Part 8

THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR.

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performs all its collective functions directly, rather than through the medium of any semi-private institution partly withdrawn from its direct supervision and control, the better.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.