The Other Books of the Church
Written by Christopher Thielen in Educational at May 18, 2010
Everybody is familiar with the books of the Church, the sacred ones at least. What is far more mysterious are their accounting books: exactly how much money does the Catholic Church take in and spend each year? What about the Church of Latter-Day Saints? What do they spend that money on, and if California’s recent Prop 8 struggle is any indication, should those books really be so private?
My favored money management website Mint.com takes a non-partisan guess at what those books might look like. From the article:
The popular image of a church is that of a selfless organization unconcerned with financial gain. It is reflected in the fact that churches receive tax-exempt status from federal and state governments. And without question, most churches do engage in substantial charity work.
But that doesn’t mean that churches are not, at least partially, money-making enterprises. Though official records are scarce, the world’s major churches are all believed to collect annual revenues in excess of several billion dollars. Like any other institution, these churches work hard to earn the highest possible return on their investments.
The article contains some surprising facts, chief among them to myself are the privacy to which the Church is granted over their books: being both private entities and non-Corporations (despite their size and income), the public places a tremendous amount of honor in the bookkeeping of the Church. The LDS Church, for example, was revealed in 2007 to have holdings totaling at least $30 billion USD, including ownership of a private insurance company, itself worth $3 billion alone.
