charity

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Caring for the Poor as a “New Emphasis” for the Church

10 December 2009 @ 10:26 am | 9 comments

Picking up on an earlier post, the SL Trib confirms that caring for the poor as a “new emphasis” for Church

The LDS Church is adding “to care for the poor and needy” to its longstanding “threefold mission,” which is to preach the LDS gospel, purify members’ lives and provide saving ordinances such as baptism to those who have died . . .

The new group of phrases will be described as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ “purposes,” rather than missions, and will be spelled out in the next edition of the LDS Church Handbook of Instructions , due out next year, church spokesman Scott Trotter confirmed this week.

“Caring for the poor and needy,” Trotter said, “has always been a basic tenet of the [LDS] Church.”

Exactly. But could this also be a smart move to publicly establish the Church as the unequivocal force for good it has always been?

It seems that a good percentage of the Church’s Newsroom press releases are about various welfare and charity projects the Church contributes to. And on a smaller level, stakes and wards do all kinds of charitable activities that never get mentioned.

And yet, as is the nature of news, they get scant attention. Instead, the Church only seems to merit headlines when it takes the relatively infrequent political stand. I would hazard a guess that over half of the national news mentions the Church has received this year are from last year’s Proposition 8 involvement.

The Church and its members have always had caring for the poor and the needy as a focus (Heck last night, our Young Men and Women went Christmas caroling (on a very cold Utah night) collecting coats and clothes for the poor – even before this all becomes “official” in the handbook). So it’s nice to see this important principle gain greater recognition, but it’s not new.

UPDATE: Thanks to KSL for the link too. The original post is here.

Let’s take the “volunteer” out of volunteerism. On comparing Sens. McCain and Obama after last week’s service forum.

Mr. McCain certainly uses his bully pulpit to proselytize Americans about public service. But he more or less stops there, even repeatedly cautioning during the Columbia forum against federalizing public service, although that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t throw taxpayer money at some of his pet service projects. However, his Web site offers nothing near what Mr. Obama is proposing.

. . . Mr. Obama would create several new corps of his own: a Classroom Corps to help teachers and students in underperforming schools; a Health Corps for underserved areas; a Clean Energy Corps to weatherize homes and promote energy independence. The last is separate from his Global Energy Corps, to promote low-carbon energy solutions in developing countries.

Mr. Obama calls all this his “Plan for Universal and Voluntary Citizen Service.” It might live up to its “universal” billing, given that it would prod Americans of all age groups — from preteens to retirees — to sign up. But as to its voluntariness, the plan will make generous use of Uncle Sam’s money — and muscle. . .

The real issue is why Mr. Obama thinks it is necessary to take such extraordinary steps to push all Americans into service. Americans every year contribute close to $300 billion out of their own pockets to charities at home and abroad. This is the highest of any nation — seven times more than Germans and 14 times more than Italians per capita. Americans are equally generous with their time. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service — a federal agency — last year Americans volunteered 8.1 billion hours of service valued at $150 billion to community organizations.

16 September 2008 @ 10:42 pm | 1 comment

The SL Tribune published my letter adapted from my blog post in response to a columnist. The letter so far has a negative vote of -19!

Rebecca Walsh’s column “GOP is the LDS addiction” (Tribune, Aug. 31) makes no sense. Of course Mormons (and Utahns) believe in virtues such as service, charity and sacrifice. But Walsh mistakenly thinks that unless the government does it, it isn’t charity. She has it exactly backward. Mormons are taught to not wait for the government to tax and act in our place. In fact, we are not performing our charitable duty unless we give of our own time and talents.

So where’s the disconnect? It is with Walsh.

Conservative Mormons are similar to other religious conservatives who are suspicious of government’s inefficiency and ineffectiveness. According to Ben Gose in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, studies show that “religious conservatives are far more charitable than secular liberals, and that those who support the idea that government should redistribute income are among the least likely to dig into their own wallets to help others.”

So putting aside social issues and other sundry reasons why Mormons vote Republican, there’s no inconsistency that a people who believe in service and charity support a party that doesn’t want to outsource those virtues to bureaucrats.

David H. Sundwall
Holladay

11 September 2008 @ 6:27 am | 5 comments

Voting Democrat Does Not Equal Charity

1 September 2008 @ 3:25 am | 17 comments

Perhaps the oldest and most unanswerable question of the Bloggernacle is why do Mormons vote so overwhelmingly Republican.

