Scholars & Saints
Scholars & Saints is the official podcast of the University of Virginia’s Mormon Studies program, housed in the Department of Religious Studies. Scholars & Saints is a venue of public scholarship that promotes respectful dialogue about Latter Day Saint traditions among laypersons and academics.
Scholars & Saints
Where Mormonism Meets Tax Law (feat. Sam Brunson)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always been a great case study in the limits of religious liberty and tolerance in America. But what can the history of Mormonism tell us about U.S. tax history? According to Loyola University Chicago School of Law Professor Sam Brunson, quite a lot!
Kicking off this new season of Scholars & Saints, Dr. Brunson sits down with host Nicholas Shrum to discuss his new book, Between the Temple and the Tax Collector: The Intersection of Mormonism and the State. Dr. Brunson details the rich history of tax law as it relates to the LDS Church, from tithing in Nauvoo to Brigham Young's hefty federal income tax liability. Throughout this history, Dr. Brunson examines specifically how taxable status—notably tax exemptions—are a cornerstone of American religious liberty that tie the church and the state together more intricately than the Jeffersonian doctrine of a "wall of separation" might imply.
To find out more about Dr. Brunson and his upcoming projects, click here.
Introduction
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Nicholas Shrum
You're listening to Scholars and Saints. The UVA Mormon Studies podcast. I'm your host, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD candidate in American religions at the University of Virginia. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism. We engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up-andcoming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism’s relevance to the broader study of religion. Scholars and Saints is brought to you by support from the Richard Lyman Bushman Endowed Professorship of Mormon Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.
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Nicholas Shrum
The podcast’s goal is to discuss some of the most pressing issues and cutting edge methods in Mormon studies, and put them in conversation with scholarship from the discipline of religious studies. While the podcast’s content explores Mormonism, the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organizations they represent or study, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the University of Virginia.
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Nicholas Shrum
Today on the podcast, I speak with Professor Samuel D. Brunson, the Georgia Reithal Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Professor Brunson researches and writes about taxation and nonprofit organizations, and today he joins the podcast to talk about his most recent book, Between the Temple and the Tax Collector, published with the University of Illinois Press in 2025.
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Nicholas Shrum
In this book, Professor Brunson hopes to “teach tax people more about taxes and Mormon studies people more about Mormonism.” But he also hopes that the book “will teach tax people more about Mormonism and Mormon studies people more about taxes.” Overall, this book is a fascinating look into the interactions between Mormonism and taxation, and it helps shed light on the relationship between religion and the state.
00;01;48;27 - 00;02;10;16
Nicholas Shrum
I definitely learned a lot more about taxes, but I was really fascinated to see what kind of insights it has for us in the field of Mormon studies. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Professor Brunson.
Introduction to Samuel Brunson
00;02;10;18 - 00;02;37;18
Nicholas Shrum
All right. Welcome listeners to another episode of Scholars and Saints, the Mormon Studies Podcast at the University of Virginia. Really excited to have Professor Samuel D. Brunson, who is a professor of law, the Georgia Resaw Professor of Law, and the associate dean for academic affairs at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He's also the author of a book called God and the IRS: Accommodating Religious Practice in the United States Tax Law.
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Nicholas Shrum
Today we're going to be talking about his most recent book, which came out with the University of Illinois Press this year, entitled Between the Temple and the Tax Collector: The Intersection of Mormonism and the State. I'm really excited to talk about this book because we're coming up on Tax Day. It's March 25th that we're recording.
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Nicholas Shrum
And so we're getting close to when people are thinking about taxes and, maybe an interesting and new, exciting lens through which to to think about religion and Mormonism. So excited to kick this conversation off. So welcome!
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Sam Brunson
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
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Nicholas Shrum
To begin, I'd love to get a little bit of an introduction to you and your background. So could you introduce yourself, your education, or other projects you've worked on and maybe a little bit about your current position at Loyola University of Chicago?
00;03;31;15 - 00;04;01;14
Sam Brunson
Absolutely. So I grew up in Southern California, went to BYU undergrad, served a mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then finished up at BYU. I started out as a saxophone performance major. By the time I graduated, I was an English major with a minor in Portuguese. After that, I went to Columbia University for law school. I attended law school for three years, and when I graduated, I worked at a law firm, a white shoe law firm, what's also commonly called a Wall Street law firm
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Sam Brunson
for two years, in the tax department. I then clerked on the Court of Federal Claims in D.C. for a year, went back to my law firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, for another two years. And then I got a job teaching at Loyola University Chicago. And we moved here. And I've been here for about 15 or 16 years now.
00;04;21;05 - 00;04;46;13
Sam Brunson
I teach tax law and business law, and I research a lot in the tax and the nonprofit area. A big portion of my research over the last several years has been focused on religion and tax and religious nonprofits, although I do some other things, too. I've done a couple about what are called decentralized autonomous organizations, which is a crypto thing that you really don't need to know about.
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Sam Brunson
I recently went to a conference talking about nonprofits and environmentalism. So I'm a generalist tax and nonprofits person, but kind of with the focus on religion and religious organizations.
00;05;04;10 - 00;05;19;18
Nicholas Shrum
Excellent. Well, really excited to have you. I have to also ask–we were talking before we began recording–that you are also a saxophonist. Can you say a little bit more about this interest of yours and what you do with that?
00;05;19;20 - 00;05;41;23
Sam Brunson
I played all through high school. And then college of my freshman year when I got back from my mission. Actually, at the end of my freshman year, I realized I wasn't as good as I thought I was. And also, it's really hard to make a living as a jazz musician. So, I made the only switch that can make an English major look practical to your dad, which was music to English.
00;05;41;26 - 00;06;05;07
Sam Brunson
And then at that point, I kind of quit playing, by and large. You know, I lived in apartments in New York, in D.C. My wife let me buy what's called an electronic wind instrument, which is like a digital midi instrument that's played like a saxophone. And then eventually I bought myself a soprano and then a tenor.
00;06;05;10 - 00;06;32;04
Sam Brunson
And then right before the pandemic hit, I did a community jazz band at DePaul University, which is close to where I live. And then over the pandemic, I drove my family crazy by making noise in our apartment. My neighbors are kind. They had not objected yet. On Craigslist, I found a band that wanted to play, but it turns out we were all middle-aged guys with jobs and families, and we got together a grand total of three times.
00;06;32;09 - 00;06;37;28
Sam Brunson
So now I just play in my basement for myself, and I dream of having a band of some sort.
