinating debate over the appropriate way to tax carried interest. Right now, though, it’s treated as pass-through income, meaning if the partnership earns capital gain income, Romney gets to treat his carried interest as capital. If you want my long take on the carried interest debate, you can read it here.

Tax Policy Take-Aways

A couple that I want to highlight:

First, if the purpose of the charitable deduction is to encourage people to donate to charities, the deduction Romney received (and that I get, and that many of you get) is probably too generous. That is, he (and I and you) would be full tithepayers with or without a deduction.

Does that mean we should get rid of the charitable deduction, or get rid of it with regard to  certain donations, or with regard to certain people? Not necessarily. First, although we talk about the charitable deduction as an incentive, that’s not the only justification for it—it may have purposes other than just encouraging people to donate to charity. Second, though Romney would probably have donated $1.5 million with or without a deduction, he may not have donated the other $1.5 million. And detangling what would have been donated from what wouldn’t have been donated may be administratively difficult, if not impossible.

Second, the same thing about preferential rates on capital gains. Romney probably wouldn’t have invested less if his capital gains rate were higher. (Why not? Because he’d still be getting a better return by investing it than he would by doing nothing.) In 1986, as a matter of fact, Reagan’s tax reform lowered the top ordinary rate to 28% while raising the rate on capital gains to 28%.

Again, that doesn’t mean the top capital rate should be raised to 35%. But it does highlight that there’s nothing True and Eternal about a lower rate of tax on capital gain.[fn5]

—

[fn1] For example, Romney has a series of Form 8621s; he has to file one for every PFIC (that is, foreign corporation that earns mostly passive income) he owns, directly or through a partnership. One of those 8621s, for Centro Properties Group (which appears to be an Australian real estate investment company) reports that Romney suffered a $2 loss. $2 would practically be a rounding error for me, and yet Romney has to file a two-page form reporting that $2 loss. We go through them, and there’s a $7 loss, a $14 gain, a $71 gain, etc. Some are bigger-dollar; he has a couple that report $10,000 or $15,000 of gains or losses. But there are at least a dozen 8621s, most of which don’t report a gain or loss in excess of a couple hundred dollars.

[fn2] And realize that a lot of what I’ll say is speculative as regards Romney personally; I don’t have any personal knowledge of his finances.

[fn3] Like I said before, I’m only going to look at his 2010 taxes; his 2011 return is tentative, and the couple hundred pages of 2010 are enough for me to deal with.

[fn4] I should note that there is some balance: when T&S distributes the $50 to me, I don’t face any additional tax. That is, I only pay taxes when T&S realizes the income, not when I get my hands on the cash.

[fn5] It also suggests that eliminating taxes on capital gains may not be what we want to do. Romney on Gingrich’s tax proposal, which would eliminate capital gains taxes altogether: “Under [Gingrich's] plan, I’d have paid no taxes in the last two years.”

I’ve glanced through really quickly and, even though it’s fascinating, there doesn’t seem to be anything terribly surprising (his effective rate’s a little lower than I expected, but not much). Still, if there’s anything you’re curious about regarding his tax returns, please feel free to leave questions in the comments; I’ll try to answer them in my next post.

As you leave comments, though, remember our comments policy. Specifically, don’t insult each other, don’t call Romney’s (or anybody else’s) personal righteousness into question, and, in general, play nice. And enjoy the look into a world of personal finance most of us rarely see.

But why? Why would Romney give the Church equity stakes in bad fast-food chains, second-rate pizza chains, and other such holdings?[fn1]

Taxes. Sure, there may be other reasons, too, but there’s a significant tax advantage to donating appreciated assets to charities.[fn2]

Remember, certain donors to 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches, can take a deduction for donations they make to that organization. An example of how it works: assume that in 2011 I itemized my deductions, that I earned $100,000[fn3], that my marginal tax rate was 25%, and that I wrote a check to the Church for $10,000. As a result of my charitable contribution, I can deduct the $10,000, which lowers my tax bill by $2,500.

And, it turns out, I get the same deduction if, instead of writing a check for $10,000, I donate, for example, stock worth $10,000. I get a deduction for the fair market value of property donated.

