Possibilities for a Surveillance Church

You’re familiar with surveillance states. We all live in one, to one degree or another. COVID and mass working from home also brought attention to surveillance corporations, which sometimes track their employees’ every keystroke to be sure they aren’t having unauthorized fun when they should be appropriately suffering for their paychecks. (Speaking of which, I probably shouldn’t be writing this post at work.) But what about a surveillance church?

I feel like the LDS Church is ideally positioned to become a surveillance church for several reasons. First, it’s exclusive. Unlike so many American Protestants, who believe members of many churches can be okay with God, we believe we alone have essential ordinances that members of any other church are missing out on. This is important because if, say, the ELCA decided to try intrusively surveilling its members, they’d all just go down the street and become Episcopalians or something. Second, it has a top-down hierarchical structure. By contrast, if say the Southern Baptist Convention said its member churches should intrusively surveil their members, they could just ignore it or leave the organization. Third, it isn’t too large. The Catholic Church is also exclusive and top-down, but it’s so gigantic that I think it would be harder to implement a surveillance program across the whole church than it would be for Mormons. Fourth, it isn’t too small. I imagine there are a lot of much smaller churches that would love to be super controlling and surveil their members constantly, but they just don’t have the resources. The LDS Church is, of course, ridiculously wealthy. Fifth, it has multiple tiers of membership (baptism level, temple recommend level), which provides more opportunities to prod members into compliance to maintain (or improve) their position.

Okay, let’s get to my suggestions. Only they aren’t suggestions so much as just thoughts or ideas of possibilities that could happen. You can probably guess that they’re at least partly tongue in cheek. But I’m a little bit serious too. I’m thinking along the lines of the quote attributed alternatively to Ray Bradbury or Frank Herbert that science fiction writers don’t write to predict a future, but to prevent it. I hope none of these ideas come to pass, but if a true zealot became Church president, or even a more garden-variety fundamentalist leaner, I could see some of them happening.

• Birth certificate requirement: The Church’s latest anti-trans updates to the Handbook are deeply concerned with a person’s “biological sex at birth.” But how do Church authorities know what that is? I can see the Church requiring a birth certificate to get baptized or get a temple recommend so they can screen for unauthorized transitioners.
• Tithing audits: Anecdotally, I’ve heard of bishops questioning people’s tithe-paying status given the amount they’ve given in comparison with their lifestyle. But it seems like these are the rare exception. The Church might be able to get more tithing from members if they required members, as a condition of holding a temple recommend, to submit to random tithing audits. They would have to submit income documentation, and if their tithing payment wasn’t 10% or greater, they’d lose their recommend, and have to pass another audit to get it back. A more intrusive version would require members to just allow their financial data to be scraped on an ongoing basis. An even more intrusive version would require members to just set 10% of their paychecks (pre-tax, of course) to be direct deposited into a Church account.
• Internet browsing audits: Members could be required to submit their devices to have the internet history checked. Auditors would check for porn sites, of course, but also for visits to anti-Mormon sites, sites of other churches, and, depending on which Church leader was implementing the rule, perhaps sites of non-GOP politicians. Like with tithing, this could be done in even more intrusive ways, like by requiring members to have their internet history submitted constantly and automatically.
• Reading audits: As so much book reading now happens on e-readers and tablets and phones, members could be required to submit logs of what they’re reading. Like with internet history, auditors would check for overly descriptive bodice rippers, but also for too much time spent on Mormon history (Rough Stone Rolling might be okay, American Zion is iffy, Mormon Enigma is right out) or other troublesome topics (e.g., evolution, communism).
• Scripture reading audits: Reading of scriptures, and perhaps more importantly, Conference talks, also often takes place now on electronic devices. Members could be required to have their reading audited, and if they weren’t spending enough time, they could be threatened with losing their temple recommend. An exception to read paper scriptures might be granted for older members. (It’s possible that some version of this is already happening, at least on the tracking side.)
• Location tracking: You can use your phone to share your location with family or friends. Why not with your church? This could be used to do all kinds of things like checking church attendance to ensuring that members aren’t going to strip clubs. It could even be used to check that members don’t speed too much on the freeway. (I assume this is already being done with missionaries.)
• Health record audits: Members may be faultless in many of their medical issues, but they may also be blameworthy! Is that liver trouble evidence of surreptitious alcohol use? Is that lung problem a result of smoking or vaping? Members could be required to share their medical records with Church leaders to get or maintain a temple recommend. This could also keep them from the wickedness of unauthorized abortion or trans-related treatment.
• Shopping audits: With so much shopping taking place online now, this type of history could easily be submitted for church auditor scrutiny. Even for offline shopping, members could be required to submit scans of receipts. This type of surveillance would couple nicely with the tithing audits mentioned above. It could be helpful both for detecting Word of Wisdom-breaking purchases, but also for finding general patterns of excess spending of money that would be better served by being donated to the Church.

Any of these could be used as a requirement for baptism or as a requirement for getting or keeping a temple recommend. If the random versions of the audits were used, then if you failed an audit as a recommend holder, you would of course lose it, and then you’d have to clear a higher bar (like some period of full audit passes) to get it back. The audits could also be used to screen members for callings, particularly to higher levels. To be considered as a GA, for example, a man would not only have to have exemplary audit results over a long period of time, but also have his wife do the same.

Other than the birth certificate requirement, which would be a one-time thing, any of these could also be implemented at multiple levels of intrusiveness. Members could be required to keep records and submit them when asked to for a random audit (like how income tax filing works, at least in the US). They could be required to keep records and submit them constantly (annually, quarterly, monthly maybe). Or they could be required to just allow the Church real-time access to their records.

These rules could also be given as suggestions, not by way of commandment or constraint. The way Mormonism works, I think they would very quickly evolve into rules even if that wasn’t the original intent.

What do you think? Could any of these actually happen? I could see scripture reading habits maybe being actually used to judge faithfulness. With any of the rest of them, though, I suspect the Church would get a lot of bad press if they were required. GAs are used to this, though, and if it were a zealot running the Church, he’d probably see the pushback as a sign of the rightness of his actions and of the wickedness of the world. And of course, Church members would have no recourse other than to leave, as GAs famously aren’t interested in feedback from the rank and file.