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Nicholas Shrum
I love it. I'm so glad that we got to include a little bit about that. I totally understand the whole neighbor dynamic. I've had multiple occasions of needing to ask neighbors, “you know, is it okay if I–” I'm a bagpiper. And so being able to say “is it okay if I maybe disrupt your afternoon?” Make sure they don't have little babies or pets to scare.
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Nicholas Shrum
So,I'm glad that you've been able to bring that back into your life a little bit.
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Sam Brunson
That's very cool that you've got bagpipes. It's not the most common instrument that I've seen.
Background for the Book
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Nicholas Shrum
Yeah, and there might be a reason for that for a lot of people. I don't know that it's super well received all the time, but back to your book. So I'm really excited to talk about this, this book because, as you note in the introduction, aside from maybe some works by the historian Michael Quinn, there hasn't been a lot of scholarship on the relationship of Mormonism to specifically tax questions.
00;07;43;02 - 00;08;05;26
Nicholas Shrum
There's been some on finance. And then recently, of course, listeners may be aware there's been lots of press and lots of commentary on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints’ finances and obviously, in some of the other historical episodes, questions of tax exemption as a kind of like a pressure point have regularly come up. But you take a
00;08;06;02 - 00;08;17;01
Nicholas Shrum
really, really awesome long historical approach of understanding taxes. I'm curious what led you to research this book in particular?
00;08;17;03 - 00;08;44;07
Sam Brunson
You know, there are probably 3 or 4 things. One is that basically, since I started in academia, I've also been blogging on LDS themed blogs. So I blogged at Times and Seasons for a few years, and I've been at By Common Consent probably for at least 10 or 15 years. And as the resident tax person who does blogging when the church intersects with taxes, that's kind of my jam.
00;08;44;07 - 00;09;16;09
Sam Brunson
That's kind of the thing that I get to blog about. So current events– my interest was piqued there. When I was in law school, I started reading a fair amount of Mormon studies stuff. I was actually thrilled that University of Illinois Press picked up my book, because I've read a lot of their books. And then as I started doing my tax stuff and as I started transitioning kind of from tax into non-profits, religious issues come up a lot.
00;09;16;11 - 00;09;39;21
Sam Brunson
So that's kind of the starting point. I had a couple things early on in my academic career. Nate Oman, who's at William and Mary, mentioned to me that he'd been reading through somebody's autobiography, someone's memoirs, and they mentioned a tax issue with the church, and he said, “you should write about that.” And I immediately forgot the person and the year.
00;09;39;21 - 00;10;11;13
Sam Brunson
And when I asked him, he also forgot the person and the year. So, like, I don't know that I've ever seen whatever he was talking about, but that kind of piqued my interest. And so I did a couple things. I wrote a piece early on about tax and polygamy with a focus on contemporary polygamous organizations, including like the FLDS church, but also including Muslim immigrants in New Jersey.
00;10;11;16 - 00;10;48;20
Sam Brunson
And then I followed that up a little while later with something with the tax treatment of–they’re called religious and apostolic organizations. They're basically communitarian religious groups. Which the our church is not one of those, but it was at periods in the 19th century. After that, I actually discovered, and it's one of the chapters in the book, that there was about an 18 month battle between Brigham Young and the revenue service in the US at kind of the tail end of the Civil War.
00;10;48;22 - 00;11;19;11
Sam Brunson
So I wrote an article. I got a lot of traction out of that article. It got an article and the chapter in my book and another book chapter on a similar thing. And that kind of piqued my interest. And then the church– two of the amazing things that it’s done involve digitizing the Joseph Smith Papers project, which has digitized, a ton of stuff, including a lot of information about Nauvoo and then also the Church History Library.
00;11;19;18 - 00;11;44;26
Sam Brunson
The librarians are wonderfully helpful. And also they've digitized a lot of things. And so I started thinking about and writing about the church and taxes kind of as I finished my first book. And then COVID hit and other than teaching and going on walks at night with my wife and kids, and playing my saxophone, there wasn't a lot to do.
00;11;44;28 - 00;12;19;07
Sam Brunson
But with all of these digitized archives, I was able to find information and I've got some generous friends. Ardis Parshall and Jonathan Stately would occasionally, in their research, run across something that said the word “tax,” and they would send it my direction and send me down different rabbit holes that were absolutely fascinating rabbit holes. And, thanks to kind of all of those things put together, I had the chance to put together a full book about the church and taxes.
00;12;19;09 - 00;12;47;04
Nicholas Shrum
That's excellent. I love hearing about how there's, for those that aren't aware of the Mormon studies, there's a kind of like a blog sphere. There's also just kind of a grassroots network of enthusiasts and amateur historians and bloggers that love to be able to help each other out and share these sources because, so many people in Mormon studies come from these diverse backgrounds and professions.
00;12;47;06 - 00;12;56;21
Nicholas Shrum
And so what you're saying is you're kind of the the tax person that all of the tax documents just kind of fell on your lap at various times.
00;12;56;24 - 00;13;05;22
Sam Brunson
Right. And if any of your listeners have amazing tax documents, feel free to send them to me. I would be immensely grateful.
How Between the Temple and the Tax Collector fits into Mormon Studies Scholarship
00;13;05;25 - 00;13;27;05
Nicholas Shrum
Well, I hope that when people read the book and they listen to this podcast, they'll be thinking about–if they're members of the church or familiar with Mormonism– they'll they'll be thinking about their own, stories or the things that they've heard from families or coworkers or coreligionists about this interesting intersection Which leads to my next question.
00;13;27;05 - 00;13;45;27
Nicholas Shrum
And you alluded to it already, but I'm curious how you think about this book fitting into the field or the topics related to Mormon studies. For instance, what what kind of an intervention do you see it making or contributing to how we understand Mormonism?
00;13;45;29 - 00;14;11;18
Sam Brunson
And so, again, as a law professor, there's never a single answer that I have to anything. But there are a couple answers. This is a really important question to me. I say in the introduction that my goal is to introduce tax to people who understand Mormonism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but aren't familiar with tax, to introduce the church to people who know tax but aren't familiar with the church.
00;14;11;18 - 00;14;41;09
Sam Brunson
I try to write it at a level where you don't have to have expertise in any of those things, but my big thing is historically in legal academia, when we look at religion, we look at questions of constitutionality. The First Amendment, the Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause are important. The Jeffersonian “wall of separation” between church and state often is what grabs the attention when you're thinking religion and state.