But that stock donation may save me more than $2,500 in taxes. Because we don’t know right now what I paid for the stock. Assume, for example, that I paid $1,000 for the stock I donate. If I wanted to get access to its $10,000 of value, I would have to sell the stock. I would realize a gain of $9,000, which would currently be taxed at a 15% rate, so I would owe $1,350 of taxes. In fact, if I sold the stock for $10,000 cash, and took those bills and gave them to my bishop, I would still owe $1,350 in taxes on my gain.

But the gain is not triggered when I donate the stock to the Church. So now I have a $10,000 deduction that saves me $2,500 in taxes, and I have a potential tax liability of $1,350 that will never materialize. And, because money is fungible, by fulfilling my tithing liability with property, I’ve freed up $10,000 of liquid assets to do with as I please.

And what does the Church do with Burger King stock? It has two options: it can put the stock in its investment portfolio, or it can sell the stock and use the $10,000 it realizes (and doesn’t pay taxes on—remember, the Church, like all 501(c)(3)s, doesn’t pay taxes on its investment income) to do whatever it would have done with the $10,000 in cash that I could have donated. I suspect, in general, that the Church (and, frankly, most charities) takes the second route.

—

[fn1] It may be that Romney didn’t donate all of those stocks, but his campaign acknowledges that he donated at least some.

[fn2] Note that, from this point on, any motive I suggest for Romney or the Church is pure conjecture: I don’t know Mitt Romney personally. It is within the realm of possibility that he had substantive non-tax reasons for giving the Church a share of Burger King. That said, I kind of doubt it.

[fn3] I should note that the amount of money I earn is something other than $100,000. But, for the sake of mathematical simplicity, every hypothetical person I deal with earns $100,000.

Over the summer, the Bloomberg administration announced that, for the first time in two decades, public school students in New York would be required to take sex-ed. The curriculum the administration recommended—HealthSmart (middle school and high school) and Reducing the Risk—include, among other things, lessons on abstinence and birth control.

Not surprisingly, the proposal has been controversial. It seems like sex-ed is one of the culture-wars topics that never gets old. But I’m not really a culture-wars person, and the real or purported controversy of New York’s most recent foray into sex education wouldn’t have really interested me except for one thing: the Bloomberg administration’s purpose for making this move. Specifically, the move was part of its strategy to “improve the lives of black and Latino teenagers.”

Sex-ed isn’t usually justified, in my experience, as a tool to achieve social justice, or an anti-poverty measure. New York, though, tied its sex-ed to improving kids’ economic potential.

How? In Creating an Opportunity Society (which I’ve mentioned before), Haskins and Sawhill say that families headed by a person who (1) graduated from high school, (2) works full-time, and (3) doesn’t have children out of wedlock has a 98% chance of escaping poverty.[fn1]

And comprehensive sex education seems to be fairly effective at achieving (3). And not just because it teaches kids how to have consequence-free[fn2] sex. Recent research suggests that teenagers who receive comprehensive sex education are 60% less likely to become pregnant or impregnate somebody than teenagers who receive no sex education.[fn3] Moreover, comprehensive sex education slightly reduced the the likelihood of teenagers having sex in the first place.[fn4]

So what does this mean to us as Mormons? The Handbook of Instructions says that parents are responsible for their kids’ sex education. But it doesn’t end there: it says that, if sex-ed is offered in the schools, parents should ensure that the instruction is consistent with “sound moral and ethical values.”

So we’ve got a moral responsibility to engage with schools’ sex education. And, I’d argue, our sound moral and ethical values at least force us to consider supporting comprehensive sex-ed. Note that I don’t mean this as a blanket endorsement of anything that flies under the rubric of comprehensive sex-ed.[fn5] But the numbers indicate that including information on contraception in a well-designed curriculum substantially reduces teen pregnancy, marginally reduces teen sex, and doesn’t cause kids who wouldn’t have had sex to suddenly have it. Even if we’re convinced our kids won’t have premarital sex (and I think that assuming that all kids will have premarital sex is condescending; some certainly will, but my personal experience suggests that it’s far from inevitable), supporting good instruction can potentially improve the economic and spiritual and emotional lives of the teenagers around them.

