#STRask - If Holy People Are So Interested in Politics, Shouldn’t Churches Be Taxed?

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Questions about whether churches ought to be taxed if holy people are so interested in politics and how to respond to the claim that conservative Christians changed their minds about slavery and segregation and will eventually also change their minds about LGBTQ+ rights.   They ought to tax churches. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everyone else. Conservative Christians were once for slavery and segregation and against women’s suffrage, but they’ve changed their minds now, and they’ll eventually change their minds about LGBTQ+ rights too.

Welcome, listeners. You are listening to Stand to Reason's Hashtag STR Ask podcast. And this is the podcast where you send us your questions. You can send them on X with the hashtag STR Ask, or you can go through our website at str.org. And then we try to answer them. And so, Greg— Emphasis on try. Yeah. Today we're starting with one from Sherry. A friend recently posted this statement.

I am sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everyone else. Thoughts? Well, everyone else doesn't pay the price of admission. There are all kinds of other organizations that are 501c3s that get public help, okay, maybe by tax benefits or something like that. And some of these are free to speak their mind, okay? This is one of those things where here's politics, here's the public square, here's where we all share ideas, except for Christians be quiet.

This is a new development, by the way, and a lot of people don't realize that the requirement that churches not weigh in on political matters is a product of the 1950s. LBJ, who later became president after John Kennedy was shot, and he was vice president, shot, and he was vice president. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a senator from Texas, and he had churches that were invading against him, and so he passed a law with the cooperation of Congress, and that they can't do that anymore. So the question is, why is it that essentially one group does not get to participate in the dialogue? What is the legitimate rationale for silencing them? Oh, well, they're getting tax benefits. All kinds of people get tax benefits. Big business gets all kinds of tax benefits, all kinds of relief. You know, farmers get tax benefit. They get relief benefits because they're they're paid for not growing certain crops as the government is trying to manage the agricultural economy. There are all kinds of things like that.

OK, but none of them are restrained from speaking. So why should why should churches or 501 C3s be restrained from weighing in? The revolution, the American Revolution, was—I'm trying to think of the best way to describe this. The place where this—the details of all of this, the ideas knocked back and forth, and how are we going to—this all happened in churches. Because that was where the communities gathered. Without the churches, there would have been no revolution. And so, you know, this is an artificial way of doing things that comes out of the 50s, and we've grown up with this, we're used to it. But why should one group be silenced?

Just because they get a tax break. What about all those other people get taxed? Everybody gets tax breaks of some sort. Does that mean that because the government is not going to take as much money from you as they might have, they get to control your speech? Keep in mind, all they're saying is, we're not going to take as much money from you as we were going to. It's our money. And so it's like they're giving – they're not paying us to be quiet. They're just not punishing us as much and then saying you can't speak because we're not punishing you as much. It's all twisted and this objection is based on that craziness.

Well, and one thing to note here, the question, if holy people are so interested in politics, let them pay the price of admission. The fact is that Christians do pay taxes. Holy people do pay taxes, even if the churches don't. So as individuals, we're still paying taxes. You know, usually you don't see a church pastor taking his church to some sort of political thing and trying to do something political. You see the Christians doing that, just like every other individual is out there making their political thoughts known. So I don't even think that this person has a trouble with churches. I think their trouble is with Christians. So now you've moved from the nonprofit to the actual individual who is paying taxes. And in our society, we all have the right to participate in the government policies. Right.

And then the other thing is that the reason why churches don't pay taxes is actually a very good reason. And a whole bunch of other enterprises too, not just churches. But in particular churches because – it's because the government cannot interfere with religious speech. They cannot interfere with religions. They can't abridge any religious talk. with religions. They can't abridge any, you know, religious talk. And what happens is the power to tax is the power to control. And in fact, there was a— And to silence. Yeah. So there was a Supreme Court decision way back in 1816 that said the power to tax implies

the power to destroy. And the government doesn't have the power to destroy churches. They don't have the power to control churches. They don't have the power to control churches. That's actually very central to the beginning of our country is that the government could not, you know, this isn't the non-establishment cause. What's the other one? The separation? No, no, no, no. The non-establishment means they can't establish one. But then there's the second half of that, which is they can't— Limit the free exercise thereof. Yeah, limit the free exercise. So if the power to tax is the power to destroy, then churches should not be taxed because the government—you have to have this separation where the government doesn't control the churches.

That's right, which was the point of Jefferson's comment in that letter to the Danbury Baptists where he used the phrase separation of church and state. He was meaning that the state has a wall that they cannot penetrate into the church. He wasn't saying the church can't penetrate into the state. That is, Christian people or Christian leaders can't have a political impact. But that's the way people have taken it. So the whole purpose of this is so that the government won't control churches. And then finally, it's important to note that churches provide a lot of social value in their communities. All you have to do is look up the—there are all sorts of statistics about this, about the kinds of

benefits that they supply to their community. They take care of each other, which means the government has to pay less to take care of others. They take care of other people in their community. There are all sorts of social benefits. The people do better. They thrive better. So it's not as if somehow the churches are taking advantage of the government here. There are good reasons why nonprofits and churches in particular are not taxed. Okay, Greg, let's go on to another question. This one is from a different Sherry. Please help me address this comment posted on social media.