I’ll try to avoid that directly, but the SL Tribune’s weekly provocateur of the dominant Utah culture, Rebecca Walsh, joins Sen. Reid’s latest lament that misguided Utah LDS so overwhelmingly align themselves with the GOP.

Democrats have been scratching their heads for years, trying to make sense of the paradox that has Reid so flummoxed: It seems counterintuitive that a state largely populated by compassionate, peaceful, faithful people who are admonished by their religious leaders to volunteer, give to the poor and live modestly and within their means should hang on the coattails of a political party that does not.

This makes no sense. Of course Mormons (and Utahns) believe in virtues such as service, charity, and sacrifice. But Walsh seems to mistakenly think that they are synonymous with supporting government action: unless the government does it, it isn’t charity.

Except she has it exactly backwards. We are taught to not wait for the government to tax and act in our place. In fact we are not performing our charitable duty unless we give and do of our own time and talents.

So where’s the disconnect? It’s in fact with Ms. Walsh. Conservative Mormons are very similar to other religious conservatives who are suspect of the government accomplishing charity and instead rely on themselves. Arthur C. Brooks has studied the poltical and religious influences on charitable giving and found that:

religious conservatives are far more charitable than secular liberals, and that those who support the idea that government should redistribute income are among the least likely to dig into their own wallets to help others.

So putting aside social issues and other sundry reasons why Mormons vote Republican, there’s no inconsistency that a people which believes in service and charity support a party that doesn’t want to outsource them to bureaucrats.

Charities That Performed Well in the 2005 Hurricanes. Those, or you always can give fast offerings.

31 August 2008 @ 9:35 pm | No comments

“Traffic as the Test of Christian Character.” It may sound silly but it’s those small things that can be hardest to conquer.

Driving is a magnificent test of our Christian character. We are generally quite anonymous, we have lots of power, and we are fully goal-directed. If anything will demonstrate our spiritual maturity, I suppose that driving will.

While I still think DC drivers are worse, I agree Utah drivers amaze me. Of course, being from both areas does not speak well of me.

I do not have scientific data to support my observations about state contrasts, I only have our experience. When we lived in Alabama, we were surprised at the way drivers let other cars into lines. They exemplified sharing and taking turns. We experienced the same wonderful phenomenon in many communities of Alabama during the six years we lived there. Yet, every time we returned to Utah, it seemed that a Utahn would rather die in a fiery crash than give way in a line of traffic. The gospel may change hearts—but only until we get behind the wheel of a car. Then we become ruthless Pharisees.

4 June 2008 @ 5:45 pm | 2 comments

About LDS reminds us how we can use a tithing slip to direct offerings for humanitarian crises.

19 May 2008 @ 5:34 pm | No comments

Saving millions of children simply.

Nearly 10 million children die each year before reaching their fifth birthday, and the saddest part is that most of those deaths are quite predictable, easily preventable, and utterly treatable. While it is true that some children worldwide die of incurable cancers, tragic accidents, or unpredictable natural disasters, most do not. Nor do they die of diseases like AIDS, avian flu, and SARS, conditions which get most of the media attention. Most children die, year after year after year, of diseases that we in developed countries either don’t see anymore because they are systematically prevented, or aren’t even consider life-threatening. Pneumonia, diarrhea and complications during childbirth are currently responsible for nearly three-quarters of all of these deaths . . .

Recent scientific studies show that 60 percent of those children’s lives could be saved by inexpensive, proven interventions. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a major donor in the Measles Initiative, a vaccine campaign that has decreased the number of deaths due to measles by 500,000 in just six years! Other simple interventions — such as a simple salt solution for dehydration, sleeping under insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria, and breast feeding infants — are also highly effective at saving children’s lives.

4 April 2008 @ 10:40 am | No comments

Charity edifieth:

Researchers found people who made gifts to others or to charities reported they were happier than those who didn’t share, according to a report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. . . . How people spent money was more important than how much money they had.

21 March 2008 @ 1:24 pm | No comments

Humble public relations: “Faced with the dilemma between publicizing the good works and results of its worldwide humanitarian efforts on the one hand and appearing self-promotional on the other . . . the Church lets media attention come as a natural byproduct of the efforts themselves and does not try to force this awareness as some kind of missionary push or as an effort to seek public validation.”

14 November 2007 @ 10:41 am | No comments