For the 9 March 2025 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, Terry Hutchinson, Mark Johnson, and Kevin Christensen hosted special guest Sam Brunson during the second hour. They discussed Come, Follow Me Doctrine & Covenants lesson 14 and Sam’s new book Between the Temple and the Tax Collector. Their conversation was recorded and freed of commercial breaks, and is now available at no charge for your enjoyment.
The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.
An unidentified Latter-day Saint sacrament meeting, perhaps in Iceland (photograph from LDS.org)
Yesterday, for a reason that I won’t identify here, I found our sacrament meeting exceptionally and unexpectedly satisfying. I’m pleased that the song “Amazing Grace” will be included in the Church’s new hymnal; we sang it during yesterday’s service. And I enjoyed the talks. Two in particular. One was from a young woman who was baptized in our ward five years ago and who leaves for the Arizona Phoenix Mission this week. A number of her non-member friends were apparently in attendance to support her. The other was given by a self-described ‘brown Latin girl” (the mother of a sister missionary currently serving in Mexico) whose talk about prayer included a moving story about a much-loved brother. I enjoy the fellowship of the Saints.
This public domain artist’s impression shows an imagined view from close to one of the three planets orbiting a dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth that were discovered using the TRAPPIST telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s facility at La Silla, Chile. These worlds have sizes and temperatures similar to those of Venus and Earth and may be the best candidates found thus far in the search for life outside our solar system. They were the first planets ever to be discovered around such a tiny and dim star. In this view, one of the inner planets is seen in transit across the disc of its small parent star.
This just in from the evangelical-leaning Babylon Bee (motto: “Fake News You Can Trust”): “Mormon Wife Designs Future Planet On Pinterest.” Obviously, they’re mocking (a caricature of) us. But it gave rise to a thought, and I permit myself a thought every day: Some critics like to claim that my church is sexist and misogynistic. But what other faith allows women such grand scope for their dreams of the future?
This is a sad story: “Popular Mormon podcasters resign from LDS church, a step ahead of excommunication — Valerie and Nathan Hamaker, co-hosts of ‘Latter Day Struggles,’ have resigned their LDS church membership rather than attend a church disciplinary council that was likely to result in their excommunication.”
I confess that, although I will take the article’s word for it that they are “popular,” I had never before heard of the Hamakers. And — although I’m struck by their willingness to forego their membership in the Church out of loyalty to what they apparently consider more important, and although easing others’ departure from the Church (if that’s indeed what they were doing) would certainly raise a red flag with me — I take no position on the particular issues involved, except for one. I’m not among their appointed priesthood leaders, I have no stewardship over them, I don’t know them, I’ve never listened to their podcast, and I’m hearing (effectively) only their side of things. And I don’t know for certain that their meeting with their stake leaders would inevitably have led to a withdrawal of their membership in the Church. Nor, I think, do they.
I do, however, want to comment on that one issue. They felt it consistent with temple-worthiness to donate ten percent of their income to other charities instead of the Church — a position that, if I’m not mistaken, Jana Riess herself has endorsed. I strongly disagree.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with giving ten percent of one’s increase — or, for that matter, twenty percent or ninety percent of it — to charities other than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Quite the contrary. Charitable donations beyond the minimum requested by the Lord are laudable and admirable. The principle of consecration is one to be taken very seriously, and not merely as a matter of theory or for the distant millennial future. And many of us support other worthwhile humanitarian and philanthropic causes, even above and apart from our tithes and offerings. Sometimes quite substantially. (I say us here, but, of course, some of my anonymous critics will know better than to include me among such decent human beings!)
In any event, to my understanding, the practice of tithing is non-negotiable for a faithful member of the Church. And I fully understand why their bishop cited it as a prima facie reason for withholding a temple recommend. Barring the existence other factors of which I might not be aware, I probably would have judged things the same way that he did (albeit definitely not as grounds for excommunication, something that the bishop himself seems not to have suggested).
This is, by the way, not to say that there is an “admission fee” for the temple. When I was serving as the bishop of an economically very modest singles ward adjacent to Utah Valley University, I signed temple recommends for a number of my ward members who, for the simple and sufficient reason that they earned no income, had paid no tithes at all. Provided, however, that they declared themselves full tithe-payers before me and the Lord — a declaration that one can truthfully make even in the absence of actual income — it made no difference to my signing their recommend whether their tithes for the year had totaled a hundred thousand dollars, or a single dollar, or not a single solitary cent.
The real question is one of obedience. I hope that the Hamakers will reconsider. The implications of their decision will be multigenerational and will, very likely, extend into the world to come.
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