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Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.2
Every April in the Saturday afternoon session of its semi-annual General Conference, the managing director of the Auditing Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) reads his department's3 report for the prior year. The annual report invariably concludes that "in all material respects, contributions received, expenditures made, and assets of the Church . . . have been recorded and administered in accordance with appropriate accounting practices, approved budgets, and Church policies and procedures."4 Presenting the Church Auditing Department's reports at General Conference dates back at least to 1906. 5 And today, this annual report provides the sole window into the global finances of the LDS Church.6
The LDS Church has not always been so guarded about its finances. At times in the past, the Church's books were apparently "open for the inspection of the Saints."7 And since its beginnings, the LDS Church has provided members with occasional public accountings of how it has spent its money. For the first eighty-five years of the Church's history, it made these public accountings irregularly.8 In 1915, though, and continuing until 1959, the church made an annual public disclosure of its finances. As part of the annual April General Conference, somebody-often the president of the LDS Church or one of his counselors-would inform the assembled congregation of how much money the Church had spent in a variety of categories.
In 1959, in the wake of significant deficit spending by the Church and of massive investment losses, the Church ended its detailed public financial disclosure,9 and instead limited its financial disclosure to the Auditing Department report. As a result of its silence about the details of its finances, members, critics, and the interested public have been left to guess at the Church's wealth and the scope of its charitable spending, among other things. The Church's lack of public financial disclosure bothers some-apologists and critics alike-who have requested, in various ways, that the Church return to its former practice of publicly disclosing detailed financial information.10
Those who advocate public financial disclosure tend to ground their arguments in both practical and theoretical bases. Practically, they believe that disclosure is necessary to...