00;14;41;11 - 00;15;11;21
Sam Brunson
And in this book, I want to expose the fact that this wall is important, I think, as a normative and as a legal matter. This separation embodied in both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause are critical, but they're not absolute. The wall is porous. And one of the things that really fascinates me about looking at questions of religion and taxation is taxation is one of those places where this intersection isn't mediated by the First Amendment.
00;15;11;24 - 00;15;48;22
Sam Brunson
The Supreme Court has said–I don't want to go too far into the constitutionality, but that constitutional rights aren't absolute rights. The government can infringe on your speech rights, your free exercise rights. It has to have a compelling purpose. And it generally has to be, if not the least, tt has to be not too intrusive. But courts have said, and the Supreme Court has said that collection of tax is so important that even if you have a religious objection to paying taxes, you don't have a constitutional right not to pay taxes.
00;15;48;24 - 00;16;30;02
Sam Brunson
So this is one of those places where the church and the state have to intersect. My first book isn't about religious institutions. It's about religious individuals and where they have to pay taxes and where they get excused from tax paying. This one is more institutional. It’s also individual. But it's a place where even if we look institutionally, churches are exempt from tax and we know that they're exempt from tax, but because they operate within the state and because they do economic things, if they're going to be exempt from tax, the state has to grant that exemption.
00;16;30;08 - 00;17;14;00
Sam Brunson
The churches have to meet certain requirements. And even if they're exempt, they're not entirely exempt. Churches that pay employees have to withhold and pay over payroll taxes. For property tax purposes, some church property is exempt from tax. Not all church property is exempt from tax. So my big interest, honestly, is how, when you don't have constitutional questions, do religions and the state interact with each other and you know, the tax law is a perfect place to look at that. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also provides us with a unique set of thoughts, because the church itself is exempt, and it's gone through this exemption that holds property that sometimes
00;17;14;00 - 00;17;58;07
Sam Brunson
exempt, sometimes not exempt. Its members are taxpayers, are sometimes exempt from taxes for certain purposes. But unlike most churches in the US, at least since at least since 1820 or 1830, the church has on two occasions essentially established theocratic governments. So in Nauvoo, Nauvoo was theocratic. Church leaders were also the civil leaders. And then when the church members moved to Deseret Territory at the time, for the first decade or so, they either operated the actual government of what became Utah or a shadow government of what became Utah.
00;17;58;10 - 00;18;10;12
Sam Brunson
So that raises some questions that most other religion-state interactions don't, which is how does your religion make law when the religion is making law?
00;18;10;14 - 00;18;33;23
Nicholas Shrum
That's a really helpful way of thinking about, for people that are going to pick this book up, thinking about why you wrote it. But also if they are familiar with Mormon studies scholarship or if they are in legal academia and they study taxation, they might be thinking of these questions in ways away from constitutionality that you’ve been speaking of. I love this quote on page five.
00;18;33;25 - 00;18;55;26
Nicholas Shrum
For me, as a religious historian, this was kind of one of the wake up things for me that I thought was really helpful. You say that “taxes were continually in the background of Mormon development, and at times broke through to the forefront of decision making. Similarly, at some distinct moments, Mormonism affected directly or through the judicial system the broader reach of taxes.”
00;18;55;29 - 00;19;23;05
Nicholas Shrum
And that was interesting to me because thinking about early Mormonism or even 20th century Mormonism, whether it's because I’m in religious studies, or the kind of the questions that I'm asking and the way I'm thinking about the relationship of church and state, it's very rarely tha something that we might think of as like, mundane or just so regular and ever-present, like taxes as something to bring to the forefront.
00;19;23;05 - 00;19;35;20
Nicholas Shrum
And I just really appreciate how you bring something that, at times seems so removed from like the scholarly inquiry. It says so much about how people are thinking during the time.
00;19;35;22 - 00;19;42;16
Sam Brunson
I love how nice you're being about saying “what you study is boring, but you made it interesting.”
00;19;42;18 - 00;20;16;10
Nicholas Shrum
To be completely honest, taxes are obviously not my thing. I'm not a lawyer. Taxes as a as a graduate student or something that typically you just think, “oh man, it's that time of the year when my tax return as a graduate student is near impossible to figure out.” But, the way that you frame it in the introduction and you deliver so well throughout the book is no this this kind of part of how religious people and especially Mormons, this is how they have to conduct their lives.
00;20;16;10 - 00;20;35;10
Nicholas Shrum
And as a church that is so heavily reliant upon law, even within its theology, it brings in questions about, you know, how are we going to compel, how are we going to raise revenue? How would we think of the distinctions between these kinds of things? So it's it's it is really excellent.
00;20;35;12 - 00;20;52;05
Sam Brunson
So I like to say that I get to teach on easy mode because students come in assuming that my class is going to be the most boring, dry thing in the world. Turns out it's not. So I have low expectations and it's really easy to exceed low expectations.
Taxation During the Nauvoo Period
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Nicholas Shrum
So just to jump into maybe some of the content of the book. You alluded to this already, but the first part of the book, it's broken into two sections. The first section follows a chronological approach where you detail the relationship between Mormonism and taxes from those origins of the 1820s and 1830s, through the rest of the 19th century.
00;21;13;13 - 00;21;32;25
Nicholas Shrum
My question is, what were to you, some of the key challenges and innovations that Mormon leaders encountered and implemented regarding taxation during this early period? And you mentioned something like Nauvoo. And I'm curious, is there something that you would like to share about that earlier period that highlights?
00;21;32;27 - 00;21;58;27
Sam Brunson
There are two things. And because I'm going to forget the second one, I'm going to go with that first. Which is even at the very beginnings of the church, church members were not sophisticated. They were frontier people, often under educated, but they knew at least some things about taxes. So very early in church history, we see that New York state has a tax exemption.
00;21;58;27 - 00;22;25;12
Sam Brunson
It exempts from property tax ministers of the gospel. And we see at least 1 or 2, early missionaries who go to the tax assessor, show their certificate as missionaries and say, “hey, I'm exempt from tax.” So, I mean, it seems like a very simple thing, but it suggests to me that these tax things at least were in the air.
00;22;25;12 - 00;22;50;16
Sam Brunson
People were aware of them because, you know, doing law is not easy. Being aware of law is not necessarily easy, especially when you don't have like an internet subscription to legal databases. So even early church members were aware of the taxes that kind of permeated the world. It's a weird world of tax. It's one that we're less familiar with because taxes weren't really universalized and professionalized.
