It is also interesting to me that when the church was in difficulty, Brigham Young would ask for a “special assessment”, and ask a member to give another 10% based on current assets. So, if it happened today, and I was baptized 10 years ago with a $150,000 house, I’d have to pay $15,000 at baptism. Then, 10 years later, Brigham needs another special assessment. By now, real estate prices have gone up, and my house is now worth $200,000, so I owe an additional $20,000 special tithing assessment. (I haven’t included cars, furniture, etc.) Ouch. Even if I’m paying tithing on a smaller amount–subtracting out mortgage, food, taxes, etc, these 2 special assessments are going to really hurt under this 1841 definition.

The polygamy raids happened in the 1880′s and literally brought the church to its knees. I know some people act like the church wimped out–I guess that’s the case, but I think people who make that claim don’t understand or care to understand how much pressure the church was under. If someone is strangling you, and you capitulate rather than suffer yourself to be strangled, is that really wimping out? I digress.

Anyway, in the 1880′s people quit paying their tithing because they didn’t want to turn it over to the government. The Manifesto came in 1890, statehood in 1898, the drought in 1899, and I suspect that it is about this time that Lorenzo Snow may have been happy just to get 10% from everyone, rather than follow the 1841 definition.

Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Wilford Woodruff were interested in starting industries. Brigham invested in sugar, coal and iron mining, silk production, and many other capital-intensive projects, so the tithing receipts were very critical to start these operations. Some industries succeeded, many did not. Wilford Woodruff used tithing to help fund a hydroelectric dam project in Ogden–Utah was one of the first areas with electricity in the nation.

When Lorenzo Snow took office, he was pretty dismayed at all these expenditures and the debt of the church. He pretty much put an end to many of these projects, though things like ZCMI, and investment in hospitals (which later became IHC) still continued. As such, I think the needs for tithing were not as great as under Brigham Young, and the change to current tithing practices probably happened at this time.

Now I want to state that I’m speculating on this point–I don’t know exactly when the definition of tithing changed from the 1841 definition–I haven’t done much church history in the 1900′s (though my book club is heading there eventually.) I’ll have to ask one of the other guys–he seems to be pretty well-versed on some of the church economics in the 1900′s. (Sanford, are you reading this?)

MH – Does the Church still follow that line of thinking regarding tithing or has there been an official divergence? It doesn’t quite sound like what we are practicing today.

The principle was that 1/10th of everything you had in excess of your basic living needs and “necessary wants” was tithable, as was a tenth of your annual income, subject to the same limitation. When baptized at 8, I dutifully filed my initial tithing statement indicating the value of my worldly goods, including toys, at $150 and accepting a tithing due of $15.00. This was quite a sobering sum for one whose allowance was 25 cents per week.

I suspect it was really sobering to adult converts!

The saving grace, of course, was that we taught tithing within a scheme that went something like:

…become an accounting steward — acknowledge your responsibility to God.

…become a self-sustaining steward — become someone who can support yourself and your family by yourself

…become an increase producing steward — someone who produces excess of ones own needs to give to others

…become an inherentance producing steward — become someone who can maintain your own and family’s needs and just wants for the rest of your life

…become a surplus producing steward who can gather excess beyond their needs to the “storehouse”.

It was a simpler concept for a simpler and less economically interdependent time.

I’m sure paying a lot more than 10% today, using the government rather than the church as the agent to help the poor.

In general, we’ve moved toward the concept of “generosity” in our teaching, with tithing supposedly not limited to church giving, but to any org we feel as a matter oc conscience is doing Christ’s work, but we do want the world church to be first among equals in practice.