Counselor; architect of fiscal restraint
J. Reuben Clark Jr.
1871–1961
1 topic · 2 dated events
Their part in each topic
Church Finances, Tithing, and the Transparency Question
Counselor; architect of fiscal restraint
Clark read the annual financial report to general conference for seven consecutive years and made the disclosures of the 1940s the most detailed the Church ever gave — several printed pages, itemized by category. He kept Depression-era spending below a fraction of annual tithing revenue and funneled Church money into low-risk bank accounts rather than speculation. His removal from the reading of the report in April 1952 begins the retreat that ends in 1959.
In the timeline
2 events across 1 topics, chronological. Only events this person was actually part of — present at, responsible for, or the subject of — not every event where the name comes up.
Routinization, then the most detailed accounts the Church ever gave
By 1923 Heber J. Grant introduced the report as 'customary.' Under J. Reuben Clark in the 1940s the disclosures ran to several printed pages, itemizing budget appropriations against actual expenditures by category, including hospitals, welfare, education and the salaries of headquarters employees. Marion G. Romney called the 1944 report more comprehensive than any he had heard in his life. Revenue, however, was never disclosed in any year of the disclosure era except fast-offering receipts between 1942 and 1950.
The retreat begins
President McKay ended Clark's seven consecutive years of reading the financial report; the duty went to the First Presidency's secretary, Joseph Anderson. The disclosure reverted from budgeted-versus-spent tables to bare categories, and detail was progressively collapsed: in 1953 the separate line items for the Office of the Corporation of the President and the Office of the Presiding Bishopric were folded into 'Administrative Expenses.'
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