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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
**** ****
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1502
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
By Joseph McCabe
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1930,
Haldeman-Julius Company
**** ****
WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF
CHURCH PROPERTY
A week or two ago I stood before the Cathedral of Notre Dame
at Paris, enjoying one more both the superb skill of the builders
an the joyous cynicism with which they had mingled piety and
impiety in the sculpture. Paris always has surprises for me but the
most singular was that a French woman of mature years, apparently
normal intelligence, an fair education came to me and asked: "Can
you tell me, sir, what church this is?" I had just been explaining
to a friend how the large island in the Seine in which the
cathedral stands was once Paris; how half of it had been occupied
by the spacious palace and the soaring cathedral, and the citizens
had Just tucked their dark little homes into such odd corners as
God and the king did not require. Sixty years ago the French booted
their last monarch across the frontier, and now, it seem some of
them have so far forgotten religion that they have to ask
foreigners the name of a church for which America would probably
pay a billion dollars.
Few countries have advanced as rapidly as France, which is one
of the least sentimental and most logical of nations, but we have
all advanced so far that one-half of our life is anachronistic to
the other half. The exemption of churches from taxation is one of
the worst anachronisms. It meant originally that the church was a
state within the state, having its own law and deciding itself when
and in what measure it might, in times of pressure; contribute to
the public treasury. When this arrogant claim was disallowed,
church property still evaded taxation on the ground that it served
a high public purpose, like, charitable or educational
institutions, which were then entirely voluntary, and it ought
therefore, to have at least this subsidy of an exemption from
taxation. There was no need in those days to inquire very closely
into the soundness of the public service. Practically the whole
community used the churches and, if a tax were imposed on them, the
community would have to pay it. The church was exempt on pretty
much the same grounds as the civic hall. It was like transferring
your money from one pocket to another. Now considerably less than
half the adults of any Community use the churches, and the last
argument for exempting them from taxation is quite discredited.
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
RICH AND EMPTY CHURCHES
Church property in the United States is said to be worth about
four billion dollars, and it is increasing rapidly in value. Drive
round the fringes of any growing town or City and see how eligible
sites have been secured for the building of new churches; how old
sites that have risen ten or twenty fold in value are quietly sold;
how the clergy can hang on to city sites until the value is
colossal, while any other concern doing so little business would
have been driven out long ago by the fair incidence of taxation. In
the inner ring of large cities there are churches with fifty or a
hundred worshipers while business men pay appalling prices for the
land all around them. And the majority of us are supinely
protecting the business. Of the majority of church-users the great
bulk are women and children, and of the genuinely religious male
taxpayers the enormous majority live in the country or small towns.
We do not much miss the taxes on their Little Bethels. The
anachronism is that city property of immense value is used by only
about a tenth of the taxpayers of this city, yet the nine-tenths
lazily subsidize it by remitting taxation. Even business men seem
never to reflect that in remitting, say, a million dollars in
taxation on buildings which nine-tenths of them do not want they
are paying out of their own pockets a million dollars a year to the
people who do want them.
Sometimes they tell us with an air of sweet reasonableness
that the churches are "doing good work" and that, after all, the
individual misses only a few dollars a year by agreeing to the
immunity. It is sheer mental laziness. If we taxed the churches,
and they then appealed to these non-churchgoers who appreciate
their good work to find the tax for them, probably none would
contribute a dollar. There would be a speedy revaluation of the
services of the churches. Take Paris. The total church-going
population is only about one-tenth of the entire community, and it
consists mainly of women and children. Now, no matter how much we
may admire the French woman, she is more rigorously excluded from
public life than woman is in any other advanced civilization. Yet
these men, nineteen of twenty of whom are not in the slightest
degree influenced by the churches, have, most particularly since
they ceased to go to church, purified the city of the last traces
of its ancient savagery. It is, proportionately, the law of the
world. There are two sets of men whom we would like to see
influenced, and we would not mind paying a few dollars for the
influence. They are the dishonest hypocrites and the honest
criminals. The churches flatly refuse to influence the first and
are quite incapable of touching the second class.
SWEEP OUT MENTAL RUBBISH
Amongst my many eccentric and utopian ideas there is one that
calls for a sort of mental sanitary service in a modern city. I
loathe the idea of compulsory education after the age of twenty,
yet in some form we ought to have a public service that will sweep
and dust our minds periodically and provide a very large
incinerator for the rubbish. Even the most cleanly-minded of us
occasionally. discover that we have for years harbored a piece of
mental junk. There lies on my desk, as I am writing, a little work
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
on the Stoics by that very distinguished Hellenist, well-known
skeptic, and most nimble-minded and charming of men, Prof. Gilbert
Murray, and I open it to see if I can find any nonsense. Here it is
at once. Murray likens the Stoic "God' to a "Friend behind
phenomena," and he Says that we all have a "yearning" for this and
an "almost ineradicable instinctive convietton" of its existence.
I doubt if one man in a hundred who got beyond what one might call
the convalescent stage after recovering from religion has the least
trace of such a yearning and conviction. Murray is no man in the
street but a very distinguished scholar of particularly alert mind
and acquaintance with men. One can imagine how easily less clear-
headed men will let these illusions accumulate in their minds,
especially in connection with religion.
We cannot, of course, get my intellectual sanitary service,
and so those of us who feel impatient about it must do the sweating
and dusting as we can. And one of the best and most promising
opportunities ought to be a public discussion of the immunity of
the churches from taxation. How many of us -- I do hot mean by "us"
the militant and vigilant folk who read the Haldeman-Julius
Publications, but modern men generally -- genuinely regard the
black-coated gentleman we meet in the street as so valuable a
person that we will pay his taxes for him? Very few, surely. Some
of us, it is true, listen to the periodical Bolshevik scare and
persuade ourselves that all chance of making a million dollars will
disappear with the church steeples, but it is a poor fallacy. My
Bolshevik friends, and they are numerous, are the last persons in
the world to listen to sermons, and any stockbroker who sends a
hundred dollars to the nearest church with the idea that he is
protecting Wall Street ought to sit down and think a little. A
Preacher in Fifth Avenue, where the danger of the spread of
Bolshevism is not acute, can most eloquently vindicate our present
economic order. But a preacher in a district where the workers show
some inclination to listen to radicalism either does not open his
mouth or he proves that Jesus was the forerunner of Lenin.
PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS
We ask people only to use common sense. The churches are today
private institutions in which certain people say prayers and sing
hymns and listen to dissertations on sin. It is a free country, and
even the Communist or the Fascist does not want to prevent them.