00;22;50;19 - 00;23;14;24
Sam Brunson
You could have a state that on the books had a tax law, but collected it every seven years. It's as you go through the 19th century that we get this idea of a more scientific, objective, universal taxation. But then the other thing is, especially Nauvoo and then to some extent, Deseret– again, Deseret is what the Mormon immigrants it's called, Utah.
00;23;14;25 - 00;23;41;05
Sam Brunson
before, the federal government said, “no, this is Utah.” So in Nauvoo, they're basically creating from scratch a governance system, and they could have gone several directions. They could have just said, “our government is purely theocratic. Joseph Smith is the at the head of government, and he, as the prophet, will make the decisions. And to the extent we want to build roads and stuff, we'll collect tithing from members.”
00;23;41;05 - 00;24;08;24
Sam Brunson
And that's not the direction they went. The Nauvoo Charter is basically copied from, I believe, Springfield, and it's really similar to the other incorporated cities at the time in Illinois, including the authority to tax what can be taxed. So they take this and they create–and again, I'm focused primarily on tax-making and not other, civic governmental things.
00;24;08;24 - 00;24;32;16
Sam Brunson
I assume that it's similar with other things, but the Joseph Smith Papers Project has a lot of like City Council notes and minutes and records from how they did their deliberations and they do their deliberations when a question comes up, people come in and make a petition. There were two petitions. Frankly, this was my favorite part of the book, and I gave way more pages to it than it probably deserved.
00;24;32;19 - 00;24;54;06
Sam Brunson
But twice people asked for a dog tax in Nauvoo. So I got to talk a lot about dog taxes and it got rejected after discussion both times. The idea was dogs were nuisances and if you tax dogs you make them more expensive, which means people are going to be more careful about having dogs and so you'll have less of a nuisance.
00;24;54;09 - 00;25;15;25
Sam Brunson
But with all these things, they design a collection, a tax assessment and collection mechanism. And rather than just going to the bishops who are in charge of their wards anyway, and are responsible for collecting tithing, they create an assessor and a collector, which is the same mechanism that other cities in Illinois, and frankly, other cities in the East used to collect taxes.
00;25;15;27 - 00;25;49;13
Sam Brunson
Now, the assessor and collector tended to be members of the church because most people were members of the church, but they were separate. They were doing this separate from their ecclesiastical authority and their ecclesiastical duties. You see occasionally when they're desperate, a little bit of mixing of the religious and the civil, but it really, sincerely surprised me that even though you have religious leaders, they're running city council meetings in a formal, probably Robert's Rules of Procedure type way.
00;25;49;15 - 00;26;11;25
Sam Brunson
They're having witnesses come in, they're debating among themselves. In the end, Joseph Smith could often play a trump card of “he’s Joseph Smith,” though it's not clear whether that's because he's the prophet or because he's tremendously charismatic. But ultimately, they approach tax law as a legal matter, not as a religious matter. And I found that really fascinating.
00;26;11;28 - 00;26;15;10
Sam Brunson
And maybe a little bit surprising.
00;26;15;12 - 00;26;36;17
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah. I loved hearing more about Nauvoo because, again, just referring back to what I was coming to this book with, I'd never thought about taxes or, I kind of just assume. I think maybe people assume that when you think of, like, a theocracy. And because of the expansive
00;26;37;18 - 00;26;59;18
Nicholas Shrum
reach of something like the Nauvoo charter, that all of these things would have been done according to a church hierarchical system that would have been done rhetorically through this religious language. And I think it's interesting, you know, how, at the very least, how you're able to show that they're able to institute these, you know, civil, things that would have patterned after other places.
00;26;59;18 - 00;27;21;26
Nicholas Shrum
And so, like everybody else, Mormons are also bringing in their context, their experience with things like taxation, whether that was from the patterns seen in other charters or from their own backgrounds, what they saw on their missions, what they dealt with in different parts of the country. So, I love that early part.
Taxation and Tithing in Nineteenth-Century Utah
00;27;21;28 - 00;27;42;11
Nicholas Shrum
My next question actually takes us from, Nauvoo to Deseret and then to Utah. In the later 19th century. And so you talk about Brigham Young and his direct engagement with federal taxation. You mentioned this entity. I'm I'm going to forget what it's called. It was the Bureau of-
00;27;42;13 - 00;27;44;00
Sam Brunson
Bureau of Internal Revenue.
00;27;44;03 - 00;27;59;28
Nicholas Shrum
Bureau of Internal Revenue. And it had some surprising twists concerning tithing. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about those interactions between the US government and Brigham Young and this instance where Young contemplated suspending tithing.
00;28;00;02 - 00;28;32;19
Sam Brunson
Which was another one of those big surprises to me. Tithing the “perpetual law,” according to Joseph Smith's revelation. In –I don't have it in front of me–but in 1869 or 1870, I believe, that he actually wrote a memo saying we're done with tithing. And I think it got sent out, but then quickly retracted. So what's happening: to fund the Civil War, the Union discovers that it's tariffs and it's internal taxes on like excise taxes on alcohol.
00;28;32;19 - 00;28;56;16
Sam Brunson
And just the ways that it raises money aren't good enough. So in 1862, we get the first federal income tax, and it last by its own terms for about ten years, probably with the thought that it would be renewed. It doesn't get renewed. So it goes along. At the end of the 1860s, the tax assessor for Utah goes to Brigham Young and gives him a tax bill.
00;28;56;19 - 00;29;26;25
Sam Brunson
And the tax bill is okay, I should do my research and like, review my stuff, but it's something like $60,000. They say Brigham Young, you owe roughly $60,000, which if you were to look at the conversion, that's a whole lot of money in 2025 dollars. And they say you owe this money because we believe that tithing represents income to the church and because you're the trustee of the church, the church isn't really organized as a separate institution.
00;29;27;01 - 00;29;55;03
Sam Brunson
You are personally liable for this tax on church revenue. I'll also note Brigham Young was wealthy. I believe he had owed several hundred dollars a year before, and I expect that he was expecting that that's what his tax assessment would be in that year. So he is surprised. I will also say, basically the federal government told him what he owed.