—

* I know that the phrase “social justice” riles some people up; I assume sex-ed gets a different group. If I included tax here, I’d have the perfect storm.

[fn1] Haskins & Sawhill p. 70.

[fn2] I don’t, of course, mean “consequence-free”; among other things, there are emotional and spiritual consequences to sex. But using contraception can significantly decrease the risk of pregnancy and, in some cases, STDs.

[fn3] Teens who received abstinence-only sex-ed were 30% less likely to become pregnant or impregnate somebody, but, apparently, this number was statistically insignificant.

[fn4] I should note that this makes some intuitive sense to me: I can’t imagine anything making sex seem less sexy to a teenager than a required high school class. I also can’t fathom how teaching about how to use contraception could possibly be useful to anybody: using a condom, for example, isn’t rocket science. But, on the other hand, I was once helping a home teachee move and, in the course of packing, we saw a couple wood phalluses on her shelf. Sheepishly, she explained that, in the course of her job as a social worker in prisons, she taught prisoners how to use a condom. So maybe condom use is not as intuitive as it seems.

[fn5] Although, frankly, from looking at the websites, the curricular subjects aren’t nearly as offensive as the HealthSmart website; seriously, what is it about public schools and horrible web design?

With the impending vote, most Mormons may assume that Mitt Romney is the clear favorite. He has been the most consistent front runner for the Republican nomination for President this year, and his views may be most consistent with those of most Mormons. So why vote for Jon Huntsman, Jr.…

… for Mormon of the Year?

I think that the reason Jon Huntsman should be considered Mormon of the Year is his role in what has been called the “Mormon Moment.” We’ve seen Romney before. Alone, while Romney did garner a lot of attention when he ran in 2008, he didn’t gain as much attention as the combination of Romney and Huntsman does this time. Along with The Book of Mormon musical, Huntsman has simply added enough national attention to make the moment more than what we say in 2008. Simply put, without Huntsman, we might be seeing the same thing we saw in 2008.

There are, of course, other attractions to Huntsman. His style is certainly more hip than Romney’s. His daughters have given him unique attention among the presidential candidates, with their tweets and social media exploits. And his more centrist positions make him much more palatable for the general election.

I don’t know if that is enough to consider Huntsman the Mormon of the Year, but I think it is a good argument. Without Huntsman, would we have had as big a “Mormon Moment?”

That said, Dr. Bloom is right that the Church has changed a lot between 1844 and 2011.[fn1] Change is inevitable and, as Ecclesiastes tells us, is to be expected. And, frankly, there have been a number of changes that, even if they risk our Protestantization, I’m really happy about.

And I’m not talking Official Declaration 1 or 2 stuff—I’m going to assume that most of us are grateful that polygamy is no longer the sine qua non of the faithful member, and that all of us are grateful that we don’t live in the world of a racially-based Priesthood ban. And I’m also not talking about our wishlist of things we want changed. I assume most of us have one or two, even if they’re just wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if kinds of things.

No, I’m talking about less-prominent practices that the Church once had that have left. And there are two that leap to my mind:

Missionary Finances

I’m actually not talking about the standardization of mission expenses, even though that’s pretty nice, too. I’m actually talking about going on missions with purse and/or scrip. See, throughout the 19th century, and even through the first half of the 20th, missionaries would travel without purse or scrip. And that practice undoubtedly helped connect modern missionaries to early Christian missionaries, making the latter-day and the ancient churches that much more connected. But really, I liked having reais in my wallet as I went preaching in Brazil.[fn2]

Come to Zion

I’m also glad that the meaning of Zion has shifted from a literal physical gathering to a broader sense of Zion as being where the Church is organized. Why? Because I liked growing up in California, living in New York, Virginia, and Chicago. Moreover, I like that we’re full participants[fn3] in the world, rather than being cloistered and physically set apart from it. I realize that physical gathering has its power and its place. But I’m glad it’s gone.

