It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post and
there are a lot of ideas I have lined up. Unfortunately due to my chronic
laziness I have a few that should have been posted last fall that still need to
be posted. So hopefully I’ll be able to get productive and start posting again.
There were a lot of issues related to religion in politics
that came up during the last election cycle. One of the most important of these
issues is illegal electioneering done by churches and their tax-exempt status. In 1954, the Johnson Amendment was signed. It requires
political neutrality from churches in order to maintain their tax-exempt
status. Nonetheless, illegal electioneering by churches and pastors is
commonplace. Here are three examples for this past election cycle:
1.
Senior pastor Terry Fox in Wichita, Kansas ran
an ad in the Wichita Eagle stating that he would speak “about how the Obama
administration and its socialist agenda is [sic] making the way for the
Antichrist to take over the world.” He hosts a weekly radio show for his church
and on it he said, “There’s no question in my mind that the sitting president
we have today is far more evil and far more committed to a one-world
government.” They openly endorsed Rick Santorum during the Republican
Presidential Primary violating IRS rules. Their church publication, The Summit
Informer, regularly includes illegal political campaign intervention.
2.
Perhaps you saw this one in the news: a church
in Leakey, Texas posted this on a sign outside their church, “Vote for the
Mormon, not the Muslim! The capitalist, not the communist!”
3.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that
Skyline Church Pastor Jim Garlow said at the end of his sermon, “Some came to
hear my endorsement. My endorsement will be Jesus. I’ll tell you whom I’m going
to vote for, but I don’t think that makes it an endorsement. I’m going to vote
for Mitt Romney, but I’m not telling you to.”
Many would wrongfully point out that this is a free speech
issue. This is not about free speech. This is about using tax money as a
subsidy for partisan political activity.
In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled in Walz v. Tax Commission
of the City of New York that religious tax exemptions did not violate the
establishment clause of the 1st amendment because they were granted
to all religions. They justified their position because the do not transfer any
revenue to the churches; they merely refrained from collecting taxes. However,
this amounts to a government subsidy that all taxpayers contribute to, and only
some utilize. This maintains a privilege given to some at the expense of
others. The Supreme Court even said so itself in the 1983 ruling of Regan v. Taxation
when it said that “both tax exemptions and tax deductibility are a form of
subsidy that is administered through the tax system.” Once again, these are
contradictory points of view from the US Supreme Court. On the one hand,
religious tax exemptions do not violate the first amendment, but they can be
thought of as a subsidy.
Here is a little background information: Churches get three
main types of exemptions…income taxes, property taxes and taxes on donations
(tithing).
The qualifications for a tax-exempt status are as follows:
1.
The organization must be organized and operate
exclusively for religious, educational, scientific, or other charitable
purposes (i.e. not political)
2.
Net earnings may not benefit any private
individual or shareholder
3.
No substantial part of its activity may be
attempting to influence legislation
4.
The organization may not intervene in political
campaigns
5.
The organizations purposes and activities may
not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.
The overarching reasoning for this tax-exemption is that
churches provide a public benefit. But what benefit does a church provide that
couldn’t be fulfilled by some other nonreligious organization? Charity work can
be done by anyone, you can learn about religion from any number of locations,
and the advancement of religion itself is not a charitable act.
There are a number of negative consequences of the current
system:
1.
Resources are being used by churches that could
be used more effectively or more efficiently elsewhere
2.
Churches have an unfair business advantage with
tax exemptions
3.
Taxpayers are responsible for the portion of taxes
that churches are exempt from paying
4.
Churches are given preferential treatment
5.
Churches participate in political and lobbying
activities with little or no sanctions brought against them (such as loss of
tax exempt statues)
6.
Sanctions against churches have little or no
effect due to the lack of regulations and oversight
This amounts to taxpayers indirectly supporting churches. I
am forced to ask: “Why should my tax dollars go to support the subsidy of a
religious organization that I am opposed to?” “Why should my taxes support the
subsidy of the Mormon Church when they spent millions of dollars pushing
proposition 8 in California.”
The fifth and sixth items on the list are very closely related and stem
directly from the fourth. The prohibition of political and lobbying
activity was the trade off made for churches to be tax exempt in the first
place. In fact, the IRS makes it very clear that a churches failure to
adhere will result in their tax-exempt status being revoked. The problem is the
IRS’s inability or (more likely) unwillingness to adequately enforce this. Many
churches break this rule, often overtly as in the examples above, and even feel that
the rule infringes on their right to free speech. Many have even
arrogantly claimed that restricting their ability to be involved in politics is
a restriction on their religious freedom.
Religious organizations must understand that the tradeoff was made because
religious political and lobbying activism poses a threat to the separation of
church and state. But to some like Rick Perry, there is no such thing as
the separation of church and state. He said as much when he claimed:
"This separation of church
and state, which has been driven by the secularists to remove those people of
faith from the public arena, there is nothing farther from the truth…When you
think about our founding fathers, they created this country, our Constitution,
the foundation of America upon Judeo-Christian values, biblical values and this
narrative that has been going on, particularly since the ’60s, that somehow or
another there’s this steel wall, this iron curtain or whatever you want to call
it, between the church and people of faith and this separation of church and
state is just false on its face…The idea that we should be sent to the
sidelines, I would suggest to you, is very driven by those who are not
truthful…Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and
what have you and one of the untruths out there is driven – is that
people of faith should not be involved in the public arena."
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this quote is
that Satan drives those who push for separation of church and state, those that
defend secular public space. It is inherently evil and must be combated. It’s
warfare with truly cosmic and transcendent implications.
Thanks to a complete absence of sanctions or supervision, churches can,
and do, freely abuse their tax-exempt status. This is an ongoing problem that
in my opinion necessitates revoking all religious organization’s tax-exempt
status. Last year, Italy decided to revoke their churches property tax exempt
status. As a result, their tax revenue will dramatically increase. A study at
the University of Tampa quantified the amount of US tax revenue lost at $71
billion. This is more than the federal government budgets for education (69.8
billion).
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is now suing the IRS to
enforce its laws. Funny that you have to sue these days just to get people to
do what they are supposed to be doing.
