In addition to all the other unanswerable objections to the
exemption system, it is thus irrepealably convicted of a systematic
discrimination in favor of the rich as against the poor. This, in a
nutshell, is the spirit of present-day Christianity. The plethoric
churches of the cities are the main foes of economic honesty. It is
they, rather than the country churches, which, feeing expensive lawyers
and maintaining elaborate lobbies at our state capitals, menace our
politicians with ruin and bring all forms of pressure to bear to
terrorize our legislatures, in order to prevent the withdrawal of the
special privilege that heaps up in their hands the earnings wrenched
from others by legal favoritism; and in all this they are not seeking
to protect their existence against threatened destruction, nor to keep
themselves from being crippled in their legitimate work, but to add more
millions to the superfluous treasure they have already extorted from
the people, and to cater to the decadent demand for extravagant display.
Isolated instances of churches engaged in serious attempts to grapple
with the larger social needs prove nothing to the purpose. Such churches
need no graft to win the cooperation of devoted workers and benefactors.
If they join in the cry for exemption, it is because they are made
catspaws by the parasitic churches, and have not enough faith in
righteousness to shun the practice of doing evil that good may come.
In order that the issue might be made as clear as possible, the
discussion has been confined directly to churches and church property.
Of the property of religious and semi-religious bodies other than
churches, and of the educational, hospital, philanthropic, reformatory
and other institutions controlled by religious bodies and exempt from
taxation--although in many cases making their ostensible activities a
cover for sectarian proselytism, and in all cases using their otherwise
excellent work as a means of advertising their sects--little has been
said. The reasons against exemption of church property apply largely,
if not fully, to these as well, although they have at least certain
specious grounds for favor which the churches cannot show. It cannot be
doubted, at least, that the more completely society, in city, state
and nation, performs all its collective functions directly, rather than
through the medium of any semi-private institution partly withdrawn from
its direct supervision and control, the better. If some compromise is
found necessary, it should be looked upon only as a temporary expedient,
and not as a permanent policy.
The evils attendant upon subsidizing any form of sectarian institution,
whatever its social services, are too great to be ignored. Yet, making
the largest possible concessions to these bodies, such grounds of
expediency as may at present be held to justify their exemption from
taxation cannot legitimately be extended to the churches, whose mission
is in no way allied to any function of organized society.
The taxation of church property is demanded by every consideration of
sound public policy, common sense, democracy and justice. In the day
when these principles are heeded, the people will come into their own.
The matter in this pamphlet is an expansion of the argument made by the
author, June 1, 1915, at a hearing held in the Senate Chamber at
Albany, New York, before the Committee on Taxation of the Constitutional
Convention, in support of an amendment offered by James L. Nixon of
Buffalo, to abolish all exemptions of church property from taxation.
End of Project Gutenberg's Exempting the Churches, by James F. Morton. Jr.