The separation of church and state is a fundamental concept in the United States of America. However, these establishments are exempt from paying taxes, a duty that every American must comply with or else prove sufficiently that they give to charity. Richard Dawkins made it clear that the tax exempt status of religious establishments "is a disgrace," and he is absolutely correct.
Everyone should pay their fair share in the U.S., and that should most definitely include churches. Yes, many are charitable organizations, but to be honest, it's a subjective system of charity in many cases. Richard Dawkins believes that churches should be made to prove that they're adequately providing charitable services in order to achieve that sought-after tax exempt status.
Considering the separation prohibits the mingling of religion with governmental affairs, it seems rather preposterous that these establishments are granted exemption from paying taxes in the first place. It seemingly defeats the whole purpose of having that barrier between religion and government. Nonetheless, the IRS does seem to reward those who are charitable whether they be an individual or an organization.
Do you think religious establishments should have to prove their charitable associations? If they were taxed, there might end up being less of a decline in money in the United States, and considering that many of these facilities operates like business ventures more than houses of worship, it's really not that bad of an idea, is it?
Crime analyst and profiler Chelsea Hoffman can be found on The Huffington Post, Chelsea Hoffman: Case to Case and many other outlets. Follow @TheRealChelseaH on Twitter or click here to contact Chelsea directly.
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Comments: 96
That is a violation of IRS rules and any local congregation that engages in that behavior is at risk of having their tax-exempt status revoked.
As a Christian, I know that the Bible says to follow the law of the land. The churches who aren't helping out are lying about their charitable doings to keep that tax-exempt status. That is wrong, especially for a Christian claiming to uphold the values they are teaching.
While it may not be a popular stance within the Christian community, I fully agree with "churches should be made to prove that they're adequately providing charitable services in order to achieve that sought-after tax exempt status."
You have it EXACTLY backwards. The whole point of the exercise was to avoid having churches run the government as they did in Europe at the time. Point the twoth... All church businesses that are not charitable (e.g., churches, schools, etc) ARE taxed. An idiot by the name of Rex Humbard who ran a cash cow of a church called The Cathedral of Tomorrow in Cuyahoga Falls saw to that when he insisted that his Maidenform Bra factory was tax exempt. Point the threeth... the rest of your comment is an incomprehensible muddle. You have a complaint in there somewhere, that much is clear, but I'll be dogged if I can figure it out.
It IS a muddle.
I plead with you Chelsea, go and examine the contributions Atheism has made over the course of history and then compare that to the contributions that have sprung from Christianity. While Atheists like to bring out the atrocities done by false believers in the name of Christ, respectfully, Chelsea, go and examine the contributions Atheism has made to the culture in the past ages up through today vs. Christianity. Try to find the hospitals that have sprung forth from Atheism in the past and today. Try to find the food banks and other outreaches to the poor though history and today that have their foundation in Atheism vs Christianity. Try to find atheist doctors that left their successful practices to bring life changing healthcare to the poor a world away in the past and today vs Christian doctors. Try to find the other professional Atheists who have left their jobs, their homes, their security and have risked their lives (or even gave their lives) to share the virtues of Atheism and how the message of Atheism has changed the lives of millions people for the better who heard that message down through the ages vs. Christianity. Try to find Atheism's contribution to government and law vs. Judeo Christian influence. Try to find how Atheism (or any other belief) has impacted social justice issues in the past and today vs. Christianity. Try to find how Atheism has done more to forward the interests and equality of women in the past and today vs. Christianity. If you do try, you will find that nearly all of the great achievements in the history of Western Civilization (from education to health care; from women’s rights to fair treatment of workers; from assistance to the poor and needy to changing the lives of millions around the globe for better; the list goes on and on), have sprung forth from the holistic Judeo-Christian worldview. And who has benefited from all this?...this is the best part: Everyone!!! Including atheists, agnostics, believers, non-believers - the whole culture has benefited from Judeo-Christian influence in the past in our culture and continues to today. That positive influence of Christianity does not require anyone to believe, or to conform it; it does not require one to deny or hide Atheism or tear Atheism down in order to continue to benefit from Christianity's influence. Atheists, agnostics, unbelievers, and believers have all benefited from Judeo-Christian influence through the the history of our country simply by being a fellow citizen of the country. Why would anyone want to remove Judeo-Christian influence from the culture?