—

[fn1] Between 1992 and 2011, on the other hand, not so much. This is beside the point, but I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what happened between 1992, when Bloom was gung-ho on Mormonism, and today, when we’re, in his words, on the path to “just one more Protestant sect.” The only major changes the Church has instituted during those two decades that I can think of are (1) the introduction of the mini-temple, (2) the changed logo, and (3) the Perpetual Education Fund. But none of these support the Protestantization of Mormonism. As James points out, the temple is a distinctly un-Protestant institution, and the mini-temples have made temples significantly more pervasive in the Mormon world. The emphasis of Jesus in the logo is mostly cosmetic; it may reflect a renewed emphasis on Jesus, but that’s far from un-Mormon. And the Perpetual Education Fund, while it looks a lot like microcredit (which, as far as I know, isn’t a particularly Protestant institution), also looks a lot like the Perpetual Emigration Fund, which is a particularly and historically Mormon institution.

Or maybe he’s thinking about the How Wide the Divide crowd; while that project seems to have a lot of BYU support, it hasn’t crept into my Church experience in any material way.

That’s not to say that the Church hasn’t changed, and changed significantly, since Joseph Smith’s days. But I can’t think of any material shift between 1992 and today. But again, this is all tangential to the point of the post.

[fn2] Okay, just one more: I’m glad we initiate the mission process, rather than being called during conferences. And that missions don’t last much more than 2 years. And that I won’t be asked to leave my wife and children to go on a mission. I do like a lot about our current mission procedures, especially in light of the way it used to be.

[fn3] I actually probably don’t mean full participants, but I do think that our rhetorical opposition to “the World” is overblown. Sure, there’s bad that we need to avoid (or, better yet, fix). Still, but for the World, we wouldn’t have jazz or iPhones or the Doughnut Vault or a ton of other things that I appreciate on a regular basis. And I’m glad I can both be a faithful and believing member of the Church and eat simply amazing doughnuts in Chicago while listening to jazz on my iPhone, or whatever.

The Super Committee’s lame punt is just the most recent sign of the overall trend, though: at an institutional level, we haven’t even really admitted there is a problem, let alone started repenting. What do we need to repent of? Oh, there are plenty of things seriously wrong with the way we run our economy, including many of the favorite criticisms from both the right and the left, and the economy feeds into a lot of other things that are wrong with our society.

I’ll just mention debt for now. We borrowed like mad for the past fifteen years or so, on houses, credit cards, student loans, and government programs, and called it prosperity—short-sighted materialism (among other things), masked and rationalized with convenient economic pseudo-theory. I was getting nervous about this back around 1999, but by now a lot of readers will probably grant it to me, though there are plenty of theorists and politicians who say our problem is still that we need to spend more.

So if you’ll grant me that this self-deceptive over-spending is a pernicious vice, isn’t my schadenfreude still wrong? Jesus said that those who don’t forgive are guilty of the greater sin, and one of the most important and revolutionary insights of the Restoration is that God does not rejoice, but actually weeps over the suffering of the wicked, so I should too. I’m sorry, though, it’s hard for me to see the Dow at a little over 11,000 as an unbearable affliction. This is not like a war. It’s not even a famine, let alone a flood. It is certainly not the fire from the sky that Jonah was hoping for, and it might even save some of us from a longer-lasting fire. It just might be enough of a discomfort to make us re-think our priorities, and we are long over-due for rethinking.

Instead of Jonah, let’s look at Nephi, who prayed, “O Lord, do not suffer that this people shall be destroyed by the sword; but O Lord, rather let there be a famine in the land, to stir them up in remembrance of the Lord their God, and perhaps they will repent and turn unto thee” (Helaman 11:4).

This economic sand trap is a serious problem for some folks, no question, but it is mild in comparison with a famine. Moreover, the Dow isn’t even the economy. A decent amount of wealth, at least in the abstract, is bound up in the stock market numbers, but they change too fast for us to take them seriously as wealth, full stop. More than anything, the stock market is a barometer of where we think the economy is going, and so when it goes down, it isn’t so much a problem itself as the recognition and publicizing of a problem.