But why in the name of all that is wonderful should the rest of us
pay them some $200,000,000 a year for doing it? A moderate tax on
church property would raise that, so we are meantime funding it
ourselves. You may suggest that it is not very onerous for us
individually, but that is not the issue. The burden we bear is a
just charge of intellectual laziness, of docility to usurpers, of
a confusion of thought which, if we generally tolerated it, would
wreck our homes or businesses in six months. We smile at the ladies
who put on an extra foot of frock because some hidden mandarins of
fashion say that this is now "the thing." Most of us men are just
as bad. If it is the fashion to exempt churches from taxation we
acquiesce without even inquiring what the real motives or who the
real dictators are.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
To many of us, of course, a rigorous campaign for the taxation
of church property would mean immeasurably more than a financial
readjustment, just as the present immunity of the churches means to
them immeasurably more than the two hundred million dollars at
which the product of a tax is estimated. The immunity means that
they have state-sanction, which is supposed to be the sanction of
everybody except a few cranks, for their profession of rendering
valuable services. A very long stride will be taken in the
direction of rationalizing the country when we remove this public
endorsement of the claims of the churches. I do not suggest that
there will be a serious diminution of worshipers in a chapel when
they are told from the pulpit that in future they have to find a
new fund of a thousand dollars or so, but we shall meet them on
more equal terms, as one body of citizens differing from another.
The chief thing that prevents me from lapsing into that comfortable
mental sleepiness to which a man of my age is entitled, is the
stimulation of fighting the prosperity of humbugs, the way in which
the clergy and the aristocracy and all sorts of people with
improper privileges seem to smile at me. I dream occasionally, as
I smoke my last four pipes at night, of forming a League of Youths,
a Thundering Legion of young folk who will go out into the streets
with me looking for lies to scotch, for usurpers to dethrone, for
hypocrites to unmask, for injustices to set right...
MAKE THIS A REAL FIGHT
Dreams, of course, I am always dreaming. But it seems that my
energetic friend and colleague Haldeman-Julius is going to do
something of the kind and to begin with this valuable campaign to
rouse the nation to some sense of this absurd and anachronistic
immunity of church property. Let me urge those many readers whom I
have found in America not merely to support him but to make it a
real and live campaign. Never mind the size and wealth of the
churches, Never mind, the contrast between the forty million
perfectly drilled and organized and doped churchgoers and the sad
disorganization and scattering of the eighty million non-
churchgoers. Talk about it. Make people read about it. Teach people
the joy of fighting, of being a personality, of raising one's head
above the stream. It is as good an issue as any to start with, and
sooner or later the start has to be made. Get young folk to blot
out of their Birthday Books that pernicious maxim: Great is Truth
and it will prevail, Great is the average man -- if you can
persuade him to make a great nuisance of himself. A reader of my
Little Blue Books wrote to tell me how he propped one against the
cruet at his lunch-shop day after day, and how religious folk who
recognize those mischievous little explosives at twenty yards'
distance got the manager to ask him to go to some place of which I
forget the name. That's the spirit. My milkman asked my housekeeper
the other day on what subject I am writing at present. "On God,"
she said, "and he guesses he'll knock him off his perch." The good
news spread in the dairy world. The girl at the circulating library
...
In short, quite ordinary folk can, if they just know when to
be quiet and when to be noisy, when to be Polite and when to curse,
but to keep on doing whichever is advisable, help the world along.
The work depends more and more on such folk. Societies and leagues
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
and associations either prosper and fatally degenerate, like some
on Which I have wasted decades, or reach too small a number. I
suggest that readers of the Haldeman-Julius Publications try the
experiment of making this a live campaign. Do not expect to convert
Mr. Hoover in the first month. That is not the Point. The idea is
that here is a chance of rousing great numbers of people to a sense
of one foolish anachronism that we tolerate in connection with
religion, and it will reverberate in the mind and make people
perceive a dozen others. Get out the figures, if you can, for your
own town. Look up the churches with hundred-thousand-dollar sites
and a hundred worshippers. let the press know that there are live
men and women reading it as well as Rip Van Winkles. Make editors
realize that in the majority of towns today the majority of readers
do not go to church and do not really care a cent about the work of
the churches. it might load to the disappearance of those Saturday
and Sunday features that linger from the days when America was a
Christian country, to a bolder note about encroachments on our
liberties, to real news about the thought-currents of the modern
world. Editors know quite well that the bulk of people are not
seriously interested today in church work, at least in any town
that is more than a mile in diameter, but they have to listen to
the noisy folk. Let them have a noise. Blessed are the peace-makers
for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Let them have it. Say rather:
Blessed are the fight-makers, for they shall possess the earth.
A CAMPAIGN OF SANITY
Seriously, a lively, rousing, country-wide discussion, the
sort of discussion that makes the editor of a daily call for a
symposium and the editor of a weekly or monthly wire off for the
opinion on the matter of Babe Ruth, Clara Bow, and Calvin Coolidge,
would be a good opening for a new campaign on behalf of sanity. The
pretext that we want to tax the house of God is hardly like to be
raised. It might provoke the Catholic to tell the Protestant, and
vice versa, what precisely he thinks of his preposterous claim that
God is in his church. The only argument that can plausibly be
raised against taxation is that the Churches do so much good that
civilization depends upon their exertions. Have Your machine-guns
ready for that. It is just the sort of plea we should like them to
set up. A good broadside of facts from history and about the
relation of modern progress and decay of religion, would open the
eyes of large bodies of readers whom we cannot ordinarily lure into
reading truthful statements. I wish I were in it, but a mere
foreigner could be bluffed into silence -- especially such a small
and modest foreigner -- and here in England the organizations that
ought to start a fight have dwindled into mutual admiration
societies and refuges for homeless mystics.
Many will, no doubt, have recourse to the plausible cry that
we are stirring up sectarian strife. Do they mean that only
political strife is to be permitted in a prosperous community? Or
do they mean that dervishes shall be encouraged to roam the country
with frantic denunciations of science, and professors encouraged to
encourage them by prostituting their learning, and the rest of us
hold our tongues? Or do they mean that the only subject on which
people cannot behave themselves when they begin to dispute about it
is religion? We people who seriously hold that religion has nothing
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
to do with the progress or maintenance of civilization are very
numerous today. But no one talked of sectarian bitterness and civic
strife when, quite recently, we were, apropos of the imaginary
atrocities in Russia, denounced violently from Boston to San
Francisco. Certainly we should smile if anybody suggests that we
must not mention a tax on churches for fear of stirring up
sectarian strife. On the contrary, we should see such sectarian
amity as has never before been seen on this planet. We should
probably see the Archbishop of Baltimore arm in arm with the
Fundamentalist leader, Bishop Manning linked with Aimee, leading a
great procession along Michigan Boulevard, and calling for the
lightning of the Lord upon these ruffianly people who want to make
them pay their own taxes.