This is then ties back to my earlier comment. Churches - not the government - and the families and individuals that churches influence need to recommit themselves to sound doctrine and teaching (morality) as well as being positive, active, caring and redemptive influences in their communities. The culture must be a moral one that is largely able self-govern itself, otherwise the govenment our Founding Father's envisioned won't be sustainable.
Not true. It should be noted that the study that you linked looked at the emotional responses of people who were shown images of people in need, and not actual levels of giving.
A study by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University found that people of faith on average exceed non-religious people in donations to non-religious charities, volunteer time in the community, and likelihood of helping a person in need.
No you could not.
Amanda: "alot [sic] of atheists give out of the kindness of their heart"
Of course they do. Just far less than do people of faith, on average.
Amanda: "Not because theres [sic] a diety [sic] telling them to do."
Straw man argument, Amanda. It's possible you're a low-information commentator on religion. It's also possible that you don't realize that.
Good day to you :)
I agreed with your comments above Sandy, but this I don't agree with~not sure about the churches in your area, but the churches around where I live are greatly beneficial to the community. There's a place called Haverhill, MA, aka, "the city of churches," seems like one on every block. It's also known to people who are homeless as the "best place to be." Everyday a church provides a hot meal, even on w/e's, some have food pantries, others clothing donations. I've been there, and not once was I asked what my religion was, or even if I had any faith at all!
In the over 400 years that the Roman Empire and Christianity both existed, there were something like thirty years when Christians were persecuted, maybe fifty tops. When Christianity became the official religion pagans were persecuted. Mostly the Roman government didn't care about religion.
August Lady-I like your comment: "Maybe they should be going after these billionaire evangelists/preachers who use the name of God to scam people, someone like Joyce Meyer, who's under federal investigation, btw."
Chelsea-I don't agree with everything you wrote, but it gave me a lot to think about. Lot of stuff I didn't know (big shock, huh?).
Regarding the tax exempt status of churches, they are far more nimble to address the needs of those in their community then the Federal government would be with our tax dollars. When was the last time you saw a politician handing out warm blankets on an extremely cold night?
Churches are funded by their congregation, some with day care facilities they offer and other events. Much of the money that has been collected by the church was already taxed. While some may write off a percentage of their donations, should they itemize, many simply don't. Churches do far more for communities then most atheists even know.
Politicians would never be caught handing out blankets to cold homeless people at night. This is above them. And the sad part is that all of our warm taxpayer funded public buildings sit empty at night while people in need sleep on park benches, under bridges or anywhere they can to survive one more day. What a waste of my tax dollars.
wow...that's...special..
The government has enough to do without taxing the churches.
Now that's a novel approach for submitting that churches should not be taxed. Not sound reasoning nor sensible thought, but most assurredly, an innovative idea. Can anyone imagine the SCOTUS having that arguement put before the Court and the Justices being able to keep from bursting out in uncontrollable laughter.
Keep em coming Angela, I love your humor.
That sounds like the straight lines Ed McMahon used to feed to Johnny Carson. "So Johnny, how much freedom have we lost over the past fifty years?"
Having been more or less sentient through the last fifty years and pretty darned concerned about things like the Bill of Rights I'm not so sure that tyranny has been developing. In some respects we've gained. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws gave more or less full citizenship to a large group of people. The silly anti-communist witch hunts of the '50s are gone. Mandatory school prayer is a thing of the past. Marriage between people of different "races" is legal. Then there's the revolution in rules of evidence and rights of the accused. I could go on.
