Music

Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you.

To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today at MormonStories.org.

Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John DeLin and here we are with part two of our interview with Alan Rock Waterman, founder of the blog Pure Mormonism.

We spent an hour and eight minutes with approximately with rock talking about his views on Joseph Smith, on polygamy, on the book of Mormon, on what the church means.

And now we're going to, and I highly recommend it, Rock's a great guy. And now we're going to spend some time talking about contemporary issues as it relates to Rock's approach.

And as you might have, as if you listen to the first hour, you'll understand that rock has a real solid sort of faith in Christ. He believes in the book of Mormon.

He has a lot of reverence for Joseph Smith, he is a prophet, but he feels like kind of everything that's been a lot that's been added since is either unnecessary or potentially distracting from the core messages of the Savior and of the book of Mormon.

And in Joseph Smith, is that a fair characterization rock? Yes, yes, I think that's fair.

All right, so now we're going to talk about several posts on Rock's blog just to get a flavor for his approach to Mormonism. And then we're going to talk about how maybe some of these posts have gotten him into trouble.

And we're going to talk about where that all stands. So let's start with the blog post.

And you don't have to like quote anything from the blog post. I'm just looking for basic ideas or arguments, right?

So, so let's start with the blog post. How corporatism has undermined and subverted the Church of Jesus Christ. What do you, what do you think you're trying to say there just in a nutshell?

Well, that's actually a review of Damon's book, the book of Maman that he wrote two or three years ago. And essentially, the church, there's no reason for a church to incorporate. They say we need to incorporate for tax purposes. Well, churches are exempt from tax. They exist in a completely different sphere from the state.

So the state does not have any means to cite the church. But if you're going to become something other than the church, if you're going to step outside the bounds of what a church supposed to do, I suppose incorporation is the thing. So if you're going to become a business.

And let me just say this, the normal business of the church doesn't need incorporation. But if you're going to say your church can just be a 501c3. Is that what you're saying? No, no, if I wanted to ask exactly the problem 501c3 status applying for that is actually asking the government is actually making the government your God by saying, can we have permission to

not be taxed? Isn't that all the church? Okay, so they've done that tax. Is that right? No, otherwise the church won't be taxed. But now you are in a taxable situation, where you say, please make me exempt. It's crazy.

The whole 501c3 thing was invented by Linda Baines Johnson as a way to get control of the church's in tax when he was a senator. He was, you know, these guys weren't doing him any favors. They were talking against him. So so this enabled him to

putting a for once the church applies for 501c3 status, it agrees that it will lose that status if they speak against any political candidate. So let me see if I understand what you're saying correctly. You're saying that I can start a church tomorrow.

I could get a hundred or thousand or a million dollars of donations and not have to pay taxes without applying for 501c3 status. Yeah, there's there are a lot of churches who have now

gone, they've they've rescinded their their 501c3 status. They've rescinded their incorporation. Small churches like this, the port Church of Christ in Colorado is one example.

You a church church is just outside the influence of government unless you're going to start investing in things that the church typically wouldn't like real estate. Now I have no problem with the church in putting money in ranches and orchards and canaries and other things that will help feed people.

...