00;29;55;09 - 00;30;18;19
Sam Brunson
He claims that he filed a tax return. They claimed that he never filed a valid return. And the archives don't have a copy of the return. Which isn't to say that he didn't make a return. We just don't know. So we get into this big thing, and for a year and a half or so, there's a big question about whether Brigham Young is going to have to pay this enormous amount.
00;30;18;21 - 00;30;45;22
Sam Brunson
The question is, again, really weird because in the Civil War, income tax, there is no corporate tax. So it's not even a question of whether the church is exempt or not. Other than insurance companies, entities aren't taxable. It's purely a tax on individuals. There are some reasons, but basically the federal government says you owe taxes on tithing for two reasons.
00;30;45;24 - 00;31;09;12
Sam Brunson
One reason is because tithing is a mandatory payment. It's an account that follows people throughout their lives. And they point to 1852 or so, there is a tithing ledger, basically, which says how much everyone owes. Brigham Young responds to that. “Yeah, we say that. But it's not really that. You know, nothing is going to happen to you if you don't pay tithing.”
00;31;09;16 - 00;31;29;23
Sam Brunson
There are rumors that if you don't pay tithing, like the collecter of taxes said that “in your rhetoric, you said you will be cut off” and out there in Utah “separate from everyone,” if you're cut off from the church, that's basically a death sentence. But even if it's not a death sentence, it's a spiritual death sentence. So part of the reason is we don't think that this is a free will offering.
00;31;29;23 - 00;31;52;04
Sam Brunson
We think that this is a compelled offering. And because of that, it's taxable. Again, I keep saying weird. That's kind of weird. The compulsion or not to pay something doesn't reflect whether it's taxable or not. But we'll leave that aside because this is a battle from 160 years, a long time ago. It's not a battle that we have to have today.
00;31;52;06 - 00;32;16;20
Sam Brunson
The other reason is they say a lot of your revenue is on speculative investments. You're investing, you're using this tithing money to invest in railroads and to invest in other speculative things. Brigham Young says, okay, so there is a problem with this. He responds. He says, “A it's not, mandatory.” Says “no one pays what they should. I don't even pay what I should in tithing.”
00;32;16;23 - 00;32;34;27
Sam Brunson
Now, is that true? Is that not true? Brigham Young, who's good at his rhetorical flourishes, so not clear to me whether that's true or not, but at least he says” it's not mandatory. Nothing happens to people who don't pay tithing,” which may well have been true at the time. That wasn't the temple recommend question or anything like that.
00;32;34;29 - 00;32;55;13
Sam Brunson
He also says, so it's a freewill offering, but he also says “even if it were taxable, the amount you're charging us is too much because we're in a cash poor environment. We don't get paid tithing in cash, we get paid in kind, we get butter, we get cotton, we get chickens, we get eggs.” And he says, “look.
00;32;55;15 - 00;33;21;10
Sam Brunson
So someone in Provo pays us in molasses. So we get this molasses, we give them $50 of tithing credit for the barrel of molasses. But then it turns out this actually only worth $30, and it costs us $10 to transport it from Provo to Salt Lake. So at this point, you're saying we have $50 of income.
00;33;21;16 - 00;33;44;16
Sam Brunson
We only have $20 of net income on that.” And he also says, also, “the Saints aren't really good about this. More often than not, they give us their spoiled butter. They give us their bad sheep. So we give them credit. And even if we take out transportation costs, it's not worth what we say it's worth.” But assessment has been made.
00;33;44;18 - 00;34;03;09
Sam Brunson
It gets passed on to the collector. Brigham Young appeals to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. On that appeal he says, “look, we don't owe this.” There's a lot of back and forth. And I go over in my book, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but half of the amount that he's assessed is a penalty for not filing a return for paying late.
00;34;03;11 - 00;34;28;10
Sam Brunson
So the federal government initially says, “we'll knock that off. You only have to pay half the amount.” And then he files his appeal. And the Commissioner of Internal Revenue denies the appeal. They have until, I believe January, to pay the amount of taxes that they owe. And this is the point where Brigham Young says, “okay, so this is a problem.
00;34;28;15 - 00;34;53;01
Sam Brunson
One of the problems is, I'm treated as receiving all of it. So maybe what we could do–” because there's also an exemption. You don't have to pay taxes on your first thousand dollars of income or so. So he says “maybe instead of centralizing it, we just leave it with all the bishops. Each bishop gets $1,000 exemption, and if each bishop gets $1,000 exemption, we owe a whole lot less going forward in taxes.”
00;34;53;06 - 00;35;15;20
Sam Brunson
This doesn't fix the initial tax burden. But he's also worried about “is this going to happen to me every year going forward”? And he ends up talking to Daniel Wells, one of his counselors and the mayor of Salt Lake, I believe, and Wells, they agree that maybe the answer is we no longer collect tithing. They didn't come up with an alternative revenue stream.
00;35;15;23 - 00;35;43;02
Sam Brunson
They're discussing it, but they say maybe we just stop collecting tithing. We figure another way to raise money. And if we can do that, then we don't have to worry about this happening again. Before that happens, though, we get a new commissioner of Internal Revenue. It turns out this Commissioner of Internal Revenue hates taxes. He testifies before Congress shortly after he's installed that the income tax is a terrible thing that should go away.
00;35;43;02 - 00;36;03;10
Sam Brunson
We should get rid of it. And he also writes a letter to Brigham Young saying, “by the way, your appeals granted, you don't do taxes.” He only lasts in this position for six months. After six months, someone else comes back. But the church at this point has this official statement from the government saying tithing is not taxable income.
00;36;03;12 - 00;36;23;08
Sam Brunson
So the next year, when the assessor of Internal Revenue, who frankly, did not like the Mormons and they equally did not like him. He says, “I need you to make a return of taxes.” And Brigham Young, writes him a letter back and says, “hey, I investigated and we don't have anything that qualifies as income, so we don't do any taxes.”
00;36;23;10 - 00;36;42;29
Sam Brunson
And then the next year or so, the federal income tax disappears by its own terms. And we don't have to worry about income taxes again until 1913. So it's a fascinating story, like you said, full of twists and turns, where the church gets its hopes up and they get dashed and it gets its hopes up.