That is all that it amounts to. That particular ten million
dollars that the churches of the city would yield if they were
taxed is paid at present by the citizens, most of whom profit
neither directly nor indirectly in the work of the churches. The
threat might even drive them into making themselves useful. They
might cease to talk for a time about our wills and have a look at
our crimes. They might discover that it is not entirely
inconsistent with the principles of the Christian Church that its
ministers should unite to rid a city of its gunmen and dishonest
officials instead of talking picturesquely about them in the
pulpit. I see an endless prospect of good results. ... But I see
most clearly of all that this is a transparently just and sound
plea, one that could unite millions of men and women, one that can
enlist the sympathies of practical people, yet one that would be an
excellent beginning of teaching a nation to think seriously on the
new conditions of our age.
OUR COMPLETE PROGRAM AGAINST CLERICALISM
1. We demand the taxation of ALL Church property.
2. We demand that church lobbying be resisted by free men as
one of the major evils that threaten the principles of secular
freedom, human rights and realistic Progress in government.
3. We demand that the Bible be kept out of the public schools
and that the public schools shall not join in any scheme of
religious propaganda.
4. We demand the complete rejection of the principle of
Christian morality -- religious dogma and doctrine -- in the making
of our laws, with special reference to the religiously inspired
intolerance of our laws concerning sex and censorship.
5. We demand the repeal of all anti-evolution laws and the
vigilant prevention of all attempts by clericalism to dictate, even
though under the treacherous guise of "democracy," the course of
teaching in our state schools and universities.
6. We demand the repeal of blue Sunday laws, and the absolute
rejection by government of the dogma that this day is sacred or
that it is to be dominated by preachers and pious zealots.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
7. We demand the repeal of all blasphemy laws and all laws
prohibiting Atheists from testifying in court or from holding
public office.
8. We demand that government shall cease the employment of
chaplains in the national congress, in the state legislature. and
in state institutions.
9. We demand that government shall strictly refuse financial
aid to sectarian, religious institutions -- whether schools,
hospitals or whatnot -- and that religion, in all its enterprises,
shall pay its own way.
10. We demand the ending of all favoritism to religion or
recognition of religion by government -- that is, we demand the
complete secularization of government both in form and function.
**** ****
A PREACHER ADVOCATES CHURCH
TAXATION
THE Rev. L.M. Birkhead
(Minister, All Souls' Unitarian Church, Kansas City, mo.)
One of the most amazing and paradoxical of modern Political
situations is that of the United States committed fundamentally to
the absolute divorce of church and state, and yet contributing
indirectly, by means of the exemption of church property from
taxation, more than $250,000,000 annually to the support of the
church.
Theoretically in America we maintain that the aim of taxation
is "to secure the equal distribution of the burden of civil
society." Theoretically we maintain that our government is founded
on the principle of the separation of church and state. The
fundamental law of the land states explicitly that "Congress shall
make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof." But it is pure hypocrisy to
maintain that we carry out these principles in practice. The
exemption of church property from taxation is a plain denial of
these principles.
And Incidentally we might mention many other evidences of a
too close connection between Christianity and government in
America, as, for instance, the employment of chaplains in
legislative bodies, in the army, and in other government
institutions, the appropriation of public money for charitable and
educational institutions of a sectarian character, the compulsory
reading of the Christian Bible in the public schools of a number of
states, the appointment of religious festivals and holidays by the
President of the United States and governors of the various states,
laws compelling the keeping of Sunday as the Sabbath, and many
other such regulations.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
It is claimed for the church that it ought to be exempt from
taxation because of the, valuable social service which it renders
to human suffering. It is well just to keep in mind two facts:
first, that very few churches are actually engaged in ministering
to the poor (other agencies render such services much more
efficiently), and, second, that the churches so engaged never do so
from the highest motives; they are always thinking of winning
supporters and members.
But granting that the church is a useful institution, " if you
were to exempt that which is useful," to quote the wisdom of
Ingersoll, "You would exempt every trade and every profession." Or,
to use the words of James F. Morton, Jr., In his recent book
'Exempting the Churches,' "Our great philanthropists, scientists,
inventors, and educators are not exempt from taxation on the ground
of the great good they are doing."
The church contributes services to the state as a police power
more valuable than the mere pittance it might pay on its tax exempt
property, the friends of religion claim. But does it? I ask this
question in all sincerity. It may be there was a time when people
could be frightened into being good by the fear of hell. It may be
that Voltaire was right in his day when he said that he didn't
believe in hell, but he wanted his servants to believe in It. But
that time is gone, for hell has been abolished and the church has
lost its power (if it ever possessed it) to keep "bad people" in
order. It is illuminating in this connection to read the statistics
with respect to the religion of criminals confined in our
penitentiaries.
To tax church property would put many churches out of
existence, the defenders of the exemption of church property say.
If an organization cannot pay its way, if it hasn't members and
friends who believe in it sufficiently to support it, why should
those of us who do not believe in it at all, who believe, in fact,
that it is a vicious, superstitious institution, be compelled to
support it?
We all agree that there may be some excuse for exempting
schools, orphanages, and hospitals from taxation, for they are
performing functions the state would be obliged to perform. But
religion is another matter -- a very personal and private matter
which is no affair of the state.
It cannot be said too frequently to the American people that
religion is a strictly private affair, and that it is never the
duty of the state to interest itself in either the life or death of
the church. The church is not a public institution in the sense
that it performs any duties which the state would have to perform
in the absence of the church,
To tax church property is "robbery of God," we are told by the
defenders of the faith. But which God? The Methodist, Baptist,
Catholic, or Jewish, Fundamentalist, or Modernist?
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
Since the churches are subsidized by the whole community -- by
means of tax exemption -- one would suppose that they would be
community institutions. But such is not the case -- they are very
exclusive and are quick to deny their privileges to the public
except upon very exacting conditions.
It is rather illuminating to note that, though all of the
states of the Union exempt church property. from taxation, there is
expressed in the legislation (pertaining to this matter of church
property) in many states a suspicion that religions institutions
might speculate in land or might use their buildings and property
for profit in the name of religion.
in many states, limitations are placed upon the amount of
church property which can be exempted from taxation. In some
states, churches are limited to one acre (on which exemption can be
claimed) within the city, and to five acres a mile or more from the
city,
In the state of New Hampshire, the amount of church property
exempt from taxation is limited to $150,000. In Iowa, church land
is exempt up to, but not exceeding, 160 acres; in North Dakota, the
limit is one acre. In Missouri, the exemption is restricted to one
acre within the municipality or within one mile of the
municipality, and to five acres if one or more miles from the
municipality. In Kansas, exemption applies only to buildings used
exclusively for religious purposes and "grounds not to exceed 10
acres." Montana places the exemption of church property on the
following basis: "Such property as is used exclusively as places of
actual religious worship, but no more than is necessary for such
purposes."
