Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Editorial: Free religions of their exemptions
There is a simple and elegant solution to ease one of the tensions between two of America's essential freedoms.
From the RoundTable blog
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Thirty-three American pastors who want to endorse political candidates from their pulpits went to church Sunday to break the rules, defying the Internal Revenue Service to take away their churches' tax exempt status.
The IRS should do it -- and not just for the 33, but all churches; and not churches alone.
No religions should operate tax free.
The exemption is hard to justify except as a government endorsement of religion as a social good. But relying on that argument runs counter to the Bill of Rights' guarantee that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ... ."
Yes, we understand that the First Amendment goes on to say "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ... ." But a tax exemption is not necessary to the free exercise of religion.
The exemption is simply favored treatment.
One might argue that organized faith groups earn their exemption by providing care for the poor, the sick, the broken -- help that government otherwise would have to provide. That made for a more convincing case in earlier centuries, before taxpayers started paying for an array of government programs essential to the health and welfare of the nation.
Still, many organized religions do provide unique and valuable human services in their communities. Those parts of their ministries ought to be able to remain tax exempt as nonprofits -- so long, of course, as they don't become political advocacy groups.
At religious services, preachers, rabbis, imams and priests then would be free to give full vent to their political views as informed by their religious faith.
One of the pastors who participated in Sunday's protest, organized by the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund, maintained that in this year's presidential election, two issues "transcend all others": abortion and same-sex marriage. And Democrat Barack Obama's views on these "are in direct opposition to God's truth as he has revealed it in the Scriptures."
The Rev. Ron Johnson Jr., of the Christian evangelical Living Stones Church in Crown Point, Ind., argued, reasonably: "The issue is not 'Are we legislating morality?' This issue is 'Whose morality are we legislating?'"
Not all religious leaders see the issue this way. The Interfaith Alliance is devoted to keeping faith and politics separate; more than 180 of its members have pledged not to endorse a candidate on behalf of their houses of worship. They recoil from the idea of asserting what God wants government to be.
As Rabbi Jack Moline, of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, pointed out, clergy can take off their robes and actively campaign as individuals.
Indeed, even from the pulpit, religious leaders can so instruct their congregations on the issues and on candidates' stands on the issues that a formal endorsement often seems redundant.
Yet, some feel the IRS requires them to choose between the full expression of their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion and speech.
The government's only gag is a tax exemption. We say, take it off.