00;36;43;01 - 00;37;03;24
Sam Brunson
There's this whole thing where the collector says, “hey, at the very least, would you mind if I take some of your property just to hold it against your eventual tax paying if you don't win?” Brigham Young says “you're welcome to do that. You walk into a tabernacle and you take the organ” because Young knows that, like if that was to be today,
00;37;03;24 - 00;37;42;09
Sam Brunson
it would be a TV spectacle or probably a YouTube spectacle. But at the time, the newspapers would have grabbed on to it. You know, federal government seizes Mormon organ. That's not great publicity. And so he probably played his hand right at that point. But all sorts of stuff going on in this, these 18 or so months, as the church negotiates, whether it's going to have to pay a ton of money in taxes currently going forward, how we can prevent it going forward, and how in the current moment it can reduce or eliminate this tax burden.
00;37;42;11 - 00;38;05;28
Nicholas Shrum
It's an excellent taste of what readers can expect when they're diving into this first part of the book. It was really, really interesting– things that I think would shock, or shock is maybe a harsh word, but for Latter-day Saints today, just even the thought of something like tithing potentially being suspended is,
00;38;06;00 - 00;38;09;26
Nicholas Shrum
surprising. Yeah. Go ahead please.
00;38;09;26 - 00;38;27;10
Sam Brunson
It's virtually unthinkable today. And I imagine it was similar at the time. They had been doing tithing, I mean, not for 160 years, but they've been doing tithing since, what, since Nauvoo at least? So they've been doing it for at least 20 years at that point, 20 or 30 years.
How Taxation Relates to Polygamy, and other branches of Mormonism
00;38;27;12 - 00;38;50;12
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah. And to touch on kind of another thing. And we don't have enough time to really dive into the specifics of some of the other chapters of this part of the book and then the earlier part of the second part of the book, which is more topical, but, you know, equally distressing or shocking as is the elimination of polygamy.
00;38;50;12 - 00;39;21;29
Nicholas Shrum
And you have a really interesting chapter on polygamy and taxes. And one thing I just want to note that I really appreciate is that the bulk of this chapter deals with the non mainstream, Utah based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. And just as a note to listeners that I think this is a really important thing for a book on Mormonism to be doing, is to consider these other, branches or denominations, however one wants to term it, of Mormonism.
00;39;21;29 - 00;39;33;27
Nicholas Shrum
That is not just the mainstream LDS church in Salt Lake City. Is there anything you wanted to touch on briefly about, how you address polygamy in the context of taxation?
00;39;33;29 - 00;40;00;19
Sam Brunson
Polygamy did a lot of work in the church, including, the part of our internationalization. We established colonies in Mexico and communities in Canada, basically to get largely, not entirely, but largely to get polygamists out of the US and out of this type of persecution. Turns out it was also illegal in Canada and Mexico.
00;40;00;21 - 00;40;30;07
Sam Brunson
So in Mexico, the polygamy isn't directly related to taxes. The tax issues are separate from polygamy, but it turns out in Canada, and again, I don't want to take too much time on this, but in Canada, you had one of these break off groups. He's originally a member of the FLDS church. He breaks off from the FLDS church, launches his own, and it actually creates some questions in Canadian tax law. And because I'm not a Canadian tax attorney,
00;40;30;07 - 00;41;00;14
Sam Brunson
I ran that by aCanadian historian and tax professor for whom I know through the internet, who is not a member of the LDS church. And confirmed the stuff that I said, but the polygamy, it kind of corresponds with communitarianism and Canada also has some special tax laws regarding communitarian organizations. It turns out we're not the only 19th century religion that practiced communitarian beliefs.
00;41;00;17 - 00;41;35;28
Sam Brunson
But also, in the end, the guy that I mainly focus on also committed tax fraud in Canada. And, then tried to basically throw his followers under the bus to get out of these tax and fraud allegations. He doesn't succeed. I, I tried, I wanted to make at least a little bit of international look and at least a little bit of not just the mainstream Utah-based church, because I think the other strands of Mormonism are important.
00;41;36;00 - 00;42;05;23
Sam Brunson
I know less of their stories, and I have less access to archives. So, the Canadian groups rely on basically legal cases in Canada that I could get my hands on and some news reports. Mexico is more because they were part of the Utah based church and remained with the Utah based church. That's more of the sources that I'm more familiar with.
00;42;05;25 - 00;42;34;18
Nicholas Shrum
Well, and it's one that I definitely recommend to people that are more familiar with mostly just the mainstream Utah-based church that this is an interesting way to to start thinking about, you know, the kind of the cousins, if you will, I guess,of mainstream Mormonism. And it's at the same time, it's a really interesting way to think about the same lens ofinteractions with the state and outside, not just the American state, but especially the Canadian state.
Incorporation of the Eastern States Mission in Brooklyn, NY.
00;42;34;18 - 00;42;58;17
Nicholas Shrum
So really liked that chapter. Just to kind of briefly highlight and point out to the listeners, the second part of the book goes more by case by case basis. And I will just give a big shout out for the chapter on the church’s incorporation of the Eastern States Mission in Brooklyn at the beginning of the 20th century.
00;42;58;17 - 00;43;20;19
Nicholas Shrum
This is a really fascinating case, thinking about the kinds of things that the church is willing to do and to adapt in order to obtain certain benefits, but also, you can think about it in terms of, like, survival or, just making sure that they can achieve their mission. And in this case, literally the mission.
00;43;20;21 - 00;43;24;03
Nicholas Shrum
Any brief comments on, on that chapter.
00;43;24;05 - 00;43;53;09
Sam Brunson
That I have to give a huge shout out to Ardis Parshall, an independent historian who came across some of this history and sent it my way and led me down that rabbit hole. Without her I wouldn't have found anything about this. I actually also have to thank my sister. As I was wrapping up, I discovered that the Church History Library had some physical copies of minutes and incorporation documents from the Eastern States Mission Corporation, in Utah.
00;43;53;09 - 00;44;19;11
Sam Brunson
And I checked plane tickets, and the plane tickets were probably more than I'm going to make in royalties on this book. So my sister, who lives in Sandy, who's also an attorney, ran up to the library and found the documents and took pictures and sent them to me so that I could incorporate some later information. But basically, the short of it is property tax exemption for religious organizations.
00;44;19;13 - 00;44;47;22
Sam Brunson
And so the church builds a building in the late 1910s in Brooklyn and it's first New York building. And from there, they get a tax assessment and they say, “hey, wait, buildings owned by churches used for public worship are tax exempt for property tax purposes.” And the New York replies “only if the church is incorporated in the state of New York.” Foreign churches and in law,
00;44;47;24 - 00;45;08;14
Sam Brunson
when we say foreign, it might mean out of the US, but also means out of the state. So foreign churches aren't. And so like there's a big battle about this is going to cost significant money if the church has to pay annually property tax on this property. So there are some debates over what they do. In the meantime, the church has started consolidating.
