When my father died my mom still had 4 kids at home. I was only 6 and other than the typical post-mortem jello salads an casseroles we got no help from the LDS church. We were and remained active members. My mom served in Young Women’s presidency for years.
They told her that since she didn’t pay her full 10% tithe she wasn’t eligible for help. The church was using my sister & her husband’s land for the welfare farm. They were young an newly married and not in a position to help my mother.
I’m sure that is what Christ would have done-- Oh hungry person, can I feed you? Let me check the books first.
When I was an active LDS, I occasionally had people on my ‘home-teaching’ assignments who were inactives resentful of the Church for how they had been treated when they were in need. I don’t mean to deny that such abuses happen, therefore. I do think that the refusal to render help where needed is actually something that represents a deviation from official SLC policy. In fact, I was told by a representative of LDS Church Welfare that it is illegal for the Church to refuse many kinds of help, even to a non-member who just happens to show up at the Welfare Services door. I don’t know the details of why that would be, but believe it is related to the Mormon Church’s 501(c) 3 tax-exempt status.
I’ll tell a true story on myself, however. Several years ago, I was in financial straits after several car accidents within a period of a few months. None of the accidents were my fault, but contrary to popular perceptions, legal counsel was not able to make me an independently-wealthy man. Rather, I was left with considerable debt owed on my own cars (in two cases the automobiles were ‘total’ losses, but the insurance only paid what the cars were valued at, not what I actually owed on the vehicles). My wife was also left unable for quite awhile to do the sort of heavy lifting that her former job as a CNA had required–due to ‘soft tissue’ injuries that our lawyers informed us were doubtlessly real but which are particularly difficult to show on X-rays or photos. (Tip: if you’re going to be in a car accident, in addition to making certain that it’s the other driver’s fault–see to it that all injuries involve massive, scarring wounds and/or broken bones).
I was able to work, and because of that, we made barely too much to qualify for food stamps or other state welfare–but not enough to allow us to buy food and to pay our necessary bills. At the time I was seriously exploring the possibility of returning to the LDS Church and when I expressed a need for help with groceries, it was given with no questions asked and with no recriminations. I was really rather pleased with the kind of help we received: Church Welfare storehouses are vaguely reminiscent of small Aldi’s stores, and the food one gets is new and fresh and very good. After going for two or three months to the storehouse, however, neither I nor my wife could see remaining a part of the LDS Church and so we stopped attending and stopped asking for help from them.
At about the same time, my wife had notified one of the non-Mormon religious social-services agencies of our situation. This was right around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Within a few weeks we had a surfeit of foods of all kinds, including two or perhaps it was three turkeys. What impressed me particularly was that even though neither my wife nor I are Lutheran nor Roman Catholic–a great deal of the help we received came from either the
Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod OR from
Catholic Charities. Neither of those denominations gave a flip about whether or not we had any sort of affiliation with their churches or not–they just knew we needed help and they gave it. I’m not at all certain that the LDS Church is THAT generous as a matter of policy.
those husbands better watch out!
