The Plight of Poor LDS

Only 51% of the LDS membership lives in the first world.¹ For the rest, poverty is a surprisingly ubiquitous condition. In 2013, I attended a meeting with LDS leaders and members from several stakes and districts in Guatemala, Peru, and Ecuador stated that most members in their units ate one meal per day consisting of perhaps some rice one day, a tomato another day, and a tortilla the third day. In Zimbabwe, interviews I conducted in early 2014 with the stake/district and ward/branch leadership yielded a consistent picture: the 90% unemployment in the country applied equally to the membership. Measured malnutrition rates in LDS children in these and other countries like the Philippines and Cambodia are staggering. In the developing world, making up 49% of church membership, many LDS children are starving. Several hundred die every year,² while those who survive will suffer the ill effects of their childhood hunger during a lifetime of physical and cognitive problems that reduce or prevent workforce participation, increasing the probability that future generations will find themselves in the same condition. There are poor among us—millions of them.

According to the church, fast offerings are a local program.³ Unlike tithing, fast offerings are not sent to headquarters to be redistributed according to need. Instead, Bishops are instructed to seek out the most needy members in the congregation and offer them assistance.⁴ When Bishops cannot find members in need, they send the excess offerings to the stake. Stake presidents are in turn instructed to send those offerings to other Bishops in the stake whose needs exceed their donations. Funds are sent to headquarters only when there is surplus at the stake level. These funds do not necessarily get used on the poor at all, as “all donations become the Church’s property and will be used at the Church’s sole discretion.”⁵

But what about tithing? As discussed, tithing represents some $7 billion per year in member donations. How much of that is spent on caring for the poor membership of the church? The basic answer is simple: none of it. President Monson said that the church’s welfare program is funded not by tithing, but by fast offerings.⁶ Some tithing is spent on the world’s poor through the humanitarian aid program. This aid comes in the form of disaster relief supplies, not in the normal course of life. The church revealed that $1.4 billion was spent in humanitarian aid over 26 years ending in 2011.⁷ This amounts to $53.8 million per year, or 0.76% of tithing per year. Why?