So, I’m excited that we are admitting to ourselves, in an implicit, confused way, that we have a serious problem, or at least that for the reluctant there is a highly public indication that there may be one. I’ll be more excited when I see people recognizing what we need to actually change. Will we as a nation actually turn back to God? That might be a bit much to hope for, but perhaps we will at least be less enamored with our idols of gold and silver, and some of our destructive ideas. Maybe we will stop seeing the stock market as quite such an important indicator of our wealth, because we will see that our real treasures are elsewhere.

Actually, I would be happy for more of us to just do the math, and there are signs that this, at least, is happening: credit card debt went down 11% from October 2010 to October 2011! Hurray! Some of us at an individual level, at least enough to affect the average, have started to change our ways.

She was right, and it would not be a good thing.

Strasbourg is and was beautiful pre-Christmas.* Several weeks passed before I fully acclimatized to the major time-change, and the schedule of missionary life, but I loved Strasbourg almost instantly. The eastern area of France bordering Germany is known as Alsace, and offers the best of both countries in terms of food, architecture, and other things. Parks are plentiful, the accent is easier to master, and doner kebab is cheap. Two wards meeting in an actual chapel with a basketball court were staffed by over a dozen hard-working missionaries who made me feel welcome as we did splits. My trainer, a stand-up guy, introduced me to the endless variety of bread, cheese, pastries, roasted chestnuts, and other delights as the weather cooled. On Saturdays, we played ultimate frisbee and soccer with other missionaries and ward members.
Things were happening in the ward; we had at least one solid person we were teaching regularly, who came often and participated more than some members. Work was hard, but had enough positive things going that I felt we had some energy. The ward choir we sang in was prepping some of my favorite classical Christmas music,  Es ist ein Rose entsprungen (or, D’un Arbre Séculaire, or, for the awful English title, “Lo, How a Rose is Blooming”), and I loved the tenor part. Life, it seemed, was Good.

Then, shortly before Christmas, I was transferred to a two-man town in Belgium called Verviers (VERR-vee-ay). 45 minutes away from other missionaries in Liège, the little industrial ville seemed to be near the arctic circle. My companion was depressed, having seen a missionary go AWOL to live with a French girl. The branch was small, dysfunctional, and met in a small but Mormon-feeling house. Mostly I remember a 10-yr old girl who liked to provoke missionaries, who closed the piano on my hands mid-hymn at least once. The mission president confided that he was considering withdrawing the missionaries and shutting it down. No choir sang. We tracted much, taught little, but one young couple with two small children always welcomed us. She was more friendly and sympathetic, but had lost all faith in God because of a miscarriage. He saw us as helping encourage his wife back into faith, but was less receptive to us as missionaries. That was the highlight of our non-LDS contact.

Belgian architecture, in that area, consists of long narrow streets, with narrow sidewalks, and endless row houses of dark brick. The weather got colder, the heavens closed permanently for winter, and dustings of snow on the ground quickly dirtied. From ground to sky, everything was despairingly grey. The transition from dim to darkness came around three each afternoon; To make matters worse, the APs, doing what middle management does best, misconstrued something the mission president said, and required everyone to wake up half-an-hour earlier every day to exercise. This somnalent curse would not lift for several months, and created perfectionist guilt when, after a few half-hearted pushups, we’d fall asleep on the floor by the heater until 8 am.

While we had a few moments of levity and brightness in Verviers, such as a MoTab Christmas tape and our “Christmas tree” constructed from some pine branches found in the street, twined onto the drying rack, decked out by a few Belge Francs worth of Christmas lights, these were merely stars in a black night. It was the darkest period of my mission, literally, figuratively, and spiritually. My struggles went deeper than what I have enumerated here, and I think I cried some bitter tears. Never have I felt more like crying out “o God, where art thou?” “How long, o Lord, how long?” My temporal suffering in hell was all the worse for having previously been in heaven. Better to start in the mission armpit and get transferred somewhere nice, than start at the pinnacle and establish that as the baseline norm for missionary life.

Things didn’t get much better until Spring began to dawn, and another transfer came. In retrospect, it strikes me that temporary (and, as they were, shallow ) feelings of despair, abandonment, and futility may be some of the best preparation for appreciating the spirit of Christmas and the mission of Jesus the Messiah. Though my discomfort was largely selfish, my wounds hardly mortal, my sins those typical of missionaries, my darkness nevertheless felt very real to me. Having been in the gloom, I could appreciate the light, instead of being distracted by the cultural trappings of Christmas.  Christ came, not to provide fleeting comforts or entertainments, but to “swallow up death in victory and wipe away the tears from all faces” to “heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds.”