The state of Washington exempts all churches, built and
supported by donations, whose seats are free, and ground not
exceeding 120 feet by 200 feet, together with parsonage. and "the
area of unoccupied ground exempted in connection with both church
and parsonage shall not exceed 120 feet by 120 feet and the grounds
are to be used wholly for religious purposes."
Some of the states place no limit on the property exempted if
the property is used exclusively for religious purposes. The
statutes in such states read; "all buildings and grounds, when used
solely and exclusively for religious purposes," or "when not used
for profit," or "when not held by way of investment."
It would be interesting to investigate the enforcement of
these statutes, to discover, if possible, how law-abiding church
organizations (so loud in their defense of the 18th Amendment and
the Volstead Act) really are. I dare say that it would be very easy
to find many instances of religious organizations exceeding the
limit of church property exempt or evading taxes on property used
for other than religious purposes,
What one of our leading weekly magazines called "saintly
profiteering" is quite common among religious organizations. Look
at New York City, for instance, where more than $500,000,000 worth
of church property is exempt from taxation! The Madison Avenue
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
Methodist Episcopal Church of New York City recently made $650,000
profit by selling its church property for an apartment house site.
A Jewish synagogue, Temple Emanu.El, made $1,000,000 clear from the
sale of its property a few years ago. St. Patrick's Cathedral, New
York City, is said to be located on property worth $10,000,000. The
fabulous wealth of Trinity Church, located at the head of Wall
Street, is familiar to everyone. But New York is not the only city
where such conditions prevail, though its case is extreme. There
is, for instance, the case of a great midwestern religious
organization which recently won from the Federal government the
right to have its income exempt from taxation -- and the income
involved in this contest with the government amounted to several
million dollars. I refer to the Unity society of Practical
Christianity with International headquarters in Kansas City, Mo.
A commission on taxation reported to Governor Pinchot of
Pennsylvania a few years ago that in the city of Philadelphia,
14.77 percent of the total property was exempt from taxation, and
of this 14.25: percent consisted of churches, parochial schools,
and buildings for teachers of parochial schools. The commission
reported that it was convinced that this condition constitutes a
subtle and dangerous form of securing a state subsidy for religious
institutions. "However commendable the purposes of these
institutions may be," the committee recorded, "it is nevertheless
a fact that the rapid increase in welfare facilities and the
generous donations to welfare work are gradually creating a non-
taxed class of property which is increasing more rapidly than the
wealth of the community, thereby forcing additional tax burdens
upon the taxable wealth to an unfair degree."
The commission recommended, therefore, that religious and
charitable institutions be required to pay taxes on their land
values, leaving improvements exempt.
Very few of our political leaders have ever had the courage to
speak out on this matter of taxing church property. Be it said to
the glory of General Ulysses S. Grant that while he was President
he gave expression to prophetic wisdom in the following words
contained in a message to Congress (in 1875):
I would call your attention to the importance of
correcting an evil, that if permitted to continue, will
probably lead to great trouble in our land before the close of
the nineteenth century. It is the acquisition of vast amounts
of untaxed church property. In 1850, I believe, the church
property of the United states which paid no taxes, municipal
or state, amounted to $87,000,000. in 1860 the amount had
doubled. In 1870 it was $354,483,587. BY 1900, without a
check, it is safe to say, this property will reach a sum
exceeding $3,000,000,000. So vast a sum, receiving all the
protection and benefits of a government, without bearing its
proportion of the burdens and expenses of the same, will not
be looked upon acquiescently by those who have to pay the
taxes. In a growing country, where real estate enhances so
rapidly with time, as in the United States, there is scarcely
a limit to the wealth that may be acquired by Corporations,
religious or otherwise, If allowed to retain real estate
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
without taxation. The contemplation of so vast a property as
here alluded to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration.
without constitutional authority, and through blood. I would
suggest the taxation of all property equally.
It would be almost impossible to get any sort of a political,
intellectual or social leader of today to speak with such boldness
concerning the church and its failings.
"One of the clearest and most audacious of the few recent
utterances on the taxation of church property has been made by
Professor Harry Elmor Barnes in his 'The Twilight of Christianity.'
If he is not severely punished by the church for so forthright a
condemnation of the church, then I am no prophet. Barnes wrote:
One aspect of the economics of religion is the economic
waste connected with the maintenance of ecclesiastical
edifices and their operation. One could conceive of a type of
religion for which large expenditures would be economically
justifiable on the ground that the churches were rendering a
very valuable social, economic and ethical service to the
community, but the activities of orthodox churches in America
must be regarded as rather worse than useless.
The hypothetical adjustment of man to an imaginary
supernatural world and the salvation of mankind from a non-
existent hell cannot be regarded as a service of any merit
whatever. The churches may incidentally offer some relief to
the poor, but it is a moot question as to whether, in the long
run, this sort of charity is not socially disastrous.
By 1926, the annual expenditures of religious
organizations in America for salaries, repairs. payments on
debts and benevolence were $814,370,000. To this sum should be
added large donations to the cause of foreign missions. The
writer of these lines is well known to be a person of pacifist
leanings who earnestly deplores our present excessive
expenditures for modern armaments, but it is certainly more
justifiable to expend large sums of money to protect ourselves
against potential earthly enemies, than to appropriate
infinitely greater amounts to protect ourselves from wholly
imaginary enemies in the postulated spirit world. We may be in
no danger from Japan or Great Britain, but they certainly
menace us more than the devil.
In 1926, the value of church edifices was $3,842,500,000.
These are free from taxation, though they benefit by all sorts
of public expenditures such as fire protection, transportation
facilities, police protection and the like. Probably no other
step would be allowed with such definite practical
consequences as the reasonable taxation of church property.
In addition to the churches, we must consider the
parochial schools which are maintained at great expense by the
faithful, though in many cases parents can ill-afford to make
the necessary contributions.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
The annual expenditures in America today for this purpose
of adjusting Americans to supernatural powers certainly total
far more than a billion dollars. One can scarcely refrain from
remarking upon what might be done with this money if wisely
and directly expended for the secular betterment of mankind,
or even used to support modernized religious cults and
organizations whose aims are chiefly related to social
improvement and aesthetic appreciation.
The present economic status of the American Church -- rightly
characterized as "a tax-dodging and tax-eating institution" --
defies the courage and sagacity of liberals. As liberals --
theists, atheists, agnostics, humanists -- we are contributing to
the support of religious institutions which are founded upon
superstition and whose influence is vicious. This is certainly a
violation of the fundamental human liberties and decencies. By no
sort of sophistry can we establish any significant difference
between appropriating money for a sect and relieving it of
taxation. The church at present is enjoying a form of legalized
graft, for it is in no sense rendering a service equal to the
benefits it enjoys under our liberal laws. The separation of church
and state is, so far, merely theoretical. The church is subsidized
to the extent of more than $250,000,000 annually by relief from
taxation. Its property has increased in value until today it totals
more than $6,000,000,000, though some conservative students put the
figure at $4 000,000,000.
