Part 4

In 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 rootedly established truth, is in the course of a few decades completely rejected. Religion is no exception to the general rule. The Greek, the Roman, the ancient Norse gods have had their day; and not a worshiper remains on earth to bow before their altars. Christianity may likewise pass; already its active devotees form but a minority of the population. And if Christianity as a whole may ultimately relinquish the field altogether, it is still more unlikely that the tenets of any particular sect known today should hold permanent sway over the minds and consciences of sincere men and women. We are allowing hundreds of millions of dollars of property to be insidiously withdrawn from the community, and tied up in the hands of great corporations which in fifty or a hundred years will be the mere shells of soulless organizations. We are making it possible for them to become our economic masters, long after men and women shall have ceased to find spiritual nutriment in any part of their creeds. By what species of casuistry does any person think it possible to put this forward as sane public policy?

"O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!"

TRUTH OF THE DOCTRINE IS NO TEST.

If the argument has thus far been conducted from the standpoint of the outsider, it is not intended to imply that the case against the exemption of church property from taxation rests in any fundamental way on the assumption that the teachings of Christianity or even the creeds of the churches are false. On the contrary, every most material ground for condemnation of the practice in question would continue to be valid, even if the truth of the Christian doctrine were assumed as a starting-point. "My kingdom is not of this world," is the express utterance put into the mouth of Jesus by his biographer. This obviously implies the principle of absolute religious liberty, so far as the secular state is concerned. The Christ of the New Testament disclaimed the intention of constraining the actions of unwilling followers. Even the man who had resolved to betray him was suffered to go forth in peace with the exhortation: "What thou doest, do quickly." In no part of his teaching is there warrant for religious domination of the state, or for control over the private actions of individuals. The only penalty for disobedience was withdrawal from the privilege of communion with him. Even the passage of dubious authenticity which smacks most of ecclesiastical judgment of the individual, goes no farther than to prescribe excommunication from the fellowship of the saints. "Let him be to thee as the Gentile and the publican," involves at most no more than an injunction to withdraw personal companionship from the unworthy. It is by man's own conscience and by the judgment of God in another world that Jesus expects evildoing to be punished. It never occurs to him to make religion a state affair.

Nay, it is possible to come closer home to the present subject. Unlike the church, which mutters "Lord, Lord," but departs from his teaching and example whenever its convenience is promoted by doing so, Jesus decided this very question on the side of honesty and justice. When this exact issue was placed before him, he not only paid his taxes, but plainly declared the duty of so doing, even though the existing government was one imposed by aliens. That, unlike the church which mocks truth by misusing his name to cover its utter antagonism to all that was vital in his teachings, he was so poor that he must needs work a miracle in order to obtain the tribute money, in no way touches the point at issue. The fact remains that he refused to take advantage of his exceptional position, but set the example of paying his tax to organized society. If the Lord of the church recognized the obligation of performing his civic duty, despite the fact that he was the exemplification of the religious principle, by what right does his church make itself more highly privileged than its master, and seek to set itself above the state?

HOW JESUS MET THE DEMAND FOR TAXES.

Not satisfied with example, Jesus is quoted as setting forth the principle specifically and unequivocally in plain words. The representatives of Judaism put the question to him plainly. "Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?" There could be no dodging the issue. They who inquired of him stood for the church of his period, the church which he himself recognized as such. "They were intrusted," said Paul, "with the oracles of God." Jesus himself referred to their temple as the house of God, and indignantly drove from its precincts the traders who sought to commercialize the sacred enclosure. It was his custom to attend the synagogue, and occasionally to take an active part in the service. If the ministers of sacred things are rightfully exempt from taxation, the Jewish nation, constituting as a whole a priesthood to God, as the channel of his revelation to man, might surely, from the standpoint of the faithful Bible believer, claim that exemption. Nor were indications wanting that they themselves felt so, and looked upon it as blasphemy to assert the contrary. In the hope to fasten a charge of either blasphemy on the one hand, or sedition on the other, on the wandering teacher, they eagerly awaited his answer. When it came, it was unanswerable. "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Cæsar was the lord of the coinage which bore his "image and superscription," God of the thoughts of their hearts and their private lives. Hence, the former rightfully laid claim to the tribute which enabled the public treasury to carry on not only the work of the coinage, but all other public works of a secular character; while the latter would hold them in the end accountable for their failure to obey his commandments, summed up in the injunction to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."

