Are Churches Stealing 71 Billion a Year from the Government?

The headline reads:  If the Churches Paid Taxes, Everyone Would Only Pay 3% Taxes

First off that's utter horsecrap. There is no "cost to the government from church exemptions. All it means is that the government doesn't take 71 billion dollars of money from people who have already been taxed because they gave money to their churches. Taxing that same money again is not only unfair, but it takes away from the charitable activities that the church already does. It's a propaganda ploy - appealing to personal greed to turn you against churches. The "video" offers no facts, only a clip of a wealthy looking fancy church which is supposed to make you angry. Their reasoning is all based on the idea that the government owns everything and anything they don't take from you is robbing from them.

Let's say the feds gave it all to "feeding the hungry", which they won't do and which by the way is one of the things the churches already do with that money. It won't all go to feeding the hungry. Between 40 and 60% of that money will get eaten up paying for the salaries, supplies, benefits and the buildings in which they have their cubicles for bureaucrats who mismanage the food benefits program and generate useless paperwork for each other; dribbling out what's left to people the government thinks "deserve" to receive food assistance and deny it to them the first time they lift their heads even a little bit above the poverty level.

But, the government reduces your food stamps as you make more money.  That works out to virtually no transition period at all.  They simply reduce your benefits so that you can't afford the added expense of working (travel, clothing, meals at work, etc.). In effect, the benefits reduction keeps you at or near the poverty level until the cut the benefits entirely. So, practically, there is no transition period. Instead, the government programs strategic reductions only serve to extend the time during which you remain at the poverty level.

Talk about glass ceilings!  The gains we made with welfare to work back in the 90s have been virtually done away with in traditional "war on poverty" programs and with Obamacare, the glass ceiling was replaced with an iron one. On in which if you make a little extra some month you go from being on Medicaid to being offered a replacement policy on the Health Care Exchange that costs you more per month than you are making. And if you don't pay it, the IRS was going to make you pay a fine with money you don't actually have.  Of course, they can always take your refund in April. How's that for a hidden tax.  So basically, now if you want to rise above the poverty level, you have to accept that, for a time you will be paying to the government, more money than you make.

Of course this means you don't eat, you don't go to work because you can't afford it, and you can't pay the rent. So, it's better to remain safely below the poverty line where you are dependent on the government. And that, I think is the point. We are creating a dependent voting block that is is being programmed to accept extensive government intervention as the new normal.

Taxing churches will not save the government anything. There is no line item in the budget where the government pays churches to exist. There is only the gleam in the eye of some progressive Democrat looking for votes by creating another expensive government program that grows the size of government, gives it more power and hires more people to work for it.

Taxing is nothing more than a legalized form of systematized robbery from churches, supported by people who hate religion and would like to see religious institutions and people disappear from society. Christianity is the new progressive left's version of the Nazi's evil Jews. You will notice that no one is calling for the World Wildlife Fund, The Sierra Club or Media Matters to be taxed. Why pick on churches?

Because atheists don't like churches and the progressive socialist movement has been, at its heart, an anti-religion movement. They blame religion for all wars for instance, conveniently ignoring that the only time religions have had armies was when they were government religions. Governments wage war. Megalomaniac dictators, kings and emperors wage wars. Not too many pastors wage war, although some did during the American revolution and the Civil War, but that was about patriotism, not religion. One religion that does wage war is Islam, although to be fair, Islam forms a government first before it wages any kind of war other than terrorism.

Anyway, if someone tells you churches are stealing money from the government, ask them if the Red Cross is stealing from the government. How about your local art museums, zoos, your public schools, universities and wildlife rescue organizations?  Are they stealing from the government too.

And how many times is it okay for the government to tax your income? Already they hit you for taxes on your business and then hit you again for taxes on your personal income from the same business and now my "progressive" friends want to take a chunk out of the money that has already been taxed at least twice just because I put it into the collection plate at church.

Here's the video with all its reasons why churches should be taxes. Decide for yourself.

https://www.facebook.com/disclosetv/videos/10155942312185628/
 

Did you notice there were no reasons, other than a visceral reaction to someone having and expensive church building. Taking money from people is not a cost to the government. It's simply letting people keep what is already theirs and do with that money what they want to do. So I'll thank these collectivists to keep their hands out of my wallet and out of the church's offering plates. Be careful my "progressive" friends. Just because they say they are progressive, doesn't mean they are truly moving forward. We are, in fact, reversing course toward a revival of the two class system of the Dark Ages - noble leaders and peasants. The only other class is the soldier class and we know what they are used for. Even way back then, the noble leaders of governments pretty much left the church alone. When the government starts stealing from churches, though, it has truly gone beyond the pale.

