“Wanna” buy a Church?

One effective way to help mute the voice of religion in America is to impose taxation on church property. An increased financial burden would of necessity curtail the outreach of religion’s voice.

Conversely, to so impose taxation would greatly relieve the already heavy tax burden which most property owners bear.

Which of the foregoing will bring greater benefit to the people of America?

Should taxation be imposed upon the people who constitute our churches and synagogues as they own property corporately to the end of being God’s voice among our people?

The answer, in the judgment of this writer, is “NO!”

Currently being awaited is a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on a case which was argued on November 19 of last year. One Frederick Walz has challenged the legality of such exemptions. If the government rules in favor of Walz it will be felt by all who support churches. Small churches, unable to pay, will cease to be and the government will have the interesting job of selling or otherwise disposing of property which has been taken over in lieu of payment.

Again the justices of the Supreme Court will ponder the first amendment to the Constitution (Article I – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; …”). It would appear that a judgment must be made as to whether church tax exemption tends to establish religion. If this is the conclusion to which the Court comes, then it could be argued that the freedom which churches have to purchase land and property tends to establish religion and might well be curtailed if consistency is to prevail.

In Article I of the amendments to the Constitution, much attention is often given to the first clause as the second is passed over lightly. According to this clause, Congress is to make no law which will inhibit the free exercise of religion. Certainly a law which taxes a small church out of existence in terms of its building-oriented (and, we trust, God-oriented) corporate life would tend to “inhibit” the free exercise of the religion of this people.

Overall tax exemption for religious institutions, as has been the case, is the people saying to the churches through their government, “You are all on equal footing – government will not establish you nor hinder you – speak what you believe -it is the principles which you espouse that make possible a functional, viable democracy.”

Someone might counter with the insistence that to render religious bodies tax exempt is to support or establish them to that extent. The fallacy here would be the assumption that there exists authoritative valid, standard of procedure which says churches “ought” to be taxed but the Congress has bestowed exemption,

The real situation seems to be that historically our people saw the wisdom of separating the church and the state. There would no State Church established and supported by the state and the free churches would not be required, as institutions, to support that state. The people of that day were, by and large, immersed in a view of life which perceived that religion was the soul of our nation and the fiber of its future. To restrict religious expression through the burden of taxation would tend to erode the foundation of democracy. The people, through government, did not bestow any great concession of exemption upon churches in opposition to what “ought” to be. They did the only thing that made common sense – they permitted churches to expend all their resources in the proclamation of religious tenets. That’s the way it has been and the way it ought to be.

It is interesting to note, according to the January 16 issue of “Christianity Today,” that of the eleven amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs which were filed in the case known as “Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York,” Walz. only one supported Walz. It was submitted by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Could it be that there is a relationship between “prohibiting of the free exercise of religion” in forbidding prayer and Bible reading in public schools and the efforts to impose the burden of taxation on churches?