-By Warner Todd Huston
As the race for the White House heats up, Reuters suddenly realized that the massive Mormon Church has a lot of money in its bank accounts and sought to needle the Church saying if it were a business “wealthy adherents like Mitt Romney would count as its dominant revenue stream.”
Reuters took the if-it-were-a-business theme even farther in its opening paragraphs.
It would also likely attract corporate gadflies protesting a lack of transparency. They would call for less spending on real estate and more on charitable causes to improve membership growth — the Mormons’ return on investment.
Of course, a religion is not a “business” proposition. A religion does not operate like a company does. It has far different goals. But assessing a religion wasn’t Reuters’ goal, here. Making Mormons out to be “rich” elitists that act suspiciously and are pushing a snobbish presidential candidate on the nation was Reuters’ goal.
Reuters goes on to recount the money the church has as if no one understood that a church that spans the entire globe might have a little bit of cash in the bank. Reuters seemed shocked, shocked I tell you, that the Mormon Church owned much real estate, and was fortunate enough to have millions of believers world wide that donate heavily to their church through tithing.
And who gives the most to the Mormon Church? Who else but those darn “wealthy” believers like that shifty Mitt Romney, of course.
“Most of the revenue of the religion is from the U.S., and a large percentage comes from an elite cadre of wealthy donors, like Mitt Romney,” said Cragun. “(It) is a religion that appeals to economically successful men by rewarding their financial acuity with respect and positions of prestige within the religion.”
Oh, and that church has “successful businessmen,” and rich entertainers as members, too. Very suspicious, isn’t it?
So, how did the foreign news service find all this out? It wasn’t from that secretive United States, they petulantly claim. It was from “church records in countries that require far more disclosure than the United States.”
Really all Reuters did here was to engage in class warfare, attempting to portray the Mormon Church as a grouping of ultra rich, snobby, white men of wealth in a secretive, shadowy cult. And by throwing the name Mitt Romney in every other paragraph this piece was a naked attempt to aide Obama in perpetrating class warfare against Romney befitting his low-down, cynical campaign to recapture the White House for another four years.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.