Welcome back to another episode of the podcast, Rami Umpdom, Ruminations.

My name is Scott, and I'm the host.

Today's episode is called A Brief History of LDS Tithing. Thanks for coming back to listen to another episode of the podcast.

For the last few weeks, I've been covering the subject of the SEC charges against the church,

and I've shifted a little bit over to church finances.

Last week, I talked briefly about tithing as it's described in the Old Testament

and compared it to the way it's practiced today in the modern church.

And today I'm going to cover a brief history of some of the major changes that took place within the LDS Church and their doctrines surrounding tithing.

I'll end it off with a story, an abstract way to look at finances and how that might alter the way someone might continue to pay their tithing.

That might still be a member of the church or an active believing member of the church and a listener to the podcast.

The majority of the content that I'm getting for today's episode is from an article by

D. Michael Quinn called LDS Church Finances from the 1830s to the 1990s.

This was published in Sunstone in 1996. So not current to today, but the history

in there is excellent. De McElcoyne is a, was a phenomenal scholar of LDS history. The first

written thing we have about tithing in the LDS church comes from Bishop Edward Partridge in 1837.

And at the time, I'll quote him in just a sec here, in this first instance that we have

written down about tithing in the LDS church, it was not what it is today.

There's a couple of interesting distinctions.

It was 2% of one's net worth

after deducting debts. Here's what Bishop Partridge said in 1837. Bishop Partridge said,

believing that voluntary tithing is better than forced taxes, Bishop Partridge defined tithing as two cents on the dollar

or one-fiftieth of what we are worth after deducting what we owe. Now this is different from what I

...