The difference between the Pharisees, to whom Jesus laid down the law in favor of the payment of honest taxes, and the churches, who are called upon to-day to perform this elementary civic obligation, lies simply in the greater impudence of the latter. The interlocutors of Jesus, says the text, "marveled, and left him, and went away." It is not stated that they proceeded to mend their ways, and to become honest; but they at least had the decency not to attempt to bluff themselves out of a false position. Confronted with the same issue, the churches of our time reject the commands of their alleged lord and master, and consult only their own greed of profit. They will cheat both Caesar and God out of what is due. That which they themselves hypocritically pretend to adore as the word of God they spit on in their actual performance, by deliberate disobedience. In spite of the almost unlimited capacity of human nature to deceive itself, it is practically incredible that they can seriously believe in the puerile sophistry by which they seek to conjure up pretexts for stealing the public revenues. The one plain reason is that they want the money, and are not honest enough to do their duty to the state which shelters and fosters them. They know this perfectly well, however glib they may be in trying to persuade the credulous that in cheating the community out of part of its revenues they are actuated only by the highest and holiest motives, and that the fact that they happen to be beneficiaries of the steal is merely an irrelevant coincidence. It is possible that there are still marines, to whom such a tale can be told.

In justice to sincere believers in Christianity, who do not make their piety a cloak for greed and dishonesty, it should be stated that a conscientious minority in the churches has consistently accepted the principle of religious liberty and of equal justice and has steadily protested against every infringement of the secular principle, even when the abuse seemed to favor their own interests.

AMERICA'S FIRST SECULARIST.

The first great voice raised on these shores for the complete separation of church and state was that of the Baptist preacher Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony, which as a state has proved in the latter days one of the worst traitors to the spirit of democratic justice. While the Baptist church as a whole has become no more loyal to religious freedom than any other, and has thus cheaply and basely surrendered its once glorious heritage, it has always embosomed individual members who could not forget that the founders of their sect suffered persecution to the death for proclaiming full freedom of conscience, and for declaring that the state could not lawfully meddle with affairs of religion. The Rev. Dr. Alvah Hovey, for many years head of the famous Newton (Mass.) Theological Seminary, wrote more than one book in which the principles of Secularism were proclaimed in full measure from the standpoint of orthodox religion, and enforced by numberless arguments drawn from the Bible and from theological lore. The relatively small sect of Seventh Day Adventists is constantly active in fighting for the complete separation of church and state, maintaining with ardor that Christianity stands in no need of patronage from human government. Indeed, it is amazing that any Christian, who is not playing a part, but truly believes in the divine origin of his faith, can come to any other conclusion. If the church is of God, it will live and conquer, though all men forsake it, and needs not the feeble prop of political favor; if it is of man, and must therefore risk failure unless bolstered up by artificial aid and by state subsidy, there is no reason why anybody not directly interested in its prosperity should wish to preserve it. Whether of God or of man, it is in no legitimate sense the ward of the state. In recent years, numerous church members are beginning to have some inkling of these truths, and to express their willingness to renounce the adulterous union with the politicians. At the hearings before the Committee on Taxation of the New York Constitutional Convention, in June, 1915, for example, preachers and laymen, representatives of individual churches and of Men's Christian clubs, appeared in favor of abolishing the exemption from taxation enjoyed by the churches. They did so, not as enemies of the church, but as its most far-sighted friends. Thoroughly believing in its divine mission, they were convinced that it could not afford to make itself dependent on graft for its very life.

THE GENUINE SHOULD BE CONSCIENTIOUS.

