Part 7

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.

NEW YORK'S BLANKET EXEMPTION LAW.

Before taking up the subject of statistics, it will not be amiss to quote the exemption law of New York as typical of church graft at its worst. It will be seen that references to religious uses and purposes are ingeniously smuggled in, side by side with much verbiage as to institutions serving a public purpose, so that they may appear to fit naturally among such bodies as so minister to the collective needs of the community that they deserve to be subsidized by the state. For this reason, it is best to cite the germane portions of the statute in full, instead of isolating those that relate solely to the churches. Incidentally, it will be noted that the churches are not once mentioned by name. It is the nature of graft to seek shelter under evasion, and to avoid clear expression of its intentions. The following, then, is drawn from Section 4, subdivision 7, of the Tax Law of New York:

"The real property of a corporation or association organized exclusively for the moral or mental improvement of men or women, or for religious, bible, tract, charitable, benevolent, missionary, hospital, infirmary, educational, scientific, literary, library, patriotic, historical or cemetery purposes... and the personal property of any such corporation shall be exempt from taxation. But no such corporation shall be entitled to any such exemption, if any member or employee thereof shall receive or may be lawfully entitled to receive any pecuniary profit from the operations thereof except reasonable compensation for services in effecting one or more of such purposes, or as proper beneficiaries of its strictly charitable purposes; or if the organization thereof, for any of such avowed purposes, be a guise or pretence for profit... or if it be not in good faith organized or conducted exclusively for one or more of such purposes. The real property of any such corporation or association entitled to such exemption held by it exclusively for one or more of such purposes, and from which no rents, profits or income are derived, shall be so exempt, although not in actual use therefor by reason of the absence of suitable buildings or improvements thereon, if the construction of such buildings is in progress, or is in good faith contemplated by such corporation or association.... Property held by any officer of a religious denomination shall be entitled to the same exemption, subject to the same conditions and exceptions, as property held by a religious corporation."

In the comprehensive list of exempted classes of property enumerated above, it will be observed that all save those of a religious nature have at least some show of claim to be regarded as ministering to public aims, or as essential to the existence of a civilized community, and therefore deserving of public encouragement. Whether the claim is in all cases sufficient to warrant exemption from taxation, need not be here discussed. In the opinion of many students of the problem, nearly all exemptions are illicit. Whether that be the case or not, it has been made clear that the argument for taxing churches is stronger than that for taxing any of the other classes, and the argument against it weaker. This results from the fact that religion is more distinctly a matter of the individual than is literature, science, education or philanthropy. Hence, even if it be good public policy to subsidize these agents of social progress, it by no means follows that the same is true of the churches; while, conversely, the taxation of churches need not logically embrace the taxation of any of the other classes. Each must stand on its own merits; and in each case enter considerations that make it improper to draw the fate of any one of them into that of any other. That a mischievous and loosely drawn statute has bracketed them all together should not blind us to the radical differences that exist among them, or to the fact that none of the grounds on which exemption of most of the others is defended apply in any degree to the churches.

LAND SPECULATION INVITED.

The recklessness of the enactors of the New York tax law is visible in its blanket nature. Not satisfied with exempting property in actual use, the statute contains a provision by which the tax assessor is called upon to become a telepathic expert, and to divine the intentions of a corporation holding land out of use! Not only property actually used for religious purposes is to go untaxed, but also land where the construction of buildings for the purpose of worship "is in good faith contemplated!" No method for testing the "good faith" is provided, nor any safeguard against abuse of the "good faith" clause. No more open invitation to fraud could be devised. No penalty for evasion is provided, and no means of collecting back taxes, in case the church corporation, after grabbing land from the heart of the city, and holding it ten or twenty years under the pretense of intending to build on it at some future time, shall find it impracticable or undesirable to carry out the "contemplated" action, and shall sell the land at an increased valuation, and put a handsome amount of money into its treasury through the kindness of government in promoting this species of land speculation without risk. Should the property depreciate instead of rising, there is still time to use it for church purposes, and nothing is lost. Every other land speculator must at least take some risk; but the church is playing a sure game and cannot lose. The community pays the bill for the benefit of the sure-thing gambler. If it be urged that this particular clause allows the same abuse by any other form of exempted corporation, the answer is that this only makes the evil all the greater. The clause would be bad, even if it applied only to corporations rightfully held exempt from taxation on the property in actual use by them for public purposes; and the wrong is multiplied by its application to the churches, which have no legitimate claim to exemption under any conditions.

