The Protestant churches adopt a different method, not quite so
successful in dragging the hard-earned dimes out of the worn purse of
the poor washerwoman or in stealing the coppers off the eyes of the
corpse, but reasonably efficacious. They, too, to at least some extent
make merchandise out of "the house of the Lord." The pew rent system
is as plain a business affair as the buying of seats in a theatre.
The collection is the most important item in almost every Protestant
religious service. It is nominally voluntary, but there are numerous
ways of inflicting acute mental discomfort on those who do not come
up liberally "to the help of the Lord." By skillfully playing on the
emotions of the congregation, and if possible inducing in them a
state of hysteria, an astute moneyseeker like Simpson of the Christian
Alliance or Billy Sunday of the "gutter gospel" can induce a scared,
madly excited, hypnotized crowd to help the Lord to the extent of
thousands of dollars, none of which can be recovered by the victims on
the next day, when they have become sobered and ashamed of their fit of
spiritual intoxication. And the church has the phenomenal impudence to
boast that the money thus tricked out of persons reduced to a frenzy in
which they did not know what they were doing was "voluntarily" donated!
Large funds are also secured by this "non-commercial institution"
through church fairs, grab bags, special entertainments and other
devices which are held to be decidedly commercial when carried on by
worldly people, but which become mysteriously sanctified when conducted
for the benefit of the church.
The claim that the church, as a non-commercial institution, is entitled
to the kind chaperonage of the state in the shape of exemption from the
obligation of paying its honest debts, besides being bad and invalid
in itself, has not even the poor merit of resting on a basis of fact.
Moreover, since there are plenty of other noncommercial institutions,
which pay taxes like any other concern, no reason is given why the
church should be the one special pet. Social and recreative institutions
are not conducted for profit, nor are Socialistic or Anarchistic groups,
the property of which is not exempt from taxation. All of these, like
the church, meet the desires or gratify the tastes of individuals, and
are of the greatest subjective value to those to whom they appeal, while
worthless to everybody else, and in no way connected with the legitimate
functions of society in its collective aspect. Hence none of them
can justly make the slightest claim to be exempted from the duty of
"rendering to Caesar that which is Caesar's."