*If I can find any of my mission pictures, I’ll update the post.

But I’m actually not much interested in that side of Bloom’s article. Let me quickly bring up two other points from the article.

First, Bloom states this:

The founding prophet Joseph Smith[’s]…highly original revelation was as much a departure from historical Christianity as Islam was and is. But then, so in fact are most manifestations of what is now called religion in the United States, including the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God Pentecostalists and even our mainline Protestant denominations.

We could take note here – it’s a succinct and accurate response to those who criticize us in this vein.

Next, I’d like to use Bloom as a way into a much more worrisome point – that is, a point that I worry a good deal about. He writes:

However, should Mr. Romney be elected president, Smith’s dream of a Mormon Kingdom of God in America would not be fulfilled, since the 21st-century Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has little resemblance to its 19th-century precursor. The current head of the Mormon Church, Thomas S. Monson, known to his followers as “prophet, seer and revelator,” is indistinguishable from the secular plutocratic oligarchs who exercise power in our supposed democracy.

The Salt Lake City empire of corporate greed has little enough in common with the visions of Joseph Smith. The oligarchs of Salt Lake City, who sponsor Mr. Romney, betray what ought to have been their own religious heritage.

and

I recall prophesying in 1992 that by 2020 Mormonism could become the dominant religion of the western United States. But we are not going to see that large a transformation. I went wrong because the last two decades have witnessed the deliberate dwindling of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into just one more Protestant sect.

What worries me is not that I think he gets this particularly correct – especially the intentional blurring of the economic and theological potentates of SLC. What worries me is that I see a consensus among the (admittedly few) very smart non-Mormon (and some Mormon) observers concerning not just significant changes in Mormonism (which would hardly be surprising and is quite apparent to all of us), but the positing of a significant break, a lack of continuity between Joseph Smith and Thomas S. Monson, coupled with the claim that we are very quickly (in a matter of a few decades) becoming virtually indistinguishable from the host of Protestant sects today. It’s an anxious worry because, first of all, it’s quite plausible; and the precedence of the Community of Christ, for example, is rather close to home. But second, I think the Harold Blooms and the Jan Shipps and the Noah Feldmans and others are dead wrong on this point; more relevantly, I want them to be wrong. An educated consensus on the point is a stubborn thing, however, it forces me to consider the probability of a significant blindspot in my own vision.

And wrestling with this point, for me, is far more difficult than wrestling with, say, the historicity of the Book of Mormon or the racism of past leaders.

By way of response, I’m going to offer three reasons why I think the Mormons-have-gone-institutional-Protestant is simply wrong (i.e., why outsiders have genuinely missed something), together with a prominent possibility that may be a fourth reason. Then I’m going to try and explain why I think it’s so critical that we do maintain a distinction; that is, I want to (very briefly) articulate what I think is, at the meta-level, responsible for our distinctiveness and part of why it would be a tragedy should we apostatize from the Restoration.

First the reasons why I think we are currently and perhaps inexorably not on a path to Protestantism:

