In the near term, the theoretical, political, and historical framework I have sketched here for the debate over whether the LDS Church should become more financially transparent is largely moot. The Church appears unlikely to return to the financial openness of the early-to mid-twentieth century.

On a theoretical level, a church’s financial transparency does little to encourage donations by individuals other than its own members. Financial transparency by tax-exempt organizations serves principally to encourage donations by assuring donors that their money is being responsibly spent in ways the donor approves and by discouraging tax-exempt organizations from acting fraudulently. Because the LDS Church, like most churches, raises the majority of its donations from members, members would be the principal audience for such disclosure.

And, in fact, these theoretical considerations seem to have driven the Church’s decision to make its finances public a century ago. The ability of voluntary financial transparency to prevent fraud and mismanagement appears limited, though: as demonstrated by the LDS Church’s half-century experiment, a voluntary discloser can change the scope and detail of its disclosure, or even quit disclosing altogether. But even if it were required to disclose—as other tax-exempt organizations are—the ability of fraudulent charities to raise significant funds suggests that disclosure has, at best, a highly circumscribed capacity to police financial practices, even when such disclosure is required by law. Unless potential donors pay close attention to the financial disclosures and have the financial literacy to evaluate those disclosures, impact on the disclosing organization will be insignificant.

That the LDS Church does not disclose its finances suggests that it is satisfied with its revenues, and that it has no need to increase them. It is possible, of course, that additional financial transparency might induce some recalcitrant members to pay more tithing, but it is also possible that some current tithe-payers would be dissatisfied with the way the LDS Church spends its money and would reduce their contributions.

Why are members of the LDS Church willing to tithe without knowing how the Church spends its money? There are numerous of possibilities. The Church may have successfully inculcated in members a culture of tithe-paying. In members’ minds, identity as a Mormon goes hand-in-hand with paying tithing, irrespective of how the Church uses that tithing. This kind of tithe-paying ethos could reduce the need for the Church to provide a detailed explanation of how it spends its money. Add to that culture an auditor assuring the body of potential donors that the Church is acting in a responsible financial manner, and the marginal value to members of additional disclosure could be vanishingly small.

In addition, paying tithing to the LDS Church is not an entirely altruistic endeavor. Members have been promised blessings—spiritual and, potentially, temporal—in exchange for paying tithing. They can see the tangible results, including meetinghouses and temples. And paying a full tithe has express spiritual and social benefits to members, too—tithe-paying is a prerequisite to attending the temple.

D. Michael Quinn posits another reason that members of the LDS Church may be more willing to pay tithing without financial transparency than theory would lead us to expect. As a result of the Church’s lay participation, and its cycling of members through positions that deal with Church finances, “literally millions of LDS men and women today have had experience as stewards over Church funds. These Mormons have personal knowledge of the careful accountability for these funds as overseen by superiors in the line of authority and by Church auditors.”

From an institutional and revenue perspective, then, the LDS Church appears to have little to gain by increasing its financial transparency. It can, though, provide valuable information to members and potential members without substantively increasing the amount of information it discloses by engaging an independent external auditor. While this does not perfectly meet the goals of advocates of disclosure, it does provide a second-best solution, one that provides real information to members with potential benefits to the Church as well. Perhaps by giving up the perfect for the good, advocates of financial transparency can, in fact, achieve a portion of their goals.