The weakness of the case for the exemption of church property is
apparent from the fact that the foregoing easily refuted claims
represent substantially the entire case in its favor. At the New
York hearing of 1915, and at all other hearings before the various
legislative bodies of our land, they have been the only points on which
stress was sought to be laid. Incidentally, of course, minor assertions
have been made, such as the alleged fact that the church is a public
utility, in the maintenance of which the community has a direct
interest. This plea, on which small reliance is usually placed, has been
fully disposed of by the analysis on a preceding page of the function of
the church. Sometimes attention is called to the apparent preponderance
of interest in favor of exemption, as witnessed by the number of
speakers who appear in its favor at committee hearings and by the number
and size of the organizations which they represent. This is obviously
the most transparent sophistry. Principles are not to be gauged by
numbers. A country in which the mob may dispose at its lightest whim of
the rights and liberties of the individual or of the minority is a
land of tyranny, and cannot prosper in the end. Moreover, the alleged
preponderance does not even prove that the majority of the citizens are
in favor of the special privilege dishonestly demanded by the churches.
It merely furnishes fresh evidence of the well-known fact that parties
with special interests to be subserved by class legislation will
organize more efficiently than those appearing for the general interest
of the citizens, but not backed by powerful existing organizations well
supplied with funds and having much to gain or lose in a financial way
by the passage or defeat of the proposed legislation. It is hard to stir
up popular interest to the point of action in matters that involve the
civic conscience. Nevertheless, the people are slowly awakening to a
realization of the iniquity of the manner in which the churches, for
their own profit, have played upon the religious emotions of those under
their influence; and a day of reckoning is imminent. The sentiment
in behalf of the repeal of the dishonest exemption laws is growing
continually stronger, and must finally become irresistible.
It has sometimes been asserted that precedent is against the taxing
of churches. At the New York hearing, this was gravely put forth by a
Presbyterian preacher as a serious argument; and he sought to dismiss
the proposition by cavalierly remarking that it was part of the present
craze for new taxes of all sorts. His deliverance was echoed by a lawyer
hired to represent Grace Episcopal church, the church which showed
its moral standards by cheating its architect out of his fee on a
contemptible legal technicality. "I am old-fashioned enough," remarked
the lawyer, metaphorically patting himself on the back for his astute
appeal to religious prejudice, "to believe that the house of God should
not be taxed." In other words, whatever is, is right. No old abuse must
ever be abolished, and every new idea must be wrong. Could there be a
finer admission that the bent of the churchly trained mind is against
all progress, and prone to resist change merely because it is new?