From the Christian standpoint, the argument against church exemption is as unanswerable as that from the standpoint of the independent citizen. A sham Christian, to whom the church is a means of getting ahead in the world, and whose profession of faith is a cloak to cover his greed and egotism, or a means of purchasing popularity and business success at any easy rate, may find it natural to carry over into his religious life the spirit of commercialism with which he gouges his fellowmen every day in his business relations. It is only natural that such a one should be impatient of any attempt to introduce ethical considerations into a question of self-advantage; for to him it is axiomatic that any way of getting money without being arrested is good enough for himself and therefore good enough for the church, honesty being merely a question of keeping out of the clutches of the police. He is so ignorant of the very elements of morality that he does not even know that he is a hypocrite, and that the kind of thing which stands for religion to him is as worthless as the cheap varnish which constitutes his imaginary respectability. To such as he, church exemption is justified by the fact that the church is clever enough to get away with it. A genuine believer in the Christian revelation, however, will wish the church, as its divinely commissioned repository, to "keep itself unspotted from the world." He will insist that, so far from seeking its private advantage by questionable means, which may by casuistry be made to appear defensible, it shall conceive of itself as "a city set on a hill," which "cannot be hid," and shall, in all things and at any sacrifice, let its "light shine before men," that by reason of its good works and spotless character it may prove that it is of God, and not of men. In case of doubt, he will demand that it refuse to set an example whereby the weakest observer may be caused to stumble.

With a keener jealousy for its purity than that ascribed to the ancient Roman, who declared that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," he will insist that it avoid the very appearance of evil. Such a believer will never be found in the halls of legislation, howling for the loaves and fishes, and asking that a secular state stultify itself by stealing money from its individual taxpayers, in order to subsidize the proselytism of the sects. And a church composed of such sincere believers will not give occasion to the enemy to blaspheme by evading its obligations through shallow quibbles about its moral influence in the community, but will prefer to give a practical demonstration of its boasted moral quality by willingly paying its honest debts.

THE CHURCH HARMED BY GRAFT.

Like all false principles, the habit of accepting a subsidy from the state does not fail to bring harm to the church itself, as the intelligent and high-minded among its friends are beginning to realize. It is not with impunity that an individual or institution adopts parasitism as a basic condition of existence. At the New York hearing already referred to the Rev. Charles T. Terry, pastor of the Brick Presbyterian church of New York City, did not hesitate to aver that the removal of the exemption graft would kill many churches. A divinely ordained institution is indeed in a parlous state when it has no shame in confessing that it is dependent for its very life on the favor of the politicians, its God having totally forsaken it. Such an organization is better dead. If the alleged divine head of the church is not able or willing to preserve it, in accordance with his emphatic promise, "even unto the end of the world," it is plain either that his promises are spurious, and hence the whole Christian fabric rests upon imposture and deserves to perish; or that the church which fails for lack of divine aid is a pretender and not the real body of believers whom he is pledged never to forsake. Let those so-called Christians, who cling frantically to the legislature instead of to Christ for the preservation of the agency for preaching his gospel, take which horn of the dilemma they please.

Every form of union with the state has not merely made of the church an instrument of oppression by reason of its preferred position and the artificial power thus conferred on it, but has been poison to the church itself. Its political alliance invariably sullies whatever primitive purity it may be believed to possess. No person having faith in its spiritual mission and anxiety to see it kept "unspotted from the world" and faithful to its "high calling" can fail to oppose every "entangling alliance" which may tend to corrupt it in even the smallest degree. In theory, the church should be purged of all motives of self-interest, and devoted solely to the good of mankind. Exemption from taxation and the lobbying necessary to maintain this special privilege infallibly defeat its alleged aims. In the scramble for political favors, it learns the tricks of "practical politics" at the expense of the unselfish devotion by which alone it could justify its claims to spiritual leadership. It gains material wealth at the cost of its own higher purpose. It unconsciously learns to regard money as the chief object of attainment, and to compromise its sterner principles for self-advantage. "_Facilis descensus Averno_" is the motto over its downward path.

ARMING CHURCH OPPONENTS.

