The apologists for church exemption find themselves in a position of
great embarrassment when the nature and amount of the exempted property
are called into question. In the difficulty of securing accurate and
complete figures they attempt at once to minimize and to magnify the
amount involved. In pleading for the country churches, they raise the
cry of poverty, and solemnly aver that these feeble institutions are so
dependent on state help for their existence that without it they must
inevitably perish. The claim is both false and irrelevant. It is false,
because the taxable property of the country churches, as may be readily
seen from the preceding discussion, and may be learned by any person
through direct observation, is of extremely low value, and bears far
less proportion to the available income of their aggregate membership
than the holdings of the city churches. The few dollars of taxes which
an honest fiscal policy would impose on the average country church would
be raised without the slightest difficulty. As a matter of fact, it
is not the "poor and struggling country churches" which are lobbying
against the removal of exemption; it is the wealthy city corporations,
which use the "poor country church" argument as a means of drawing a
red herring across the track, and diverting attention from their
own handsome pickings. The claim, even if true, would obviously be
irrelevant, since it is not the business of the state to keep churches
alive.
Forgetful of their professed fear on behalf of the struggling country
churches, however, the apologists for religious graft lay tremendous
stress on the assertion that the amount which the state loses through
the churches is a mere bagatelle, and that the taxpayers would not gain
enough to help them much, if it were reclaimed. A pat retort, of course,
is that if this be the case, it is amazing that the churches have become
so terrified at the idea of handing over so small an amount to the
state. Wealthy as they are, if the sum is as trivial as they say, they
will never miss it, and can afford to be honest, and to conciliate the
favor of those who are now driven away from the gospel by the greed and
grafting spirit of the agencies which represent it. Like the fiction
of the dying country churches, however, the claim is both false and
irrelevant. It is false, as will presently be shown by some of the
figures which have become available; and it is irrelevant, because the
moral character of a thief is not to be graded according to the amount
of loot which he has succeeded in acquiring. The recognition of the
right of the church to receive a subsidy from the state, and thus to
make the separation of church and state a dead letter, would remain as
serious a crime against the democratic principle, if not more than a
single dollar were involved.