00;45;08;14 - 00;45;35;26
Sam Brunson
It wants primarily to be a corporation sole based in Utah, to the extent possible. They end up incorporating the Eastern States mission as a separate corporation. And that corporation seems to last through the 1950s. And around the 1930s, the New York– okay, I went to law school in New York and I don't remember exactly its support system. In New York, the trial level court, the lowest court is called the Supreme Court.
00;45;35;29 - 00;45;57;17
Sam Brunson
And then you appeal from the Supreme Court. We spent the first two weeks of law school learning this. You appeal to, like there's a court of appeals and another court and I forget what the level is. But finally, the top court in New York in the 1930s says, “okay, we know that the courts have held for the last 20 or 30 years that this is the law, but it's not based on the statute.
00;45;57;22 - 00;46;32;11
Sam Brunson
We're going to overrule this.” So today in New York, a foreign corporation can have tax exempt, but foreign incorporated religion can own property and have it property tax exempt in New York. But there were about 20 years, 15 or 20 years where that wasn't clearly the case. And the church adapted. It moved away from its preferred organization to a different type of organization where it incorporated in New York, the Eastern States mission.
00;46;32;14 - 00;47;00;04
Sam Brunson
It turns out that the church, when it comes in conflict with the state, is willing to make changes. We saw that with polygamy. We saw that potentially with Brigham Young having to pay taxes. And we see that in maybe a less religiously central way, but in a practical way, with its preferences regarding its incorporation status.
00;47;00;06 - 00;47;29;02
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah, that was one of the big takeaways for me and you’re prefacing nicely how kind of as we near the end of our conversation, I would like to ask one more question about more content of the book. But then, I always end every podcast thinking broadly with the author of books that that we're talking about about what enduring lessons come out of this history as we think about religion, and specifically about Mormonism.
Tax Exemption as a Lever for Change
00;47;29;04 - 00;47;53;19
Nicholas Shrum
But, before we get there, and maybe this is a way to get into that. You mentioned the idea of tax exemption, you title your last chapter, “Tax Exemption as a Lever for Change.” I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that concept and what you mean by that. And why that is significant for the narrative of your book.
00;47;53;20 - 00;48;28;12
Sam Brunson
Sure. That shifts from a description of law more to a description of the LDS church. The church cares a lot about its tax exemption. It works hard. You'll see in the Handbook of Instructions, which is basically an administrative manual for how to operate the church, or at least historically, that's what it's been. Its role seems to be changing a little bit, but it has strongly worded rules about how you can use church buildings so that they don't potentially cause the church to lose its tax exemption.
00;48;28;14 - 00;49;08;09
Sam Brunson
So, for instance, you can't use church buildings for profit-making purposes, and you have to be cautious about other things. Dallin Oaks, who is in the church’s governing body, has testified in front of Congress about the importance of tax exemption both to the church and to tax exempt organizations broadly. So the church cares, at least rhetorically, and I think actually, about its tax exemption. Which means that threatening its tax exemption becomes a rhetorically powerful move
00;49;08;09 - 00;49;48;02
Sam Brunson
if you don't like what the church is doing, and you'll see this on the internet fora all the time, people will say, like, when a church or churches in general do something they don't like, they'll say, “take away their exemption.” That's– if I may be blunt– that's dumb. But for reasons that if anyone wants to engage with me on social media, I'm happy to talk about. But there have been at least three occasions where activists have objected to something that the church has done, and used the idea of tax exemption to suggest that the church either shouldn't be able to do what it did, or that it shouldn't
00;49;48;02 - 00;50;22;23
Sam Brunson
be able to be exempt from taxes. The questioning the legitimacy of the church's tax exemption. The first is in reaction to the church's opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. The second is in reaction to its racial priesthood and temple ban, and the third is in reaction to its lobbying against same sex marriage. In each of those cases for various different reasons. Some of the reasons given are people argue that the church shouldn't be able–
00;50;23;00 - 00;50;51;19
Sam Brunson
It's doing too much politicking or it's doing politicking of a type. In some cases, they're arguing that it's violating a fundamental public policy. Either way, the argument is the church shouldn't qualify for tax exemption. I'll say here– I go into a little more detail in the book– that's not a strong legal argument, that as a legal matter, nothing that I've seen the church do threatens the legitimacy of its tax exemption.
00;50;51;21 - 00;51;19;00
Sam Brunson
But it's a powerful rhetorical move, especially in a country and in a world where we believe in religious liberty. Because with that, you're able to say, it's okay that you believe wrong things, that you do wrong things, but we shouldn't subsidize you. We shouldn't reward you if you're going to do those wrong things. You don't deserve this tax exemption because you're not legitimate in this particular way.
00;51;19;03 - 00;51;44;02
Sam Brunson
And that actually puts the church back on its heels. The church has responded on its website and in General Conference to these assertions, not directly, but asserting, yes, that it should have the right to tax exemption. These are things where people sometimes will send letters to the IRS saying, take away their tax exemption. Those letters, again as a legal matter, are meaningless.
00;51;44;02 - 00;52;06;13
Sam Brunson
They don't have any effect. The IRS can read them if they want. The IRS could go after the church if it wanted. More likely it opens the letters to see was what it is and just throws it away for various reasons, including, being overworked and understaffed. And because it's an unpopular agency and it's not going to win popularity by going after churches.
00;52;06;15 - 00;52;29;16
Sam Brunson
So it it's not a good legal argument, but it is it seems to be a very effective rhetorical political argument, both because it does get under the church's skin and because it's something that the general public understands. It's an easy way to communicate and punctuate that this thing they're doing is bad.
00;52;29;18 - 00;52;54;09
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah. I really appreciated the way that you talk about those three specific examples, from the the 60s and 70s and then, most recently in the early 2000s. Because I, you know, before I went to graduate school and was thinking about these kinds of questions, relationship of church and state, I do remember hearing those kinds of things.
00;52;54;12 - 00;53;15;10
Nicholas Shrum
I grew up in Utah, and so I heard quite often kind of the question of tax exempt status and something that could be threatened or, depending on who you talk to, one that was actually that people would be worried about and kind of what I'm getting from you and from the analysis in the book is probably not something people ever really needed to be worried about.
