Proposal for Revising Tithing System to Be New Member Friendly

John Theriot
October 9, 2012

I don't believe anyone is looking at the Unification Church's policy on tithing from a witnessing perspective. Most new members are deeply affected by the Church's continuous demand for money in all forms. We have attached a deep religious significance to giving, and this practice is based on the Divine Principle. However, our policy on tithing is not witnessing friendly.

Let's look at two different growth models: 1) the Unification Church 2) the Muslim Faith our policy is the first 10th is required. The Muslim Faith encourages to give one third of discretionary income. How does it work? Well, the Unification Church model puts the biggest burden on the poor who have many troubles already. The Muslim Faith prides itself as a church that provides for the poor, specifically through providing "alms" and through providing a path for the poor to be welcome in the church. In fact if you make less than what you need to survive, the guilt burden of the Unification Church builds up.

In the case of the Muslim Faith, the poor are inspired to do more than "break even" so that they can have the honor of giving. So what is the score: According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion by number of conversions each year and Unification Church has shown negative growth over the last two years, 0 growth for the last 10 years and deeply negative growth for the last 25 years.

If you are making $3000 per month and your expenses are $3200, you are in hot water in our church. You don't sweat it as a Muslim, you just try to work harder and you keep important seed money that is needed for investment. If you managed to keep your expenses constant but triple your income, as a Unification Church member, you give $900. As a Muslim, you give 30% of your net or 5,800/3 = $1,933. The 10% of gross is repressive to the poor. The 30% of net is encouragement to the poor. Every religion has grown based on its connection to the poor (I could not find average income statistics on the Scientology Demographic, but all of their programs are free for the poor.)"