Don’t Tax the Churches
Let’s kill this terrible idea once and for all
What are taxes? Here are some definitions:
“A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures.” (Wikipedia)
“Taxes are mandatory contributions levied on individuals or corporations by a government entity — whether local, regional or national. Tax revenues finance government activities, including such public works and services as roads and schools, or programs like Social Security and Medicare.” (Investopedia)
“[A] tax is an amount of money that you have to pay to the government so that it can pay for public services such as road and schools.” (Collins Dictionary)
Now, what does “separation of church and state” mean? Here’s an excerpt from a letter that that President Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut. It was his response to the Association’s concern about their state’s constitution and its lack of protection for religious liberty.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
Here’s Merriam-Webster on “separation of church and state”: “the act or state of keeping government and religion separate from each other.” To be sure, there has always been some encroachment by religion into governmental matters (“some” is putting it charitably; see the considerable influence of evangelical churches), but what many “tax the churches” folk fail to see is that taxing churches would only give them permission to encroach even more.
On Twitter I see lots of calls from atheists to tax the churches. One person wrote: “I am here for the Catholic Church losing its tax-free status.” Another wrote: “Unless Joel Osteen agrees to return his Ferraris, Rolexes, and gulf stream jets, churches should pay taxes.” Others see taxes as a penalty, as a way to stick it to the churches (whereas churches would only see taxes as a cost of doing business). Jefferson would disagree. Taxing churches would not only nullify Jefferson’s concurrence with those Danbury Baptists that church and state remain forever separate, it would ipso facto institutionalize the relationship between church and state (also see James Madison’s letter to Secretary of State Edward Livingston).
But what about public safety? What if a church is in flames and needs the fire department? What if some kind of police action is needed? Because churches don’t pay taxes, and because firefighters and police officers are paid through the tax system, what is a church to do? It’s obvious that a church uses the same city resources as everyone else, which means that if a church catches on fire, the fire department will come in to help — not just to save the church, but to protect the community around it. So how does the city pay for this protection if churches aren’t paying taxes?
Churches do one of three things or perhaps an admixture of them as a way to have access to these services: they pay fees (unlike a tax, a fee is earmarked for a specific service); they use monies from donations; or they work with third-party contractors. Now, am I acquainted with the details of these financial arrangements? I am not. Why would I be? This information is private. But in lieu of paying taxes, common sense tells us that some arrangement has been set up for churches to acquire the services of the police and the fire department (and for the latter, note that a church would also be subjected to fire inspections and to pay fines if something is amiss in the same manner as any secular institution or organization would).
If churches paid taxes, imagine the mischief they would get up to if they found themselves in a position to avail themselves of government connections. Imagine a tax-paying organization called the Chamber of Faith in a position to lobby the government for something. What could that something be? I’m sure Christian nationalists have some ideas. And then there’s the New Apostolic Reformation, a right-wing Christian sect that has become popular with several Republicans, most notably Doug Mastriano, who lost his bid for governor in Pennsylvania in 2022. As The New Republic has noted, the group has “one clear goal in mind — ruling over the United States and, eventually, the world.”
It’s not ideal, to say the least, to have a government mix it up with religion. Look at Spain after the Spanish Civil War: The Catholic Church collaborated with the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. And while Russia is considered a secular state, the country’s ties to the Russian Orthodox Church are quite close, so much so that the church gave Vladimir Putin moral approval for his invasion of Ukraine, which is to say that an abuse of power can become a free pass: “Hey, I’ve got God on my side, so what I’m doing is fine.”
For society to become more secular, which is the desired goal of this writer (and America is becoming more secular, albeit slowly), religion needs to fade out, not crushed or taxed away (a reference to the Ronald Reagan adage that if you want less of something, tax it). Let the churches pay their fees for public services. As for the future, religion will likely be with us for some time to come, which means we should stick to religious freedom, an ideal that would be nullified if government and religion partnered in any fashion. So nope on Osteen returning the Ferraris, nope on returning the Rolexes, and nope on returning his gulf stream jets. If Osteen wants to fleece his flock, that’s between him and his gullible followers who fill his coffers.
There’s a slogan from the American Revolution expressed by the American colonists against Great Britain: “no taxation without representation.” Or as a friend piled on in an email to me: “When you allow churches to pay taxes, you give them equal representation in our governmental system. I want them excluded from all realms of governance. Taxation of churches brings a powerful voice to the table and I don’t want them there.” Or to quote Denis Diderot: “The distance between the throne and the altar can never be too great.”
So let’s not tax churches, not now and not ever. I almost typed “amen” as a sign-off, but you get the picture.
Barry Lyons is a freelance writer living in New York City. He is no fan of religion, as if you haven’t figured that out already.