If the church hasn't the decency to come forward and confess
that it has been enjoying special privileges which it did not
deserve, and voluntarily give up these privileges, have we liberals
the courage to say that the church's abuses of our liberties must
cease? And have we the boldness and skill to put the church in its
proper place?
This is one of the most challenging labors confronting
liberals today.
**** ****
WHY CHURCHES ARE EXEMPTED FROM
TAXATION
A WEIRD LIST OF THE "USEFUL PUBLIC SERVICES"
PERFORMED BY THE TEMPLES OF SUPERSTITION
PRESBYTERIAN -- Exempted from taxation for "useful public
service" of teaching the doctrine that God in the mystic beginning
of things settled the destination of each human being, scheduling
some of them inevitably to heaven and most of them unescapably to
hell.
METHODIST -- Exempted from taxation for the "useful public
service" of teaching that all men are sinners, that Jesus Christ
died to Save from sin all men who believe in the Said Christ, that
such believers are "made new creatures in Jesus Christ" and thus,
according to the rule that things which mean nothing are equal to
anything else, are "adopted as the children of God."
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
BAPTIST -- Exempted from taxation for the "useful public
service" of teaching that baptism by means of total ducking is the
only device by which men can keep out of hell.
CAMPBELLITE (Disciples of Christ) -- Exempted from taxation
for the "useful public service" of teaching that "while both Old
and New Testaments are equally inspired, both are not equally
binding upon Christians;" that "the old was God's will with
reference to the Jews, the New is his will with reference to
Christians."
JEWISH -- Exempted from taxation for the "useful public
service" of teaching that the Old Testament is the only part of the
Bible that is the authentic word of God, that the true Christ is
yet to come, and that Jews alone are "the chosen people" of God.
CATHOLIC -- Exempted from taxation for the "useful public
service" of teaching that priests can grant confession and
absolution of sins, that the sacramental wine and wafers are
magically turned into the blood and flesh of Christ, and that the
Pope is the supreme official representative of God.
LUTHERAN -- Exempted from taxation for the "useful public
service" of teaching that the miraculous Christ of the New
Testament explains all the problems of man -- "creation, man,
faith, the Word of God, the sacraments, prayer, the Church, the law
and the gospel, sin and grace."
EPISCOPAL -- Exempted from taxation for the "useful public
service" of teaching that the Nicene Creed, formulated by the early
Christian fanatics centuries before the modern age of science and
culture, is "the sufficient statement of the Christian faith" and
an explanation of the sacred mystery of mystical hocus-pocus; and
that great "spiritual" value flows in a sly and imperceptible
manner from "the two sacraments -- baptism and the supper of the
Lord -- ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of
institution and of the elements ordained by Him. ..."
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE -- Exempted from taxation for the "useful
public service" of teaching that the material world is an illusion,
that mind (completely divorced from reality) is the only reality,
and that all minds are in mortal error that do not agree with the
extravagant effusions from the mind of old "Mother" Eddy.
The other churches -- countless, disputatious, futile and
intellectually obscure -- perform "public services" that are
equally "useful." intelligent Men and women should ask themselves
whether the dissemination of these foolish rags and tags of ancient
theology is entitled to the special sanction, favoritism and
amazing tax exemption granted by the state.
**** ****
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
THE CHURCH IS A BURDEN,
NOT A BENEFIT, IN SOCIAL LIFE
by
E. Haldeman-Julius
I have no doubt that many persons -- a minority but a
zealously vociferous group -- would have so little feeling of humor
and anachronism as to claim that churches should be exempted from
taxation because they are "houses of God." It does seem that it
would be hard on a God, if any God there were, to learn a different
set of manners, beliefs and tricks in each of his denominational
"houses." But this "house of God" claim is not the reason generally
alleged for church tax exemption. The average man or woman, making
pretensions to intelligence and fairmindedness, would say that the
churches should be free from the obligation of taxes because they
have a communal usefulness of a moral and enlightening and refining
nature. Churches, these apologists would argue, have a vital place
in the social fabric and help hold men together in the texture of
civilized ethics and behavior.
This claim on behalf of the churches is not really a thin
shade of a degree better than the claim of supernaturalism. It may
have an appearance or an intention of reason, but it is easily seen
to be untenable. We have only to inquire, with specific
seriousness, what the church (taking it in general as to the
institution of religion) contributes or has ever contributed to
civilization. In what field of life, for example, does the church
usefully instruct or guide men?
It is not necessary to have a broad understanding of history
to realize that the church is the foe of knowledge. One realizes
this intellectual obscurantism and tyranny of the church more
vividly when one sees it against the background of dramatic
centuries; but, history aside, one can See this church antagonism
to knowledge operating today. The attacks upon the teaching of
evolution, culminating in several states in laws forbidding this
scientific instruction, show very clearly what the church thinks of
knowledge: it thinks that knowledge is very bad for religion and,
therefore, it sets all possible obstacles in the way of knowledge.
An uproar such as that occasioned by the sex questionnaire at the
University of Missouri reveals the hand of the church and the
influence of narrow church morality striking against the modern
scientific effort to learn soundly and sanely the art of living.
The church is compelled to compromise a good deal with the modern
spirit; but, given half an opportunity, it springs forth as the
enemy of culture.
It would be impossible for any one to maintain with any show
of plausibility that the church is beneficial in the broader
cultural life of mankind. Whatever subject the church touches, that
subject the church inevitably obscures and corrupts and reduces to
nonsense. Concerning science, concerning history, concerning
ethics, concerning literature, concerning the affairs of government
-- in one field and in all fields, the church is engaged in the
promotion or the artificial bolstering up of decadent, empty,
luridly false notions. In every branch of learning, our gains have
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
been made through secular agencies; and, naturally, this has been
so, for the church has never been interested in the development of
knowledge, regarding (in this showing its shrewdness of self-
interest, at least) the spread of culture and free thought and
realistic curiosity as unfavorable to the purposes of the church.
As a moral influence, the church has been notoriously lacking
and indeed marred with definite viciousness and error. It has
supported all the social evils (monarchy, slavery, intolerance, the
oppression of women, and the like) that shame the record of man --
and some of these evils the church has not merely supported but has
inaugurated: the appalling slaughter and vileness of bigotry and
the punishment of heretics must, as a red-splashed feature, be laid
at the door of the church. The moral notions of the church have
been at once brash and puerile. Ethics, in the view and preachment
of the church, have been subordinated to theology. No institution
has done less good and more harm in the moral sphere than has the
church. The student of history cannot avoid the conclusion that,
had it not been for the distorting influence of the church, mankind
would today be immeasurably farther advanced along the Path of a
progressive, humane, intelligent code of behavior. The church's
pronouncements on morality have always been corrupted (that is to
say, weakened and broken and rendered futile) by its refusal to
understand that morality is solely a consideration of human, social
adjustments and is, from first to last, a worldly concern. The
church's preoccupation with "sin" has disabled it from approaching
moral questions sensibly.