And there beyond the pale my friend, lie the dragons in wait for us! And as one wry old philosopher so aptly put it, "Beware for thou are soft and crunchy and taste particularly good flambéed."
© 2017 by Tom king

What the Government Really Has to Say About the Church

To put it simply, "Nothing."  The First Amendment says this.

• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, any law the government may make which limits the right of churches or individuals who may belong to a church to meet together, speak freely or print their opinion or even to complain to the government, is unconstitutional.

In other words.  The government may not meddle with the church and the church can do or say what it likes without interference.  This is highly troubling to many, given that the churches of the United States are given by the Constitution, great freedom and latitude to do their work, while the poor government may only stand by and wring its hands if the pastors of the nation say mean things about it.

This was a revolutionary idea in the world of the late 1700s/early 1800s given that most of the nations of the world had a government-sponsored church. The key feature of such a system was that only the approved church was encouraged and all others, if tolerated at all, were repressed. Because the state church depended on the state largess for it's continued existence, most state churches were well-behaved towards their political masters. The First Amendment was a revolutionary idea because most nations were governed by the nobility. Churches, as any king worth his salt knew, could be quite troublesome if allowed to call out the princes for their bad behavior. After all, the princes believed that because of all the hard work they did governing the ignorant masses, a little moral leeway should be allowed them. That's probably why the bit of my family tree that strays into the noble classes has so many branches that grow together at the top or were lopped off by less-deserving branches. The noble classes were naughty boys and girls.

At any rate, the churches, because of those pesky commandments, often felt compelled to speak out against the behavior of their liege lords. This problem with mouthy churchmen has a long history, going all the way back to Nero's problems with the Christians, Herod's dust up with John the Baptist, Ahab's troubles with Elijah and Saul's problems with Samuel. Churches are troublesome anyway a despot looks at it. They have a bad habit of pointing out sins. The Founding Fathers wanted to hamstring any potential American despot who might wish to silence the conscience of the nation. Religion had, after all, played a key role in the success of the American Revolution.

So the Constitution, after it's fashion, limits government's power to restrict the rights and privileges of the people. Our founding documents tell the government what it cannot do and tells the churches their rights are protected along with the rights of other peaceful assemblies of the people. It also took the time to create a second protected moral voice by protecting the freedom of the press which also was supposed to act as a curb on power-mongering.

The First Amendment says that the government, therefore, cannot set up its own exclusive church, nor can it compel people to worship in that church. Nothing else is implied and any attempt to project any sort of government power over the exercise of faith by Americans is therefore, unconstitutional. Nowhere does it say the churches may not speak out on issues which concern it's moral imperatives or religious practices. And for 240 years, the churches have been pretty good about not using government to establish religious practice with occasional lapses, of course. A lengthy experiment with Sunday Blue Laws was finally brought to an end within my lifetime, brought on, in part, by the lobbying efforts of churches concerned that such laws did, in fact, violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Churches have recently spoken out against efforts by government to legislate the acceptance of gay marriage, in particular by churches which find the practice in violation of their principles. Churches have also spoken out against abortion, which most find to be nothing less than murder of a human being. Because the issue of when a fetus becomes human is something of a philosophical or theological argument, the government has rightly left the decision with regard to abortion in the hands of the individual mother. Other aspects such as father's rights or the establishment of some sort of mutually agreed upon limit to how late an abortion can be performed might find some wiggle room for government legislation, but, again, this is something we as a nation can debate and churches have every right to put their oars into that debate.

Recently, laws regarding public restrooms have been challenged by churches on the grounds that such laws violate the establishment law by imposing secular standards upon the practice of faith by church members. More blatantly, laws which gag pastors from speaking out about political issues against the threat of IRS stripping them of the nonprofit status granted all religious organizations. If you're a strict constitutionalist, IRS sanctions would definitely fall under the establishment clause.

Remember, the Constitution tells the government it cannot meddle with churches. The right of churches to state their opinion or to advise their members on public issues, on the other hand, is protected by the Constitution along with the rights of individuals as well (under the right to petition for redress of grievances clause).

Secular priesthoods are never kindly or benevolent. They are a tyranny
because they have no moral compass, nor any fear of God.