1. Distinctive and blatantly anti-traditional Christian doctrines. There’s no softening of our theological narrative concerning the history of Christianity. There’s no movement on the trinity. The possibility of future scripture (e.g., whether we’ll canonize the Proclamation) is one of our favorite conversations – and all of us attend General Conference hoping we’ll hear something really new and exciting (1978 and 1998 met thunderous applause from the ranks). Perhaps most significant of course is The Book of Mormon. Emphasis and scholarship on this book proliferates, as do translations, publications, and the myriad of ways we take it up culturally (colloquial speech, names, common knowledge passages, Deseret Book ketch, and all the rest). We’re not exactly shying away from our Egyptian texts, inspired translations, and other unique scriptures either. But also significant are our doctrines concerning embodiment, eternal progression, the lack of hell, and even the darned location of the Garden of Eden. It’s all still discussed in General Conference, written in our manuals, taught in CES classes, and many of these unique doctrines still play prominent roles in our conversion stories. What’s more, most of our current apostles would’ve been raised in homes where the truly distinct kinds of Mormon doctrine and practice were the essence of normal spiritual life. We have and maintain a unique cosmology, and it remains the content of our pedagogy.
2. Joseph Smith. Feldman’s article during the 2008 election campaign is the antithesis of Bloom’s lazy drek. Nevertheless, he comes to much the same conclusion concerning the fact that Mormonism has gone a long way toward becoming a decent and viable [read: Protestant] religion. He argued that the final step needed was for us to more completely distance ourselves from our early days, and especially Joseph Smith. It was shortly after I read the article that the church announced that for the next two years we would be reading the words of Joseph Smith in our Presidents of the Church series. This was followed soon thereafter with the Joseph Smith Papers publicity – undoubtedly the most important scholarly work undertaken by the Church, and one that clearly strengthens the bond between us and Brother Joseph, even as it shapes our people in new ways. The timing was for me a significant “tender mercy.” The church is facilitating and actively nourishing both our theological and scholarly connection to our history generally, and to Joseph Smith particularly.
3. Temples. I find it very interesting that Pres. Hinckley, who surely did as much or more than anyone else to tack our ship toward Protestantism, is also the one who – perhaps irrevocably – kept us out of the good ‘ol boys club of Christendom by tripling the number of our temples and putting in place the institutional mechanisms for sustained temple growth. This includes our ever-growing attachment and practices with regard to genealogy. It’s almost as if there was a Benson-Hunter-Hinckley conspiracy to ensure our distinctiveness even while we work doggedly to appear to the public like we’re just another normal sect. Clearly tacking toward is not the same as sailing toward Protestantism. The temple will remain the center of our worship and connection to God and history and a wedge between Protestants and us.
4. Growing ties with Islam and Judaism. This one is the possibility as opposed to the already accomplished. Our ecumenical spirit of late has not been limited to Christian groups. While much of the world nurses a knee-jerk reaction to Islam, and while anti-Semitism continues to flourish, Mormons are actively reaching out and partnering with the other “Abrahamic traditions” at all levels. Should we continue to do so, I think it inevitable that we will recognize and appreciate, reflected in these other traditions, those aspects of our own religion that simply do not square with Protestantism.

Now let me try and say what I think is at the “core” of Mormonism, that which, should we abandon, we will have clearly abandoned our dispensation, irregardless of whether current doctrines, practices, or institutional organization give us a more or less Protestant physiognomy. Mormonism carves out a distinct position with regard to the epic theological battles waged in the Judeo-Christian tradition: Polytheism vs. Monotheism, Priestly vs. Rabbinic Judaism, Esotericism vs. Exotericism, and Orthodox vs. Reformation Christianity. It’s easy to look at these battles and conclude that Mormonism takes a middle-ground approach. But far from being a spew-worthy, lukewarm reaction, Mormonism works out a distinctive way of framing the theological battles themselves so that, far from being pitted against one another, the polar ends of the warring dichotomies actually become the cherished aspects of a unified tradition.[2]

Now to do justice to my claim I would need to set up the frameworks involved in each of these epic battles and show how Mormonism reframes each one. But for now at least, I’m going to leave that up to your imagination – this is, after all, only a blog post and I’ve waxed long-winded enough. Fortunately, I suspect many of you are already familiar with how this looks (with regard to Orthodox and Reformation Christianity if not the others). In closing I want to simply point out that Mormonism’s reframing of these debates both distinguishes and unites us to theological history and provides us with a narrative framework within which the Restoration unfolds—our unique framework is critical to both our identity and our raison d’etre.

I believe that this is our critical “core.” So on the one hand, as long as we maintain our framework, reinterpreting the way one ought to understand the stakes of the major battles in the Judeo-Christian tradition,[3] then it doesn’t much matter if we superficially appear more Protestant. On the other hand, it’s difficult to ignore the collective weight of substantive institutional shifts and their accompanying shifts in doctrinal emphasis.