The church has contributed nothing to civilization. It has
progressed somewhat, and it has become a little more decent, in
reflection of the movements of civilization that have taken place
outside of the church and usually in the face of the strong
opposition of the church. But the church has always resisted the
process of civilization. It has struggled to the last ditch, by
fair means and foul, to preserve as long as it could the vestiges
of ancient and medieval theology, with all the puerile moralities
and harsh customs and medieval styles of belief.
Our gains in culture, in humanity, in social law, in
scientific achievement -- in all the practical and in all the
gentler sides of life -- have been impressively due to the efforts
of secular thinkers and workers laboring outside the church. The
church hasn't led in civilization. It has always lagged behind the
march of civilization. It has been a burden to mankind. It is a
burden today, so that to speak of its social usefulness is to
express notoriously the opposite of the truth.
There is no valid, not even a faintly plausible basis, for any
sort of claim in defense of the exemption of churches from
taxation. When the last church disappears, civilization will be
relieved of a serious and sinister burden. Meanwhile, the churches
should be made to pay their honest share of the cost of public
services which they, now enjoy freely and to which they contribute
nothing.
Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he
despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the
apologists for the church exemption answer it?
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A BIT OF CHURCH HISTORY
John W. Gunn
One thousand Years ago, the church (Roman Catholic) claimed
and, on the whole, effectually maintained supreme power in the
affairs of Europe. The church punished with torture and death those
who disagreed with its teachings. The church was the biggest
grafting Institution -- or, more plainly, robbing institution -- in
Europe, and it grew tremendously wealthy. The church admitted for
itself no obligations. It laid stern commands upon the people. It
was a vast machine of exploitation.
With the growth of independent kingdoms and monarchs who ruled
genuinely and with no light hands within their own domains, the
church still held the major share of its original power. It
maintained its "spiritual" rule, which meant, in gigantic effect,
that all rival beliefs about religion were crushed and that the
masses were compelled to continue in their submission to
ecclesiastical robbery. The state and the church were closely
united machines of tyranny and exploitation.
When secularism advanced (although it was far from complete)
and innumerable protestant sects came forth with new and strange
doctrines, established (state) churches were for long upheld both
in Protestant and Catholic countries and, frankly enough, these
churches were regarded as bulwarks of the oppressive governments
that patronized them. The church was not so powerful, but it was
still very powerful; and it was as greedy as ever.
When religious toleration (for the various believers in
religion but not equally for, opponents of all religion) was won,
the church was less powerful, although it continued to be rich. In
countries (both Protestant and Catholic) where there were
established churches, those institutions were burdens upon the
state -- in other words, centers of graft and favoritism. They were
always taking from the state (which meant from the people) -- never
contributing to the public good.
In the early days of American colonization, the church
maintained its privilege and power as it did in Europe. In
Virginia, for example, the Episcopal church (or Church of England)
was the ruling ecclesiastical machine, its doctrines absolutely
supreme and its financial demands supplied by taxation of the
citizens. In Massachusetts the sect of Calvinism held this strong,
favored position. In the early colonies, church and state were
practically the same, at any rate united in a close conspiracy of
oppression.
After the American revolution and the legal separation of
church and state, the churches were all on an equal footing and
they did not directly control nor participate in the affairs of
government. But they were favored by tax exemption, blue laws
upholding religious bigotry were enforced (although they could not
be enforced regularly and consistently) and preachers retained a
very considerable, often a commanding influence upon the opinions
of the citizens. There was no strong opposition to the church;
religion held sway intellectually; and the argument that church and
state were mutually dependent and helpful was not disputed, insofar
as it implied special privilege, (though not political power) for
the church.
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
Throughout the nineteenth century, the preachers were very
influential, but their actual power of creating or guiding opinion
slowly but certainly dwindled, as politicians and newspaper editors
grew more powerful and as secular affairs, beyond the control of
the church, grew in recognized importance. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, preachers still had a great deal of prestige and
influence, and the churches held on to their special privileges,
chief among these being the privilege of tax exemption.
Science and liberalism have added, in the first decades of the
twentieth century, to the brilliancy and power of secular history.
The supremacy of religion per se has long since been overthrown:
that is to say, there are no professedly religious doctrines in
which we must believe and there is no professedly religious control
over our lives. However, the churches have turned to operating
under the guise of moral reform organizations; and such a group as
the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals
wields a very alarming, though in many ways an indirect and
insidious, power in our government. Yet the majority of Americans
do not attend church, do not believe in church doctrines and are
not interested in supporting the church. Skepticism grows steadily.
Secular affairs are foremost. Religion is dying, although the
church flourishes as a social and business institution.
And let students of history reflect that, after all these
centuries, during which the power and greed of the church have been
manifested in every conceivable shape -- after all these centuries
the church is still an institution of special privilege and it is
at its old game of taking money from our pockets. Throughout all
its hanging history the church has been distinguished by its two
ruling motives of bigotry and greed. The church is still demanding
laws to enforce its bigotry (though it now commonly calls such
bigotry moral rather than religious) and laws to uphold it in its
financial privileges.
There has been a series of significant revolutions within ten
centuries; mainly within the past two centuries, the world has
progressed sensationally. This progress has been secular in
character. Our age, in all that is beneficent and hopeful and
civilized, is irreligious. But the fact remains -- the stern fact
-- that the necessity of war on clericalism is not ended. It is a
serious problem in this modern age and until it is solved, until
clericalism is deprived of all its powers and privileges (retaining
only its rights of private propaganda), civilization will not be
safe.
**** ****
THE RIGHTS OF MAN
Among the clearest declarations in the historic rights of man
is the principle that all citizens shall be treated with equal
Justice and that no group of citizens shall be favored in any way
to the disadvantage of other groups. This means that no set of
private opinions shall be honored or subsidized by the state. It
means, logically and fairly, that the opinions of atheists are as
much entitled to respect and protection as the opinions of
Christians.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
Yet our governments, state and federal, violate amazingly this
clear principle of the rights of man. Special privileges are
extended to religion. Religious holiday proclamations are issued by
presidents and governors. Religious chaplains are employed in
legislative bodies, in the army and navy, and in other state
institutions. Public money, collected from the people in the form
of taxes, must pay for this gross favoritism that is shown to
religion. And the most flagrant injustice of all is the exemption
of church property from taxation.
