Exemption of church property from taxation is a deliberate invitation
to the concentration of wealth, in opposition to its equitable
distribution.
While social reformers are straining every nerve to devise and apply
effective methods for the breaking down of monopoly, the policy of
favoritism toward ecclesiastical bodies is building up the evil in its
most aggravated form. If the churches really regarded themselves as
simply trustees of the resources placed in their hands by private
benevolence and state favor, and spent all or practically all that they
received for the benefit of humanity, some defense, though even then an
insufficient one, might be made of the practice of tax exemption. The
tendency, however, is wholly in the reverse direction. The more the
churches receive, the more property they accumulate, heedless of
the stern warning of Isaiah, the iconoclastic Hebrew reformer, who,
according to tradition, was sawn asunder for offending the priests and
the king by the heretical doctrine that Jehovah "would have mercy and
not sacrifice" and preferred social justice to religious ceremonialism.
"Woe," cried the prophet, "unto them that join house to house, that lay
field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in
the midst of the land!"
It needs no expert knowledge of political economy to comprehend how
readily untaxed property can be made to multiply. Sharing all the social
advantages, and bearing none of the social burden, its owners can bide
their time through all the tips and downs of the market, sure to gain in
the end.
All things come to him who is in a position to wait longest. While the
possessions of others are automatically limited by the effective lien
placed on them by the taxing power, the churches can placidly increase
their holdings to their hearts' content. In the long run, they can
outbid competitors, who must add the cost of annual taxation to the
original payment for the property acquired. Safe in the evasion of their
civic duties, they have nothing to do but to grow richer and richer.
Paying no taxes, they become independent of the state, an _imperium in
imperio_, a power rivaling that of organized society itself.