-- George Carlin
Can we be clear on one thing? The new atheists, are not just not theistic. They HATE religion. Just look at the comments of some of those on this post. If they could, they would ban religion. They like to say that they are the ones being victimized, but their defense is to try to destroy the faith and institutions of the believers. They are at war, and Dawkins uses this language all the time
The problem is that this is not a good war to fight. Atheists cannot win this war, no matter how nasty their comments are on Gather or other places. You will not succeed in destroying faith, all you will do is sow hatred and intolerance. And you will reap what you sow.
0_o
I'd challenge anyone who doesn't like churches to go to the public officials in your town and ask them how they would feel if all the churches were closed. They understand that the churches are a lifeline to people who are, in many cases, living broken lives; that the churches are an essential element of stability and moral instruction to the citizens. This does not imply that non-religious people are "bad"—that's not the point. From a civics viewpoint, these organizations represent a stabilizing social service element to the entire community. There's no confusion about that on the part of community leaders.
Regarding "holy war", Dawkins et al. readily admit that they are fighting one. They make it clear that they think in terms of a cosmic battle between "religion" and "reason", and they even jokingly but perhaps revealingly use religious phraseology to describe themselves (like the "four horsemen of the apocalypse"). Sy, on the other hand, denies there is such a conflict between religion and reason.
Of course that isnt what you have been told, but I would venture a guess that your knowledge of certain periods of the last 2000 years is not extensive.
Christianity is a golden light of peace and safety.
It would appear that you are not referring to 95% of what is written in the Bible, because that part sure isn't about peace and safety !!!
Not everyone tries to impose their own beliefs. In fact, I have never had a Muslim, Hindu, or Native American even EXPECT me to switch over to their views. It's the Christians.
It's important to understand something when pointing to the child sex abuse scandal that occurred between about 1975 and 1995 and the cover-up scandal that followed. It is an abominable period of history on the RCC, and it's disgusting that 100% of priests could not be trusted. But understand that a child during that period was 4 to 10 times more likely to be sexually abused at home or elsewhere than in a private meeting with a priest at a Catholic church. The safety and light went up considerably when children entered that setting.
If the history of the 20th century history of secular democide doesn't give pause then minds are closed based on more than the facts of the matter.
The sex scandals to which I refer came to light much later than the 1970s (in 2002) as an issue of concern to the public. The level of child sexual abuse by priests rose dramatically in the 1960s and diminished dramatically in the 1980s. Even one case is intolerable. You seem to evince virtually no knowledge of the issue. I recommend the 2011 John Jay College of Criminal Justice report titled "The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States," which was commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. A link to the 152-page report is found here. The report notes that 80% of the incidents now known to have occurred prior to 1985 had not been reported at that point (ibid., p. 9). The preliminary 2002 report is found here. The links at the latter site provide a lot of background on prevalence.
The percentage of abusive priests among all serving since 1950 is said by the report to have been 4% (ibid., p. 8). I've seen calculations using different assumptions that go lower. "The overall percentage for American males... according to Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, is one in ten.... Margaret Leland Smith, a researcher at John Jay, estimated that the figure is closer to one in five." source
I'm sorry that you're misinforming your kids. Generally (and you can follow the link I provided earlier to confirm this) "religious wars" (those where religion was used as a pretext for violence) have accounted for 1% to 2% of the deaths of innocents over the past 2,000 years. Over 200 million innocents have died at the hands of secular tyrannies just over the past century. (The crusades accounted for a couple hundred thousand deaths, while the Spanish Inquisition took out about 35,000 over 350 years.) And while the story of secular tyrannies is pretty much all bad, the story of people of faith over the centuries has some real good parts—not just moral instruction, but service to others, educational institutions, and building of communities.
I know there are religious organizations that abuse their non-profit status. I don't think it's because they're religious organizations.
Though I now consider myself an ex-religious agnostic, I give cred to some of the above arguments in favor of tax-exempt retention.
As masses gradually abandon religion, how do we combine the best attributes of religion - such as the passionate philanthropy Carol K. & Joseph Tuerff note above - into secular life?
While I cannot force people see it, it seems the best of secular life also gradually influences religion. Religion always seems to be playing catch-up with science and human rights?