Turn now to the last sentence in the law as quoted. This works in two main ways. In the first place, it is special legislation in favor of the policy of the Roman Catholic church of placing church properties in the hands of bishops, over whom there is no adequate check. The congregation might as well be so many cattle for all the rights they have over the church property accumulated through their sacrifices. All they are for, in the eyes of the hierarchy, to which they submit with the docility of sheep, and less than a sheep's intelligence, is to pay. Contrary to the entire spirit of self-government, the State of New York endorses this exploitation and tyranny, and ordains that the irresponsible bishops shall hold other people's property free from all taxation, to use or abuse as they see fit. The provision also makes it possible for any individual to start a church on his own hook, for any ulterior ends he may see fit, and to maintain sole authority over the property as an "officer of a religious denomination," thus under the color of religion to claim divine sanction for the most anti-social ends, and to receive a subsidy from the state while doing so. Its second use is to complete the parasitical status of the ordinary parson by exempting his house and land from taxation, provided only he is not using it to buy and sell goods, but only for the pretended service of God. When the land appreciates, he may sell at a profit, and start to "serve God" in a brand new parsonage, putting into his own pocket the surplus cash thus sweated from the community. Like the church, he may gamble in land values to his heart's content. As he pays no taxes, he cannot lose, and can hold on indefinitely, where the ordinary real estate dealer must let go his holdings if the market runs against him. The state thus interposes to favor one land speculator above another, and to tempt the clergyman to neglect his spiritual duties for financial profit. The provision is thus an outrage on the community, an unfairness to the real estate interests, and an injury to whatever is good in religion.

A FEW FIGURES.

The amount of the indirect subsidy annually paid to the churches by our government which pretends to separation of church and state cannot be exactly determined. Statistics of the value of church property are inaccurately gathered, with a tendency to underestimate; and tax rates, of course, vary within very wide limits. Taking the figures as we find them, however, and assuming an average tax rate of $1.50 per $100, we shall still arrive at striking results.

As we have seen, President Grant, in his presidential message for 1875, quotes the amount of church property exempt from taxation in 1850 as approximately $87,000,000. This had doubled, he states, in 1860; and the official figures for 1870 were $354,483,587. This terrific rate of growth, far in excess of the growth of any other form of wealth, could not, of course, be maintained in full; but the actual increase has, none the less, been enormous and alarming. In 1890, the admitted value of church property, as compiled by H. K. Carroll, LL.D., the well-known authority on religious statistics, had risen to $679,694,439. The latest available figures of the present time are those of 1906, in which year the church property of the country was valued at $1,257,575,867. Keeping well within bounds in estimating the value of this favored class of property in the present year (1915), we shall be more than safely conservative in calling it at least $1,500,000,000; and it is still rapidly increasing. Thus, from 1850 to 1915, the value of church property was multiplied not less than fourteenfold. In the same space of time, the population had increased less than fourfold; and church membership has just about kept pace with the population; showing a growing tendency to fall behind. In other words, the churches are making money from three to four times as fast as they are gaining members (winning "souls" in their own phrase), and the same number of times as rapidly as the population is growing. They are "laying up treasures on earth" faster than any other class in the community and at the expense of the whole community; and it is no wonder that their clutch on the "things of this world" and their opposition to any check on their graft prove them amenable to the saying: "Where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also." When an organization so rapidly absorbs the wealth of the nation it cannot resent the imputation that acquiring wealth is its chief concern.

