Category: History - Modern (1750+)
"To relieve the property of a church from taxation is to appropriate money, to the extent of that tax, for the support of that church.... To exempt the church from taxation is to pay a part of the priest's salary."--Ingersoll.
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 dif...
6. Part 6The Rev. Dr. D. C. Potter* of Brooklyn, who attended the hearing, scorned to argue with unbelievers in any way except by ejaculations. He fairly screeched his horror of the idea...
5. Part 5But from a social point of view the case is even more serious. It is not the most intellectual and refined classes which even the wildest zealot will claim to stand in special n...
3. Part 3The church cannot be heard to claim that it is a public or a quasi-public institution. It exercises no public function of any description which should warrant granting it immuni...
4. Part 4In this connection, it must be borne in mind that nothing is stationary. The minds of men change from age to age; and that which appears to one generation to be the most rootedl...
2. Part 2No amount of sophistry can disguise the fact that the church is primarily a doctrinal organization. No theories of supernaturalism are needed, in order to teach a pure morality,...
1. Part 1"To relieve the property of a church from taxation is to appropriate money, to the extent of that tax, for the support of that church.... To exempt the church from taxation is t...
8. Part 8In 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 th...