Wealthiest Religion

[Bignate603]

Mormon has millions more members and to be Mormon you HAVE to give a certain percentage of your income to the religion. I say Mormon is the richest.

DOH my mistake. He said per member. Yes then it's Scientology.

No, you don't have to give. It's encouraged but they won't revoke your membership if you don't pay. That being said, PBS did a documentary on them a while ago which stated they were the richest church per capita in the US. They also estimate that only 60% pay tithing.

PBS info

 

[BeauJangles]

ba'hai, almost without a doubt.

 

[zerocool84]

No, you don't have to give. It's encouraged but they won't revoke your membership if you don't pay. That being said, PBS did a documentary on them a while ago which stated they were the richest church per capita in the US. They also estimate that only 60% pay tithing.

PBS info

Yes sorry my mistake. To be more clear if you don't tithe you can't go into a Mormon church.

 

[Malak]

Considering that there is only a little over a billion catholics (1,068,368,942 according to wiki) in the world, you stats are bullshit.

And there are tons of poor muslims, and arabs only became really rich in the 20th century because of oil. The Vatican has been sucking up money from rich Europe for a long, long time. A ton of the silver from the Spanish Empire went to the Catholic church, which invested that everywhere.

The Catholic church is, by far, the wealthiest religious organization in the world by total.

Wiki has to be wrong, I've never seen a single poll that put catholics anywhere near that number. Not even close.

As far as commanding a political presence, that has to be Mormons. They own a whole state in the most powerful country in the world.

 

[BrokenVisage]

no cars, boats, rvs, too.

..not a sinnnnngle luxury..

 

[DrPizza]

How about Pastafarianism? Seems that they enjoy the luxury of the majority of their members being better educated. Generally, with a higher education level, there's a higher level of wealth.

Then again, maybe it isn't a better education, maybe it's just higher IQs. I don't think there's as strong a correlation between IQ and wealth. Or is there?

 

[El Guaraguao]

"But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"

- George Carlin

 

[ProfJohn]

1. Jews. Unlike Islam and Christianity, Judaism is not a mass religion with countless members. There are only 13 million Jews and there are a LOT of very rich Jews, especially some of the Russians. (There are 2.2 Billion Christians and 1.5 billion Muslims)

2. Christianity is easily the richest of all religions with nearly everyone in the Americas, Europe being a Christian. The wealth of the American and EU Christians is probably greater than the wealth of everyone else in the world combined.

3. Most powerful would again be Christians since they rule the US and Europe. However, if you want to define power as the ability to do things then Islamic leaders are probably the most powerful since they are the only ones who can command governments to act on their behalf.

BTW I would guess than non-Catholics are wealthier than Catholics. Keep in mind that much of Northern Europe, which is far richer than the south, is made up of non-Catholics. Same with the US where most of the wealth belong to Protestants and others.

 

[ProfJohn]

"But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"

- George Carlin

Carlin was so fricken brilliant.

 

[Bignate603]

Yes sorry my mistake. To be more clear if you don't tithe you can't go into a Mormon church.

Nooo.... You can't go into one of their temples. They do stuff like get married in their temples but their normal Sunday stuff is in their normal churches which anybody can go into.