This exemption is doubly contrary to the principle of secular
freedom and equality of rights. It places a government sanction
upon the ideas of religion; it is an admission by government that
it favors the opinions of Christian citizens or citizens who
believe in religion and discriminates against the opinions of
atheists, agnostics, and all unbelievers in organized religion.
And, again, this tax exemption is not merely a moral sanction but
is a material aid given to the church. The state, in plain effect,
helps to pay for the upkeep of religion although, constitutionally,
church and state are supposed to be entirely apart and unrelated.
The state helps to pay? What we should say is that millions of
non-religious citizens, millions of citizens who have no kind of
use for the church, are compelled to pay for this unjust
favoritism. As firm believers in the rights of man, as opponents of
inequality and tyranny in all forms, we demand the fair taxation of
all church property.
STATE GIFTS TO RELIGION
A Cleveland, Ohio, reader sends us a clipping from the Press
of his city which reflects the interest shown in the church
taxation question. It seems that there has been some argument in
the section of the Press devoted to letters from its readers and
one of the disputants, signing the initials V.F.P., has stressed
the old fallacy that churches do educational and charitable work
and for this reason should be exempted from the payment of public
taxes and rates. A secular-minded reader, W. Mortimer, answers that
fallacy very clearly, and capably in the following communication to
the Press:
The thing that V.F.P. and other religionists do not seem
to grasp is the principle, of separation of Church and State.
The amount of money is not so important as the principle
involved.
To say that because the parochial schools relieve the
burden on the public schools they are therefore entitled to
free water is indeed a flimsy argument. The secular authority
establishes certain public activities that are essential to
modern life, such as schools, libraries, police, parks, etc.
These are all owned and used in common. Every citizen is
justly required to contribute his or her share in support of
all public activities.
The law does not prohibit me from owning my own private
library or sending my children to a private school, yet I do not
expect free water on that account.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
Some corporations and individuals maintain their own
police and fire depots. Yet they are not entitled to public
money because of it. V.F.P. and myself, being citizens of the
same country, must support the things we own in common. He or
she belong to the Christian church, while I am an atheist.
Neither of us can justly desire that the other financially
support our private opinions or institutions. If V.F.P. feels
the parochial schools are necessary to his or her well-being
V.F.P. is at liberty to support them, but I cannot be expected
to support a private institution in which I do not believe.
By, non-payment of water and taxes, the churches are
receiving public money as surely as if a like amount had been
donated from the public treasury.
Exactly. Mr. Mortimer, didn't waste time on sophistry. He just
cut right through it with sharp common sense. This talk of the
educational and charitable work done by the churches is an evasion
of the real issue. Plainly the interest of the churches is in
maintaining the beliefs and worship of religion. Any other alleged
purpose is remotely secondary and in modern society, unnecessary.
Education and social justice (as it should be considered rather
than charity) are essentially secular activities. To let the
churches go tax-free is to make gifts to religion: it means that
the state is granting public support to one set of private opinions
and thus unjustly burdening those who hold contrary private
opinions.
CHURCH AND PUBLIC
The apologists for church tax exemption say that the church is
a public institution. Just what do they mean? The church is devoted
to the propaganda of religion, which is strictly a private and not
a public affair. It may be called public in the sense that anyone
may attend church meetings; but 80,000,000 out of the 120,000,000
don't want to attend church meetings, so evidently the church is
not offering a public service that is even popular; it is
unnecessary and is wanted only by the minority of church members.
If the church were, in another and more valid sense, a public
institution -- that is, a building for use of the people without
discrimination -- there might be something in the argument for tax
exemption. But this consideration runs up against facts that cancel
it entirely. In the first place, the Church is not available to the
community or to various groups of the community on equal terms.
Atheists, for example, would not be permitted to hold meetings in
a church. The church doors would not be opened to admit a mass
meeting of protest against blue Sunday laws. A demonstration of
public sentiment against Prohibition would not be permitted in a
church. Dances, band concerts and like public recreational
activities are not usually permitted in a church.
On most nights, the church buildings are empty and are put to
no use whatever. They never serve as genuine community centers.
Their use is limited strictly to religious and propaganda and the
promotion of movements which have a pious, puritanical character.
Public questions are not discussed freely in the church, They are
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
discussed from the narrow viewpoint of religious bigotry. Public
interests are not served by the church. The specific purpose of the
church is to serve the interest of religion and to gain support for
the particular creed of each church organization.
Under these plain circumstances it is impossible to argue
convincingly that the church is a public institution. There is no
good reason why the public generally should be compelled to share
in the cost of maintaining church institutions. These institutions
are conducted in the narrow interests of sectarian groups and these
groups should entirely pay the cost of them, including fair
taxation of every bit of property owned by the church.
Let those who use the church, let those who believe in the
purposes of the church, produce every penny for the upkeep of the
church. This is the demand of justice.
Exemption of the church from taxation is a tyrannical
compulsion upon millions of citizens to pay for something in which
they are not interested, in which they do not believe, and to which
many are profoundly opposed.
Here is a fraud that is outrageous on its face and in every
feature. It is indefensible. All Americans who have a real sense
of justice and who are candid enough to recognize the facts will
join in our demand that all church property shall be taxed.
"HOLY" BEGGARS
The churches are always begging money. And there is little
pretense that this money is wanted for a public purpose. It is
wanted for the propaganda of religion. It is used to maintain
temples of superstition. It is a form of beggary that is sometimes
called "holy" (and that, to be sure, is always defended by the
allegation of good purposes;) but that is really a continual,
exasperating nuisance.
Many who contribute to the churches are unwilling but feel
that they dare not refuse: these are men who, for business or
professional reasons, fear to offend the church element, or any
element, and make a practice of being agreeable to all groups.
There are many others who do refuse the begging requests of the
churches but who are irritated again and again by the repetition of
such appeals for help.
In their begging, the churches are a nuisance. Yet, legally,
they have the right to get money from all who are willing to give.
We don't object to the extortion of money by the churches. But we
do object to the extortion of money for these begging institutions.
A state tax exemption for churches is in reality a form of
extortion, taking money from millions of citizens without so much
as a "by your leave,"
The churches beg -- and if we don't give them money, why, they
take it anyway, forcibly, by means of this unjust state tax
exemption.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THE STATE CONSISTENT IN SUBSIDIZING,
CHURCH ERRORS?
One argument for the exemption of church property from
taxation is that religion is a socially valuable hind of activity
and that it is an instrument of righteousness which the state, as
a measure of public welfare, does rightly in subsidizing.
Take a good look at that argument. It is really funny.
Religion is divided into many creeds. It is a patchwork of errors.
