re: #13 mmmirele

propublica.org

My only comment on this is that I had multiple friends who fell on hard times when I lived in Utah. Since they were Mormon, they went to their bishop to try and get assistance from the Bishop’s Storehouse. I heard more than one story about how awful it was to have the Relief Society president go through their cupboards to see if they were worthy.

Oh, and if you got assistance, you were still expected to tithe, and to volunteer to work in the church. Blergh. This article is NO surprise.

ETA: The largest church in Utah is sitting on at least $38 billion under management at Ensign Peak, and according to the Wall Street Journal, has in excess of $100 billion in assets. That there are poor and homeless in areas where the church formerly known as Mormon is dominant is shameful.

From the article above:

State employees then explicitly recommended to Bellamy that she ask for welfare from the church instead, she and her family members said in interviews.

*snipped*
Although maintaining a safety net for the poor is the government’s job, welfare in Utah has become so entangled with the state’s dominant religion that the agency in charge of public assistance here counts a percentage of the welfare provided by the LDS Church toward the state’s own welfare spending, according to a memorandum of understanding between the church and the state obtained by ProPublica.

Wow. It’s like they forgot about the separation of Church and State.