My own church has long fought for the principle of separation of church and state. How? By preaching about public issues like Blue Laws and religious discrimination, by lobbying, by printing a magazine on the subject and by raising funds to support lobbying efforts to protect religious liberty. At no time have we believed that separation meant that churches should be silent. You can call it "education" all you want, but what the religious liberty, pro-separation coalition is doing really is lobbying by the old definition. We just don't call it that anymore because the IRS gets all up in your business if a nonprofit lobbies the legislature. Apparently the IRS thinks lobbying has something to do with bribing politicians (and sadly, they may be right). 

There is a concerted effort going on right now to establish a new government-sponsored religion. This religion is being established by silencing and banning all other religions from any influence it might have with government. Therefore, by denying all other religions the right to petition for redress of grievances with the government, militant secularism establishes itself as the only government-approved belief system. No matter that secularism has every earmark of a religion. It has codes of conduct, fundamental beliefs and websites. It holds evangelistic meetings, sells books, and pamphlets. It has prophets and preachers. It proclaims loudly that God is dead and therefore must have no influence upon the government which must only recognize the tenets of secularism. Most of these tenets are rules of behavior and belief as ironclad as the ten commandments. And, it seems, the secularists are making up their tenets as they go, largely in the form of cultural laws and rules which gag preachers and hobble religious institutions from doing their work of influencing the culture for what they see as "good".

For an amendment with just 45 words total, the forces of secularism have certainly managed to wring a lot of meaning out of the establishment clause that doesn't appear to be present. Dylan Thomas once wrote, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." I agree with the fiery Welshman as I watch the Christian church face enemies that would have its light extinguished. I do not believe we should go gently. As another great philosopher once said, "I'm tired of runnin'. I aim to misbehave."  I even bought the tee shirt.

I'm just saying,

© 2017 by Tom King

Screwing Around With the Constitution - Is This a Concerted Effort to Suppress Religion

 The IRS recently threatened to go after the nonprofit status of churches whose  pastors included political ideas or instructions in their sermons to their congregations or in their literature, brochures and pamphlets. Cruise the net and you'll discover tons of angry vitriolic calls for Christians (mostly) to sit down and shut up where politics are concerned, calling for the muzzling of religious groups under the principle of "separation of church and state".

Don't get me wrong, I believe strongly in the separation of church and state.  The constitution (the amendments part anyway) clearly forbids the government to establish any state religion and not to meddle with churches governance or the exercise of the principles of any church's faith by it's members.

The Amendment which guarantees these rights, however, does not, forbid religious people or their leaders from sticking their nose into government by lobbying or the exercise of the freedom of the press, speech or assembly.  The establishment clause is a one way prohibition.  It clearly restricts the government from meddling with one's religion, not vice versa.  Free exercise is a right of the citizenry. The government is not allowed to interfere with that.

Pastors, under the free exercise amendment can say whatever they want to, ask their members to vote anyway they want to and even lobby if they wish. If union leaders can do it, why not pastors.  Union leaders instruct their members as to how to vote all the time and nobody's going after them for that!  I listened in to a live SEIU union teleconference in Washington State last week that was nothing less than a political rally for Democrat candidates.  The freedom of assembly, speech and the press allows them to do that.

Trying to say churches cannot do the same thing is at the very least trying to game the system in favor of nonreligious groups and at worst an attempt to suppress the free exercise of religion at worst.  If nonprofit animal rights and environmentalist groups can do what they do and maintain their nonprofit status, churches must be allowed to do the same.

The American Constitution is a unique document in that it protects citizens from the government. Nowhere in there is anything that protects the government from it's citizens.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King

Does the Constitution Separate Church and State?

Christine O'Donnel got a lot of flack the other day for saying, in a debate with Democrat Chris Coons that "there is no separation of church and state".  The audience ridiculed her, pointing to the Establishment Clause for proof.

So what does the Establishment Clause actually say?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Sounds straightforward doesn't it and, I believe, an open-minded person would have little trouble understanding what the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were getting at.  For quite some time an organized group of Christians has been referring to the principle outlined in this section of the first amendment as the principle of "separation of church and state".  This group refers to a Thomas Jefferson letter to a group of pastors which describes the Establishment Clause as a wall separating church and state.

These days, however, it's not the usual Christian groups calling for recognition of separation of church and state, but progressive socialists who use this same phrase to support recent efforts by the government under the guise of enforcing separation of church and state to establish "freedom FROM religion" in the public square, rather than "freedom OF religion". 