00;53;15;10 - 00;53;24;12
Nicholas Shrum
But there is something about the rhetoric about the discourse that is very salient in American culture, especially.
00;53;24;15 - 00;53;25;26
Sam Brunson
Right.
Enduring Lessons from the Book and What it Offers Audiences
00;53;25;29 - 00;53;45;14
Nicholas Shrum
Excellent. So, just as we we wrap up, I always ask this question about how the author of these books and in this case, Between the Temple and the Tax collector, how you see it relating to the broader study of religion? This podcast is housed in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.
00;53;45;17 - 00;54;11;20
Nicholas Shrum
And I always like to be able to have listeners that maybe aren't related to Mormon studies or practitioners of Mormonism, to think about how these books speak to larger issues. And, perhaps in this case, the intersection, as you say in the subtitle, the intersection of Mormonism or just religion, and the state. What kind of, enduring lessons might you want to speak to as we wrap up?
00;54;11;22 - 00;54;37;09
Sam Brunson
I think one of, for me, probably the principal lesson, the principal thing that I want people to think about is how we want religion to be situated in a secular state. You know, we we kind of have, I think, especially for people who don't think about it a lot, this idea in the back of our minds that they're kind of not co-sovereigns, exactly, but they're kind of entirely separate.
00;54;37;09 - 00;54;55;15
Sam Brunson
I go to church on Sundays or Saturdays or Fridays, depending on my religion. And then maybe I think about religion and talk about religion during the week. But that's a separate sphere from what I do at work. That's a separate sphere from what I do when I pay my taxes, when I speed or I don't speed when I use city infrastructure.
00;54;55;17 - 00;55;17;01
Sam Brunson
And it turns out there is a close connection. We don't have to be talking Mormonism. If you live in a religious city. I live in a religious city, Chicago. You would be amazed by the number of beautiful Catholic churches here in Chicago, among other churches. Each church sits on land that it doesn't pay property taxes on.
00;55;17;03 - 00;55;48;06
Sam Brunson
So, which is a policy decision we've made and I don't think it's the wrong decision. I think there is an argument for it. But it is engaged with the state that there's this relationship, and we can't get rid of this relationship unless we were to somehow expel religion from the state that, like, not just expel it from rhetoric, from law, but just, like, physically pick up all the churches and stick them somewhere outside of the state, which is something that we really can't do.
00;55;48;06 - 00;56;14;10
Sam Brunson
So I think we need to think carefully, you know, about how we want this intersection to happen. There are important places where we need them to be separate, but we can't separate them in every case. As long as a church is employing people, you know, we have anti-discrimination laws, we have employment laws, we have, every year I have to do sexual harassment training.
00;56;14;12 - 00;56;46;24
Sam Brunson
I work for a religious university. We have laws that govern employers, religions are employers. Religions are tax payers and tax exempt. Religions use public services, they provide to the public. So they are part of the fabric of the communities that we all live in. And it's overly simplistic to say either we should entirely separate them, or that we should instate some sort of theocratic government and give them special privileges.
00;56;46;26 - 00;57;11;05
Sam Brunson
Instead, we have to navigate this space where they are and figure out what we want that to do. In addition to that, honestly, I think there's some great stories in the book, and I like the idea of getting to know, and understand better, topics that aren't necessarily front of mind for a lot of people. Mormonism and taxes, not withstanding, some Hulu series and some other things.
00;57;11;07 - 00;57;40;11
Sam Brunson
Neither one is particularly salient most of the time, but both taxes and Mormonism are kind of enmeshed in, you know, our history. My wife grew up in South Carolina, and it's only after she moved to New York and we got married and we moved a little further west that she started to understand how important Mormonism is to the western half of the United States in terms of law, settlement, culture.
00;57;40;14 - 00;58;08;01
Sam Brunson
And, you know, we, like you said, we're approaching April, it's tax season. But, one of my colleagues has mentioned essentially, when we look at taxes, taxes represent what we find valuable as a society. That's how we pay for services. That's how we provide some benefits. So part of what I want to do is put into the discussion–
00;58;08;03 - 00;58;32;08
Sam Brunson
But yeah, sorry, I talk in circles sometimes– but part of it is historians quite frequently aren't trained in tax. You know, my tax knowledge dates back to my second year of law school, after a friend told me, you need to take federal income tax from Professor Zelenak. So I took federal income tax from Professor Zelenak. Before that, I knew taxes existed.
00;58;32;08 - 00;59;00;26
Sam Brunson
I didn't know that it was like, really I didn't understand that it was law. I didn't understand where exactly it fit in, like life and and culture. So, partly I want to people to be able to provide an entree to historians and historians of religion about other financial and economic matters that are increasingly important, I think, that are increasingly being looked at.
00;59;00;26 - 00;59;33;12
Sam Brunson
But historically haven’t, for historians haven't been the focus. I love the the recent-ish move toward economic and financial history and corporate history and tax history. And then also, I just want to bring religion and tax and history into a dialogue that I think is an important dialogue.
00;59;33;15 - 00;59;53;23
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah. And I can say after reading it, it's one that I from now on, whenever I'm doing any of my research, I'm going to have to ask that question of maybe “how are these things operating,” as you say, at the end of the book, “for its whole existence, the Mormon church has operated in the shadow of various tax systems.”
00;59;53;25 - 01;00;20;18
Nicholas Shrum
And then as all of the stories show, these are important stories, some of them familiar, some of them not, but especially for the ones that are familiar, thinking about race and thinking about the church's engagement with lobbying, whether that's on same sex marriage or other issues. Right. Taxes, and the systems of taxation that you say “it has operated in,” it's always there.
01;00;20;18 - 01;00;37;07
Nicholas Shrum
And so hopefully other scholars of religion will be able to take that step like you recommend and I think you do a good job making the case for it here. So really appreciate you being on the podcast to talk about this book. Again. It's called between the Temple and the Tax Collector: The Intersection of Mormonism and the State.
01;00;37;07 - 01;00;43;29
Nicholas Shrum
And it's been published this year, by the University of Illinois Press. Thank you, Professor Brunson, for being on the podcast.
01;00;44;01 - 01;00;50;05
Sam Brunson
Absolute pleasure to be here. And thank you for your insightful questions.
Outro
01;00;50;07 - 01;01;06;24
Nicholas Shrum
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversation soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stewart for production editing, and to Ben Arrington for providing music for this episode. To hear more, visit mormonguitar.com. Thank you for listening.