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From: tdn@spice.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA (Thomas Newton)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: "Tax Supported" Churches.
Message-ID: <460@spice.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 19:03:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: spice.460
Posted: Thu Oct  3 19:03:58 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 05:46:58 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 43
Xref: watmath net.politics:11335 net.religion:7890

> Tom, thanks for a thoughtful message on an emotional topic.
>
> I disagree with you very strongly that making churches tax-exempt is respect
> for the principle of separation of church and state.  It puts the government
> in the position of deciding what is or is not a religion, and is therefore
> the very opposite of separation of church and state.  Did you see the
> message by Bob Brown telling of a UPI story on 9/27 that said the Senate had
> agreed to deny tax-exempt status to Wiccans?  Is that separation of church
> and state, or is it the exercise of a discriminatory power?

If the police mistreat a suspect, should they then mistreat all suspects in
order to be consistent?  You seem to be saying a similar thing with respect
to religions:  if the government mistreats (taxes) one religion, it should
mistreat (tax) all religions in order to be consistent.  In both cases, the
'easiest' way to ensure consistency leads to a result that is precisely the
opposite of the main goal of which consistency is but one criterion.

> I feel that all non-profit organizations and corporations should be
> tax-exempt, and churches which do not make a profit, but re-invest into
> charitable and missionary pursuits, should be considered non-profit
> corporations.  To give the government the right to declare a religion "a
> non-religion" is a frightening, Orwellian power.

I don't think that simply declaring that churches are subject to the same
rules as anyone else is the right answer.  For instance:  suppose Congress
decided to start taxing non-profit organizations for who knows what purpose.
Overnight, the government would acquire the power to destroy *all* religions.

A slightly different formulation that seems more acceptable would be to
declare that non-profit activities of churches are Constitutionally tax-
exempt, and that for-profit activities do not have Constitutional protection.
In order to check whether or not such a declaration would be Constitutional,
it would probably be necessary to review various historical information such
as:  profit/non-profit status of churches in the 1700's, the letters written
by the people who influenced/wrote the Constitution & Bill of Rights, etc.
The crucial difference here is that if Congress decided to tax non-profit
organizations in general, it still would not be able to tax the non-profit
activities of religions because of the Constitutional protection.

Of course, this gets us back to the problem of having the government decide
what is a religion and what is not . . . in theory if not in practice.

                                        -- Thomas Newton


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