At the assumed rate of taxation ($1.50 per $100), the money actually filched from the public treasury by the churches is at least $22,500,000 a year; and this minimum calculation, far below the actual amount, is increasing swiftly from year to year. In all the talk of economy in taxation, and of seeking new sources of revenue, when will our "statesmen" have the intelligence to stop this frightful leak? The churches owe the money, they can afford to pay, and they should be made to pay. Did they not set the satisfaction of selfish greed above moral and civic considerations, they would do their duty without compulsion. Since, however, they will do nothing for the community, except when they are forced to obey the people's will, the problem is only that of enlightening the public as to the manner and degree in which it is robbed. If legislatures cannot be found with moral courage to withstand the threats of the church lobby, and with sense to penetrate the sophistries of the hired lawyers arguing in behalf of the church's demands, a counter force must be provided in an enlightened public sentiment so strong that the politician will find his political future dependent on his deafness to the ecclesiastical sirens and his support of full justice to the taxpaying citizens as against the pious harpies now permitted to prey upon them.

To enter upon the figures for each of the different states and for the principal cities would savor of iteration. In no case will analysis of the figures for any state or city negative the foregoing facts or conclusions. Those interested in pursuing the question of statistical detail may find food for study and reflection in the work of H. K. Carroll, LL.D., "Religious Forces in the United States," edition of 1912, pages 378-381 and 418-421. Dr. Carroll was in official charge of the department of churches in the census of 1890 and is a recognized authority on church statistics. Active in Methodist circles all his life, he may be trusted to resolve all doubts in favor of the church, and his testimony cannot be put aside by church apologists.

WEALTH INCREASES FASTER THAN CHURCHES.

Illustration of the looting of the public treasury by church exemption may be drawn from New York. In this state church property in 1890 was valued at $140,123,008. In 1906, a period of fourteen years, it had risen to $255,166,284. Here, as elsewhere in the country, Dr. Carroll points out ("Religious Forces" Introduction, p. 59) that the increase in church buildings comes nowhere near keeping pace with the increase in values. In the country as a whole the increase in values from 1890 to 1906 was 85.1 per cent., while the increase in church edifices was only 35.3 per cent. In New York, the increase in the number of buildings within the period given was only from 7,942 to 9,193, or less than 16 per cent., as compared to the increase in value of more than 82 per cent. Even with this small increase of churches, it is notorious that more buildings exist than are needed or used. But taking the figures as they are, it is self-evident that for this huge increment of value the community gets nothing. Even the friendly Dr. Carroll is forced to admit this, and to draw the inevitable conclusion (Int., p. 60) that the increase results from more costly edifices and the "natural" increase in values, which can mean nothing but speculative land values. This removes the last faint pretext for exemption. Even supposing that the services rendered by the churches were indispensable to the community, it is palpable that the performance of such service draws upon only a fraction of the wealth possessed by these bodies. Out of the immense margin they could well afford to bear their honest share of civic burdens, and would not be compelled to curtail their beneficent activities in order to do so. Honest church taxation would merely prevent the storing up of superfluous wealth at the expense of the whole people.

Since the most valuable church property is concentrated in the cities, a glance at their statistics should not be omitted. Figures for 1890 are given by Dr. Carroll in the volume cited, pages 400-415. From these, it appears that in that year $313,537,247 of the total previously given was situated in the 124 cities of the first, second and third class. The population of these cities amounted to 13,988,938 in 1890; that of the whole country to 62,622,250. Thus were the enormous profits from the exemption graft poured mainly into the swollen coffers of the city churches. While serving considerably less than one-fourth of the population, they had amassed nearly one-half of the property owned by all the churches of the country. The churches of New York city alone owned in the year stated property to the value of $73,352,437, more that a tenth of all the church property in the country, although then, as now, containing only about one-twentieth of the population. While no exact figures are at present available as to the value of church property in the metropolis to-day the amount cannot be much short of a quarter of a million dollars. In a printed brief presented to the Committee on Taxation on the New York Constitutional Convention, William D. Guthrie, retained as attorney for the Roman Catholic interests, estimates, according to figures as of May, 1914, the amount at $170,445,725.* As his whole aim was to minimize the amount of exemptions this is certainly none too high a figure, and is probably much too low. Allowing it to stand, however, a comparison with the foregoing data will show that either New York churches are at a fearful rate growing richer and richer at the expense of the other churches of the country, or that the total of church property in the land has risen to the appalling figure of at least $1,700,000,000.

