Since no corrupt condition has ever wanted for apologists, it is not
surprising that self-interest has prompted many voluble spokesmen for
the churches to cast about for plausible arguments in favor of a system
by which they fatten on avoidance of responsibility. While most of such
attempts to excuse the inexcusable have already been refuted in advance,
a brief summary of those currently employed is desirable, as revealing
their utter ineptitude. In practically every case, it becomes
self-evident that they are not the true reasons for church exemption,
but worked up by way of afterthought. Having already decided to rob
us, on quite other grounds, our plunderers sit down to devise specious
phrases which may serve to cajole their victims. In reality, the
exemption of church property from taxation is, of course, a survival
from the times when it was frankly regarded as the duty of the state to
support the church and to enforce the dogmas of religion. This medieval
view having passed away, so far as the enlightened members of the
community are concerned, the subsidizing of the church by the state
should have perished with it; but since the churches do not wish to lose
their easy money, they have manufactured pretexts for the continuance of
the favoritism to which they are self-evidently not entitled in a land
and an age of religious liberty and equality.
The chief defense of church graft is based on the claim that religion
is the supreme moral agency of the community. This argument is found in
many forms, and is highly elaborated by those who put it forward. Boiled
down, it expresses the point of view that the church is a voluntary
adjunct of the police power; that it lessens crime, and therefore
directly saves expense and trouble to society, for which exemption from
taxation is only a reasonable return. In part, this argument has already
been tested and found valueless. The church claims a kingdom, which "is
not of this world," and its main business is to create subjects for that
kingdom. To receive salvation, faith is all-essential, moral character
being subsidiary. A single act of penitence may atone for a lifetime of
crime. The great work of the church is to develop faith, without which
the righteous deeds of the purest and best man on earth are nothing but
"filthy rags." The vilest murderer, "converted" under the fear of
being presently precipitated into a yawning hell, and having no further
opportunity to enjoy life on this earth, may pass directly from the
gallows or the electric chair to the bosom of Jesus, while his
innocent victim, struck suddenly dead without a chance to reflect on
possibilities beyond the grave, has sunk to everlasting perdition in
spite of possessing a character above reproach. Is this the form of
doctrine calculated to raise the moral tone of the community? Let it not
be replied that this is the antiquated theology which the liberal and
most of the orthodox churches have long since outgrown. On the contrary,
it is the teaching of the entire Roman Catholic church and of the
largest section of the Protestant church. In its coarsest and crudest
form, it has in our own day been preached to huge audiences from one end
of the country to the other by the spectacular evangelist, Billy Sunday,
as the only true Christianity; and this otherwise negligible religious
mountebank has received the explicit endorsement of the principal
evangelical organizations and an overwhelming majority of the orthodox
preachers in every one of the largest and a multitude of the lesser
cities of our land. The churches in which this repulsive and vicious
doctrine is taught receive much the larger share of the benefit from tax
exemption.