A review of General Conference discourse in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reveals an interesting shift. Temples have always been mentioned more often than tithing, but the gap has widened dramatically in recent decades. References to tithing appear to be steadily declining, while references to temples have skyrocketed. The question is why. Data was pulled in 2024 from www.lds-general-conference.org The 2020 dataset sees a large decline in both Tithing and Temple references due to only being halfway through the decade In the nineteenth century, church leaders spoke openly about tithing because the church needed money. The institution faced repeated financial strain. The Panic of 1893 damaged the Utah economy, and federal legislation such as the Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887 resulted in the confiscation of church property. Under those conditions, leaders frequently urged members to contribute financially. That urgency faded once the church stabilized its finances. In...
This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a historical excerpt and some brief context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding. -The full series can be found here - This article titled “The March of Mormonism” was published on July 1, 1831, in the Lockport Balance , a western New York newspaper printed by J. Mills. It appeared at a transitional moment in early Mormon history, just as Joseph Smith and a core group of followers were relocating from New York to northeastern Ohio. Less than a year after the publication of the Book of Mormon in March 1830, the movement had shifted from a small regional body in the Palmyra–Manchester area to a community organizing migration around new revelations. The immediate scriptural backdrop to this relocation appears in Doctrine and Covenants 37 (December 1830...