Okay I get why conservatives are saying the Establishment Clause doesn't call for separation of church and state.  However, as a member of a Christian church whose free exercise has been repeatedly trampled upon by government in the past 150 years, it makes me nervous to hear you say there is no "separation".  When political lobbyists from Christian churches in the past talked about separation of church and state with reference to the Establishment Clause, we meant that the government should be separate and not controlled by any religious denomination or vice versa.  In that respect there is and should be a wall of separation. But the wall we refer to, only prevents interference by government with religion or religion with government.  It does not mean we cannot vote by our religious principles if we are elected officials.  It does not mean we cannot pray in public places or acknowledge religion's role at the very bones of our country.  It doesn't mean taking "God" out of things.  It only means we will not have priests and clerics running our government nor our government running our churches.

Once again the wisdom of our fathers is aimed squarely at those who lust for power and would imperil our liberties by seizing more of it than they are very wisely limited to by the constitution.

I just as vehemently object when progressives apply apply the establishment clause in a way that forbids any kind of religious practice in the public square.  This essentially establishes a kind of formal atheism, in effect, as our state religion.  It violates the establishment clause as surely as it would if the president started taking orders from Joel Osteen or Pat Robertson (or Mullah Omar for that matter). 

It is as wrong for the President to issue mandatory sermon topics to pastors as it would be for bishops to dictate US foreign policy.  I belong to a church whose members have been imprisoned for laboring six days a week because "laws" declared it was the wrong six days (remember the Blue Laws).  When a sheriff can drag a simple American farmer out of his field and jail him for months because powerful church leaders forced passage of a religious law, there is something not right. Clearly this was a violation of the establishment clause. These laws were resisted and after more than 70 years on the books these laws were repealed.  Still, every few years for decades since, some well-meaning someone trots out a proposed bill to formalize in law, what they believe is the correct day of worship. Such laws would enlist  government aid in enforcement of a tenant of religious belief that has no basis in natural law.

Personally, I think if Blue Laws ever do come back, they are more likely to come from the left than the right, but then not everyone agrees.  If conservatives are the party of liberty, then let's just make it clear what we mean when we make statements like the one O'Donnell made.  She badly needed to explain.  Such blanket statements as "There is no separation of church and state," make me nervous. The speakers sound like folks determined to re-establish the old theocracies that we fought so hard to free ourselves from.  I know that 99% of conservatives are not out to codify religious belief in the law of the land. Most of us have learned our lesson about what ills that can cause.

Glenn Beck is always telling us to look at history.  Well, when you do, you'll discover that 'social gospel' progressives were the ones that rammed through some of the more draconian of the Blue laws at the turn of the last century.  For the "good of the workers", people actually went to jail for plowing fields on Sunday, even though they had been in church the day before.  The folks who coined the phrase "separation of church and state" were the ones who ended such laws.  They are devout Christians and most are very conservative.

Let me be clear. I don't think conservatives are the greatest threat to establish a state religion.  I think conservatives do need to make it excruciatingly clear what they mean when they say there is no "separation" of church and state. Let's try not to sound like we're fixing to bring back the Inquisition and witch trials.  Unfortunately, some of our less thoughtful brethren aren't so careful with how they present their views on church and state issues.

Even church leaders like the Pope have called for codifying church doctrine in law.  A papal letter a few years back called for good Catholics to force passage of laws to protect Sunday as the day of worship in their own countries.  I read the pastoral letter when it came out. That would be problematic in the U.S. because of the Establishment Clause. 

There's where the wall should be built. We need that wall to tell church leaders where lie the limits of their authority.  We need that wall to also tell the government where they have no right to diddle with the free exercise of our religion.

The test of our belief in the establishment clause will come when a Christian judge posts a copy of the ten commandments on his wall and next door a Muslim judge posts a passage from the Koran on his and the Buddhist next door to him sets a little golden Buddah on his desk.  Will we protect each man's "free exercise" of his religion and trust him to make rulings according to the law alone and not to his personal belief?   I would hope so.

As a judge, I'm sure I would find it difficult to rule in favor of someone who is right under the law and yet wrong by all that's holy.  Judges do it every day, though - because of the wall that separates faith from mere human law. That wall protects those on both sides of it.  One day, this world will end and no such wall will be needed.  Till then, thank God for the Establishment Clause.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King - Tyler, TX