Is the Mormon Church Ready for Its Closeup?

South Park's primer on Mormonism

The Mormon Church has been busy recently, dramatically increasing its presence on the American political scene. With a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, a free-speech case in front of the Supreme Court, and a leading role in funding anti-gay-marriage legislation in California, the Mormons are exerting power and influence and might just get what the Church has wanted all along: acceptance into the mainstream.

What the Church gets with acceptance, though, is increased scrutiny, quite unwanted, considering the great effort the Church expends keeping its internal governance and finances secret.

Mormon leadership represents a successful blend of piety and business acumen. Where other Christian denominations pledge to turn income into charity, operating as non-profits, the Mormon Church not only provides charitable relief to the needy as part of a larger missionary program, it also invests heavily in for-profit enterprises, funded at least in part by the compulsory tithing of its members.

Current or detailed estimates of the Mormon Church’s vast wealth are difficult to find. In the early 1900s, the Mormon Church seemed interested in divesting itself of business holdings no longer needed to protect the security of its members. The current party line from the Church on financial matters professes the organization operates primarily on the generosity of its members and that for-profit interests are a negligible part of the Church’s economy.

The Church holds business interests that are primarily an outgrowth of enterprises which were begun when the Church was isolated in the West. The commercial businesses owned by the Church help serve the needs of the Church in accomplishing its mission. The money made from these commercial enterprises is relatively small; the majority of financial resources in the Church comes from the tithes and offerings of Church members.

Outside estimates of the Church’s wealth tell a different story. The Church owns significant amounts of land in the Western U.S., including water rights it leases to public utilities. It owns Beneficial Life Insurance Company and the largest cattle ranch in the country. In 1991, estimates of Church holdings exceeded $8 billion. In 1997, Time reported the Church worth at $30 billion. Based on these estimates and a 1997 membership of about 10 million people, the per capita wealth of the Mormon Church is stupefying. Unfortunately, more recent estimates of this wealth are unavailable.

Mormons under the microscope after the jump.

That soon could change. With the hefty role the Mormon Church played in funding the effort to pass Proposition 8 in California, it might need to open its books in response to the California Fair Political Practices Commission’s new investigation into the Church’s financial contributions to Prop. 8 supporters.

That the Church will shed light on the extent of its wealth and power is unclear. What is clear is that if it continues to assert itself, the Church stands to potentially steal the longstanding thunder of the evangelical bloc in setting and leading the conservative agenda in national politics. Proposition 8 was on the verge of failure, according to polls, until the Mormon Church came on the scene with manpower and, more importantly, money. Mitt Romney’s relative success in the primaries proved a nasty, if temporary, thorn in McCain’s side, and the readiness with which Republicans speculated if Romney wouldn’t have been a better candidate than McCain indicates that the historical cultural chasm separating Mormons from other Christian sects might be bridgeable after all.

But with great power comes great headaches … Mormon legal circles are speculating victory in the current case before the Supreme Court where a small non-Mormon sect in Utah has challenged the Mormon-dominated local government’s refusal to install a monument on public land. If the Court sides with the local government, Mormons will have gained a victory where evangelicals have often failed, and that cachet will serve the Church well as the social-conservative movement regroups after the whupping of the 2008 presidential election.

The Mormon Church is going to have to make some decisions about its future very quickly. Entering mainstream politics and society as a powerful voice of influence is not without cost. The Church will need to determine if it is willing to pay the price.