Whether so-called "science " or "religion" , as practiced by humans, just in the last three centuries , has done more evil and caused more destruction of society and the planet is a useless debate. "Science" and "religion" are both at fault, because of immature, ignorant and selfish humans who practice them. "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts": physicist Richard Feynman He worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the nuclear bomb, and he was the youngest group leader in the project's theoretical division. When the first test bomb was detonated in 1945, he was ecstatic about the project's success, but soon the real-world implications of this new weapon began to trouble him.
He made enormous contributions to the field of quantum mechanics and electrodynamics, and he had fun doing it. It frustrated him that so few laypeople shared his awareness of the wonder in science. Feyman refused to believe that scientific inquiry came at the expense of beauty.
He said: "Stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it."
Not to forget the ever increasing religious sponsored infomercials we are bombarded with on television, depicting destitue children in foreign places of squalor, with the host begging for our much needed donations to keep the child from dying of starvation.Then there is the multitude of Church owned television networks who 24 hous a day,7 days a week, 365 days a year are asking for donations for a variety of different reasons, from keeping the televised show on the airways, to feeding the hungry in Africa, to relocating Russian Jews to Israel in preparation for the end of days. You name it and the show's host are asking for associated donations, with all charitable donations and monetary gifts being tax free.
Church organizations are afforded local, state and federal infrastucture usage of basic services such as street lighting, schools, water, sewer, roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, waterways, emergency medical services as well as police, fire, and military protection. Yet they are exempt from paying taxes for using such services. Services which all American citizens and businesses are required to pay taxes to use.
Such organizations are also exempt from paying taxes on member tithing and other monetary gifts and donations. Such received monies when combined as an annual income for the millions of religious organizations in America, are in the hundreds of billions of non taxable dollars. Neither do religious organizations pay taxes on property upon which their religious institutions are built nor the buildings and furnishings themselves. Such property tax exemption also includes buildings and properties which are church owned and operated as schools, colleges, universities and siminaries or other types of scholastic institutions.
The U.S. Constitution does not provide for the exemption of taxes for religious organizations. They were afforded that exemption by U.S. Congressional Legislature which granted the tax exemption status through various Bills of Legislation. My two questions would be, WHY, were religious organization given tax exemption in the first place and WHY, should the tax exempt status not be repealed for the fairness and equality in taxation for all Americans.
Churches and Religious Organizations are a business, a very, very, big business in America today, regardless of how they protray themselves to be otherwise.
Since the government has taken the position that it can choose to tax the "church" or not to tax the "church" it has assumed power over the "church" thereby making the principle of separation of church and state of non-effect.
Your attempt to make the Constitutional right concerning the Separation of Church and State, as no longer being in effect, under the premise that, that "Right," has been voided by the federal government, because the IRS has in your words, "the power" to impose certain taxes on the Church, is about the most pathetically unintelligent arguementative statement as I have ever read concerning the issue of "Separation of Church and State."
For your uninformed benefit, the U.S. Constitution provides for Congress to make laws as are required for society and to impose such laws upon the citizen population, businesses, corporations and all other entities operating within the United States and It's Territories.
{i.e.} Laws which also apply to Religious Organizations. Such laws have nothing to do with the Separation of Church and State, but refer specifically to commerce within The U.S. Laws which were Bills of Legislation passed by our (yours and my) Representatives in Congress.
Although you Religious Conservatives would like it to be otherwise, no Church nor any other Religious Organization in the United States, is a Sovereign Nation. They are an entity operating within the United States and are therefore subject to the laws of the United States, including laws of taxation.
Where did the principle come from?
The best way to eliminate the controversay is to eliminate income taxes for all businesses and organizations. Tax only personal income using a flat tax or establish a national sales tax. This would pretty much eliminate the need for the almost useless and abusive IRS government agency. It would be hard to convince the career politicians to eliminate the most complicated tax system the world has ever known because it would keep them from doing their I-know-better-than-you-how-to-run-your-life social engineering.