This is where the worry of a blindspot comes in. Transformations resulting in General Authorities functioning no differently than a General Church Board as opposed to functioning as Prophets, Seers and Revelators; emphasizing church institution and activity over peoplehood; exalting the exoteric and sweeping the esoteric into the dustbin of our history; electing a Christian Jesus in a fit of ecumenical zeal rather than testifying of a brother appointed as our Messiah; these kinds of trends are capable of combining in such a way as to transforms us from our Restoration alternative – an alternative I believe in, heart and soul – into merely another, if somewhat eccentric, Protestant faith. Maybe, as several perspicacious observers have claimed, we already have and I just can’t see it.

But again, for at least the reasons outlined above, I don’t think so. Nor do I think the Lord or his prophets want us to. Nevertheless, as we know from our own narrative account of history, the Lord and his prophets are constrained by what the people are willing to accept and do. God won’t ultimately stop us from abandoning the Restoration if we elect to do so. It’s my hope that we’ll all resist a collapse into Protestantism. As I see it, the best way to do this is by following the lead of the prophets and presidents who stand at the head of the Church and Kingdom of God, emphasizing the Restoration and teachings of Joseph Smith, the accompanying scripture, and the temple practices and covenants designed to make us a people of God.

[2] It’s analogous to the way Brother Eyring, far from taking a “middle road” in the Darwin vs. the Bible debate, instead became a faithful, biblically religious, Darwinian scientist. Building off of earlier intellectuals in the church, his theological and scientific understanding was a reframing of the debate, such that he didn’t need to abandon the core of either position, but instead made them complimentary pillars in his overall understanding.

[3] That is, if we interpret the stakes in such a way that we maintain an equal and complimentary allegiance to both God and Gods, both scripture and priestly practice, both prophets and institution, both hierarchy/mediacy and democracy/immediacy, both individual and community, both faith and works, then continual evolutions in structure and emphasis don’t much matter.

We’re probably all aware of the LDS Political Neutrality statement; periodically, we hear it read across the pulpit, and we can also read it here. It’s a fairly brief document, creating a skeleton of dos and don’ts. Essentially, the statement does two things: (1) it reminds us that the Church doesn’t endorse candidates (which position is likely a result, in part, of its desire to remain tax-exempt); and (2) encourages members to participate (through voting and running for elective office) in our communities.[fn1]

Ours is not the only viable model for a church’s addressing its congregants’ political life. The Catholic Bishops of the United States have also produced a document on the political responsibilities of Catholics; at 31 pages, I doubt it will be read at Mass, but it creates an interesting counterpoint to our Political Neutrality statement.

Though I’m not going to go through the whole document, on page 4, the Bishops describe their view of the duties of Catholics with regard to how their religious and political beliefs should interact:

As Catholics, we should be guided more by our moral convictions than by our attachment to a political party or interest group. When necessary, our participation should help transform the party to which we belong; we should not let the party transform us in such a way that we neglect or deny fundamental moral truths. We are called to bring together our principles and our political choices, our values and our votes, to help build a better world.

I like the idea of using our religion to transform the party, and not allowing the party to transform us. Moreover, on page 7, the Bishops grant that Catholics may use a diversity of methods to achieve their goals, as long as these methods address some essential goals:

Catholics may choose different ways to respond to compelling social problems, but we cannot differ on our moral obligation to help build a more just and peaceful world through morally acceptable means, so that the weak and vulnerable are protected and human rights and dignity are defended.

A couple issues that the Bishops seem to find essential within this realm of human rights and dignity include abortion, racism, and genocide.[fn2] Ultimately, though, Catholics are to be guided by a “well-formed conscience” (p. 8) as they make their judgments in the political realm.

I agree with some of the aims that the Bishops promote and disagree with others, but I like the idea that we have a religious duty to create a more just and peaceful world, and that we need to be guided by a well-formed conscience as we figure out how to do so.

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[fn1] They’ve also added a section about General Authorities not participating in political campaigns; I suspect, though, that the pulpit-letter won’t include this section, irrelevant as it is in most wards. I could, however, be wrong: we’ll see next year, I assume.

[fn2] I also like that the Bishops explicitly endorse the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit (23).