What it costs people
Tithing and Poverty
“If a destitute family is faced with the decision of paying their tithing or eating, they should pay their tithing.”
The quote is real, it is from General Conference, and it is still on the Church’s website
Elder Lynn G. Robbins, April 2005, in a talk titled "Tithing, a Commandment Even for the Destitute":
"One of the first things a bishop must do to help the needy is ask them to pay their tithing. Like the widow, if a destitute family is faced with the decision of paying their tithing or eating, they should pay their tithing."
Read it on churchofjesuschrist.org. Unedited, still hosted, twenty years later.
Do not paraphrase this one. Pull it up on their phone and let them read the title.
What tithing gates
The temple recommend interview asks it directly. General Handbook 26.4.1: "Are you a full-tithe payer?" The handbook
No recommend means you cannot enter the temple. Which means you cannot be in the room when your own child is married. You wait in a lobby.
In May 2019 the First Presidency removed the one-year waiting period that had previously forced couples to choose between a civil wedding their whole family could attend and a temple sealing that excluded most of them. Church News That helped. It did not change the underlying gate: the sealing itself is still recommend-holders only.
Does it work?
A 2024 peer-reviewed economics paper examined 829 US counties from 2010 to 2018, using temple dedications as a proxy for local tithing participation, and found no statistically significant relationship between temple presence and reduced poverty rates. Journal of Economics, Theology and Religion
It is one paper in a niche journal, not replicated, and it measures a narrow proxy: temple presence rather than tithing payment itself. Say "one economics paper found" rather than treating it as settled. A knowledgeable reader will spot the limitation, so name it first.
Concede this, because it is true
The Church runs a real, well-documented welfare and fast-offering system, separate from tithing, and it does help people. Bishops have discretionary funds. Food from the bishops' storehouse is real.
And the underlying principle, giving in faith even when it costs you, is not unique to this church or inherently sinister. It is taught in a lot of traditions and a lot of people find it meaningful.
The argument is narrower than "tithing is a scam." It is this: a 10 percent obligation with no low-income exemption, taught as taking priority over food, enforced by gating access to your own family’s weddings, collected by an institution that has not opened its books since 1959. Any one of those alone is defensible. Together they are something else.
Why this should make you question
Look at the two documents side by side. The 2005 talk telling a destitute family to pay before eating is on churchofjesuschrist.org. The 2023 SEC order describing 13 shell companies used to conceal a $32 billion portfolio is on sec.gov. Both are real, both are the same institution, and the money moves in one direction.