One sect contradicts another, and every church member is a heretic
in the view of members of other church organizations. What is it,
then, that the state can be sure of in religion to guide it in its
assumption that religion is useful?
It cannot be a particular idea of God, for the religious sects
are sharply disagreed about the identity and the Character and the
opinions of God. It cannot be a particular notion of another life,
because the sects are luridly confused in their contradictory
notions of heaven or paradise or the hereafter or what you please
in the way of crude or fancy absurdity. It cannot be a particular
view of morality which the state thinks it publicly useful to
encourage by tax exemption -- for here, again, the sects are not in
agreement. Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics,
Lutherans Episcopalians, Christian Scientists, Holy rollers,
Modernists and Fundamentalists all have their hotly different
notions about what constitutes righteousness.
There is no clear, agreed, indisputable program of religious
morality. If there did exist such a program, it would be brazenly
tyrannical for the state to enforce or even encourage it -- such a
measure would be a flagrant repudiation of the terms of secular
freedom in government (and, remember, good people, that secular
freedom is a phrase not to be shortened -- secular freedom is the
only freedom, for religion in government means tyranny) But our
point at the moment is that the state cannot pretend that it is
favoring, in a definite and intelligent way, a theory of social
usefulness in religion.
TO be logical in this argument, the state would have to single
out one religious, creed and favor it as being the true and useful
creed, As matters stand, the state favors, by tax exemption and
other means, a perfectly ridiculous stew of irreconcilable and
indigestible religious errors. It can't say what is true in
religion. It can't say what is useful in religion. The supporters
of the various religions can't say wherein they are right: but each
sect maintains that it is right and the others are, on important
points, very wrong. In exempting the churches from taxation, the
state is subsidizing, most inconsistently, a medley of errors and
aberrations that are socially distracting and confusing, rather
than socially useful.
**** ****
The only excuse for state favoritism would be an open
declaration of support for a particular state church, a particular
state creed, a particular state system of errors officially
proclaimed as the truth. A state church is inconceivable in this
modern age, and, aside from the higher principle of intellectual
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WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
liberty, the fact is that the churches couldn't agree among
themselves, There is no sensible argument, then, of truth, or
usefulness which justifies the state in favoring religion. Let the
believers in religion pay for their ceremonies and controversies of
error.
**** ****
The churches can well afford to pay fair taxation. But
supposing they couldn't. Would not that be a very significant
evidence that the churches were not really wanted?
**** ****
How can a preacher talk with a straight face about political
graft? He is, himself, profiting by one of the most notorious
political grafts in this country.
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A free, secular government has and should have no interest in
the church. The church is interesting only to its partisans. They
should bear the whole cost of supporting the church.
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Why should the residence of a preacher be untaxed? Useful
citizens must pay taxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher --
actually and notoriously the least useful member of the community
-- lives in a tax-free dwelling.
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"Would you tax God?" asks a defender of church tax exemption.
Well, if there were a God he should be able to pay his own way and
support his own business. If not, then he should do like other
business men and close up shop.
**** ****
Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the
collection boxes, whether we go to church or not and whether we are
interested in the church or not. It is systematic and complete
robbery, from which none of us escapes.
**** ****
It is an absurd fiction that the churches are useful. They are
nothing more than propaganda centers for superstitious faiths and
doctrines. Church members have a right to believe in and propagate
their various doctrines. But they should pay every item of the
cost, of this propaganda, including fair taxation for all church
property.
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Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
22
WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
When priest and king conspired in medieval tyranny, the church
did its bloodiest to suppress all freedom of thought. We live in
the modern age and we believe in liberty. We don't ask that the
churches be destroyed or religion suppressed. We ask only that the
churches be taxed fairly, as other property is taxed. In resisting
this very fair demand, the churches will only expose their motives
of greed and Injustice.
**** ****
Churches are private institutions. Their members should
support these churches out of their own private resources.
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Those who want the churches should pay for them. Nobody else
should be taxed, directly or indirectly, to support the churches.
**** ****
There can be no perfect freedom unless the church and state
are separated. But the church and state are not separated in
America so long as the state grants a subsidy to the church in the
form of tax exemption.
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It is surely enough that the clerical grafters are permitted
by law to drum up trade among many credulous victims. But it is
outrageously too much that the rest of us, who oppose the clerical
grafters, should have to pay for the maintenance of this graft.
We think that men and women who pay for listening to sermons
are being cheated. But if they are satisfied, well enough. They can
spend their money as they please. The point is that we don't want
to continue paying for sermons that offend us with their bigotry
and non-sense.
**** ****
The American colonists fought against taxation without
representation. We are fighting against what is ironically much
worse, namely, taxation for the benefit of churches in which we
don't want to be represented and which are inimical to all the
civilized public purposes in which we do want to be represented.
**** ****
Is a church too small and too poor to pay taxes? That means
that not enough people want the church seriously enough to pay for
its upkeep. Then, why should such a church exist? Why should
atheists, agnostics and non-churchgoers be forced to maintain such
a useless, unwanted church by granting it tax exemption?
**** ****
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
23
WHY I BELIEVE IN FAIR TAXATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY
Religion is matter of private opinion. And, similarly,
religion should be a matter of private support, There is no good,
honest reason why it should have the sanction of the financial
favoritism of the government. Legally and in its fundamental policy
(as set forth in the Constitution) ours is not a religious
government and, therefore, it should not in any way subsidize
religion.
**** ****
It is a ludicrous notion -- ludicrous and outrageous -- that
the 80,000,000 Americans who don't go near the churches and who are
not interested in the churches should pay, in the form of state tax
exemption, so that the 40,000,000 of churchgoers can have houses in
which to play. After all, these 40,000,000 could do their praying
cheaply at home -- and it would do them no more and no less good.
If they want special houses of prayer, let them contribute all of
the money for this odd purpose. We object to paying a cent for
praying institutions which are ridiculous in our sight.
**** ****
Rev. John Haynes Holmes argues that the churches shouldn't pay
taxes because, amid the towering city skyscrapers, they afford
needful light and air. But now the churches are growing into
skyscrapers. And, anyway, parks and tennis courts and the like are
much better for light and air than churches are. To put it more
emphatically, the churches spread gloom and the air in and around
them is unbearably stuffy.
**** ****
"God hasn't quit" says a theological illogical professor. That
might be an interesting statement if there could be adduced the
tiniest bit of proof that God ever began anything, including
himself. What this professor means is that a few men, who have
worse than idle minds, haven't quit talking aimlessly about a
mythical God.
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"The atmosphere is literally charged with religion" says 'The
Literary Digest," referring to radio sermons. We should call it a
spreading of intellectually poisonous gas
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Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have
been sincere. And so have fools.
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The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
and information for today. If you have such books, magazines,
newspapers, pamphlets, etc. please contact us, we need to give them
back to America.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
24