Even if the church could, by some miracle which has never yet been vouchsafed to it, retain its purity of character while remaining the recipient of state graft, the crippling of its influence would continue. If it wishes to win the world to its gospel, it does ill to put the most potent of arguments in the mouths of its enemies. Let Christians make no mistake on this point. So long as the church continues to mulct the taxpayers for its own profit through the exemption of its property from taxation, it will be held by the multitude to give the lie to its own professions; and it will drive thousands of earnest seekers for truth away from its doors. We do not go to a thief for lessons in the higher morality. If rejection of the Christian message means the loss of immortal souls, their destruction lies on the heads of those representatives of Christianity who prize a few dollars stolen from the people at a higher rate than the privilege of coming forward with clean hands, and being listened to with respect and in a teachable spirit by those whose ears are now sealed against the admission of the gospel message by their unconquerable distrust and contempt for those who come with lessons of moral and spiritual uplift, but whose hands are tainted by the acceptance of graft from politicians who never give without expecting an equivalent in return. In receiving this dishonest money the church is not only guilty of an immoral act, but is legitimately subject to many suspicions of unworthy conduct of which it may be innocent, but which it has debarred itself from being in a position to refute. It has thus tied its own hands with reference to its real work of benefiting the spiritual natures of human beings. Whether the teachings of Christianity are true or false, the adulterous union of church and state creates a reasonable and just bias against them, and prevents them from having a fair hearing. Those who believe that the eternal salvation of mankind hangs on the acceptance of these teachings are, from their own standpoint, incurring a fearful responsibility in placing so huge a stumbling-block in the way of inquiring minds. They have no reply, and can only hang their heads in shame, when we outsiders sharply demand what value a religion can have for mankind if it cannot breed common honesty even in the institution which embodies it and which has no other function than to spread its teachings.

CHIEF DEFENSE OF CHURCH SUBSIDIES.

Since no corrupt condition has ever wanted for apologists, it is not surprising that self-interest has prompted many voluble spokesmen for the churches to cast about for plausible arguments in favor of a system by which they fatten on avoidance of responsibility. While most of such attempts to excuse the inexcusable have already been refuted in advance, a brief summary of those currently employed is desirable, as revealing their utter ineptitude. In practically every case, it becomes self-evident that they are not the true reasons for church exemption, but worked up by way of afterthought. Having already decided to rob us, on quite other grounds, our plunderers sit down to devise specious phrases which may serve to cajole their victims. In reality, the exemption of church property from taxation is, of course, a survival from the times when it was frankly regarded as the duty of the state to support the church and to enforce the dogmas of religion. This medieval view having passed away, so far as the enlightened members of the community are concerned, the subsidizing of the church by the state should have perished with it; but since the churches do not wish to lose their easy money, they have manufactured pretexts for the continuance of the favoritism to which they are self-evidently not entitled in a land and an age of religious liberty and equality.

The chief defense of church graft is based on the claim that religion is the supreme moral agency of the community. This argument is found in many forms, and is highly elaborated by those who put it forward. Boiled down, it expresses the point of view that the church is a voluntary adjunct of the police power; that it lessens crime, and therefore directly saves expense and trouble to society, for which exemption from taxation is only a reasonable return. In part, this argument has already been tested and found valueless. The church claims a kingdom, which "is not of this world," and its main business is to create subjects for that kingdom. To receive salvation, faith is all-essential, moral character being subsidiary. A single act of penitence may atone for a lifetime of crime. The great work of the church is to develop faith, without which the righteous deeds of the purest and best man on earth are nothing but "filthy rags." The vilest murderer, "converted" under the fear of being presently precipitated into a yawning hell, and having no further opportunity to enjoy life on this earth, may pass directly from the gallows or the electric chair to the bosom of Jesus, while his innocent victim, struck suddenly dead without a chance to reflect on possibilities beyond the grave, has sunk to everlasting perdition in spite of possessing a character above reproach. Is this the form of doctrine calculated to raise the moral tone of the community? Let it not be replied that this is the antiquated theology which the liberal and most of the orthodox churches have long since outgrown. On the contrary, it is the teaching of the entire Roman Catholic church and of the largest section of the Protestant church. In its coarsest and crudest form, it has in our own day been preached to huge audiences from one end of the country to the other by the spectacular evangelist, Billy Sunday, as the only true Christianity; and this otherwise negligible religious mountebank has received the explicit endorsement of the principal evangelical organizations and an overwhelming majority of the orthodox preachers in every one of the largest and a multitude of the lesser cities of our land. The churches in which this repulsive and vicious doctrine is taught receive much the larger share of the benefit from tax exemption.

DOUBLE PRICE FOR SALVATION.