* In 1913 an analysis of the official figures given in the City Record to show the amount of exempt property in New York City was made for The Truth Seeker. The exempted church property listed was appraised at $244,-445,955.

POPULATION AND PROFITS.

Taking the church population instead of the general population as, from some points of view, a fairer measure of the degree to which the city churches amass wealth at the expense of the country churches, we find that the total number of communicants in 1890 was 20,618,307 in the entire country. In the 124 cities of importance, the number was 5,302,018. It should further be remembered that the Roman Catholics are concentrated in the cities, about one-tenth of all the Catholics in the country being in the single city of New York; and that this sect does not keep honest records of its communicants, but practically forces all the children of nine years of age and above, born in Catholic families, to become communicants, and then on the basis of "once a Catholic, always a Catholic," counts them forever after in its doctored figures. Thus the hundreds of thousands of born Catholics who have turned Protestants are counted twice in making up religious statistics, once as Catholics and once as members of the denomination to which they have transferred their allegiance; while the ex-Catholics who have left the church altogether are still counted in to swell the total. Thus through accepting the crooked Roman Catholic statistics, the ostensible number of church members in the country is greatly overestimated by Dr. Carroll and others, while the proportion of Catholics to the whole number is likewise immensely exaggerated. Could we squeeze out the water from the religious statistics, it would be found that the actual percentage of genuine communicants in the cities is much less than one in four. Even from Dr. Carroll's figures, however, it is but little more. Thus a church member in one of the cities is a partner in twice the wealth of a church member in the country; and "where the treasure is, there will the heart be also." By the same census, the number of communicants in New York city was only 866,564, or less than one-twenty-third of the total, and this in spite of having much more than its share of persons dishonestly counted as Catholic "communicants." So, according to the system of church exemption, the rich New York churches, with less than one church member in every twenty-three in the country as a whole, have swept into their hands, by the method attributed by the author of the Proverbs to the daughters of the horseleech, more than one-tenth of all the church wealth. No wonder they can afford to hire expensive counsel to appear before the state legislature and the Constitutional Convention to demand that they be left undisturbed in the profitable enterprise of impoverishing the community to provide more luxury for themselves.

PREPONDERANCE OF CITY PROPERTY.

A final comparison will prove even more startling than what has gone before. In 1890, the total number of church buildings in the country was 142,639; in the cities referred to, the number was 9,722; and in New York city it was 917. That is to say, 124 cities, with less than one-fourteenth the number of church buildings, possessed practically one-half of the church wealth; while the single city of New York, which absorbed more than one-tenth of the wealth, had less than one out of every 155 of the church buildings of the country! No wonder the churches of the large cities, and of New York in particular, howl bloody murder when asked to part with some of their popular graft and pay their debts! To them, at least, Christianity is no longer a religion for the poor and disinherited of earth, but the special enjoyment of idle wealth and heartless vanity.

What New York lacks in number of churches to the population, it makes up in the luxurious elegance of those it does possess. Its houses of worship are magnificent religious clubs for worship on the _de luxe_ plan. What the poor, wandering Nazarene, if any credence is to be placed in the story of his life, would have said to this cynical burlesque of his teachings, may be left to the imagination. Were there any honest excuse for asking the state to bear part of the burdens of the church, it would apply in a tenfold degree to the struggling country churches, which form a much more organic life of the community than do the city ones, and may much more plausibly be credited with genuine and community-wide social service. As has been seen, however, tax exemption going in the main to multiply the superfluous wealth of the city churches, does next to nothing for them.