Conservative Christians were once pro-slavery. They were also against women's suffrage and were once pro-segregation, and they changed their minds, mostly. Okay, there's two things here. One's a historical issue. And the Republican Party was founded in the mid-1900s for the purpose of destroying slavery. And it was opposed by the Democratic Party until the early 60s. 1960s, not 1860s. Over 100 years, this is just a matter of fact. Over 100 years, this is just a matter of fact.

And actually, I think when the amendment regarding the Constitution that had to do with suffrage for blacks, there was not a single Democratic vote in favor of that. So I don't – I question all of these statements of fact about the past, okay? In fact, especially with regard—I don't know about women's suffrage, but especially with regards to the slavery issue, it was predominantly Christians that were the ones who accomplished the abolition of slavery. I mean, obviously in the UK with William Wilberforce, and then we followed suit soon after. And it was Christian organizations and Christian people using biblical arguments. Oh, I understand there were Christians that were against it because they had an interest in it, an interest in slavery and promoting it.

But the irony is that when it was finally dealt with, it was finally dealt with because of Christian activism based on biblical principles and the Republican Party. Okay, that's just a matter of history. It doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on politically now. That's the history. It doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on politically now, that's the history. Okay. Now, just for the record, what distinguishes—okay, let me back up and put it this way. There are no moral implications of having dark skin. None. It has nothing to do with behavior. All right. There are moral implications about our sexual behaviors. Doesn't matter the motivations. People say, well, blacks

are born this way. Gays are born this way. Well, blacks were born this way. We have no evidence that gays are born that way, but that's not relevant, because the relevant issue is not what your inclination happens to be. What's relevant is what the inclination is that you want to practice freely. And the objection regarding the behavior is that it's immoral, and arguably immoral, all right? So there is no parity between these two issues, although the issue is brought up all the time. Now, again, I'm not going to stretch this too far. I'm not saying the Christians are right in their view. I mean, I view that. I believe that. But what the point I'm making now is you cannot compare these two things, okay, well, let's just change LGBT to pedophilia. Okay, I'm not saying they are pedophiles. I'm just saying, if it were pedophilia, would we make this argument? You know,

conservatives didn't wake up to the racism and all that until finally they changed their minds. When are they going to change their minds about pedophilia? Now, you're going to see immediately the problem with that view because the complaints in the first case is the apples and oranges. All right? It's the behaviors that are the concern. The difference between pedophilia and LGBTQ is that culture largely approves of LGBT behaviors and not pedophilia behaviors. OK, but the but but the argument doesn't stand in either case as a comparison to racism. That's the point I want to see.

And this this once again is an issue of clarity of thinking. There is no parity here. It is very different. Skin color is irrelevant to morality. Sexual behavior, and most people even acknowledge in general that sexual behavior is a moral concern. They've just changed the categories or the values they apply to different behaviors now over time, but it is still a category of moral concern. So, however one caches, if I were an LGBT advocate, I wouldn't make this comparison. It's not a legitimate

comparison. There's no parity between the two. Plus the historical facts are wrong. Double dead. Some of what you said, Greg, I have here too. So good job, Greg. We think too much alike now. But one thing to remember is you noted that it was those who believed in the Christian worldview, believed that we were all created in the image of God, and that your skin color is irrelevant to your human value, that we're all intrinsically valuable regardless of our skin color. That is a Christian idea.

That's a conservative Christian idea. Which applies equally to LGBT folk. We hold the consistent attitude. Of course, right. Yeah. Just to make the point. So those who were consistent with that, like William Wilberforce, and you can read his book about Christianity. He wrote a whole book about how the elites of his time had this kind of nominal Christianity. And he said, no, you need to look at the actual real doctrines. They matter. And you should have a more robust Christian worldview. You should love God.

You should take this seriously. So he was obviously a very serious conservative Christian. And he also started all kinds of other organizations, a whole bunch more, because he wanted to reform what they called manners. He reformed manners. That means moral behavior in the culture. And so all of these other enterprises that he started to help the poor, et cetera, et cetera. So he was calling people to a more robust and consistent worldview. Those who went with slavery were going away from the Christian worldview, being swayed by the culture. So that's what's true about the LGBT now ideas.

People are moving away from the Christian worldview towards the culture, whereas with slavery, being against slavery was moving towards the Christian worldview and away from culture. So what we have here is Christians being against segregation and slavery because skin color is irrelevant to our value, but being for male and female marriage because sex is relevant to marriage, according to the Christian worldview, because of the nature of marriage and how we were created as human beings. So we are created in a certain way that means that our sex is relevant to marriage. So you have skin color irrelevant to value, sex relevant to marriage. So again, you have those who went towards slavery were going away from a Christian worldview,

and those who are going towards LGBT are going away from a Christian worldview. Those who oppose segregation are going towards a Christian worldview. Those who are going— Who oppose. Who oppose the LGBT ideas are moving towards a Christian worldview. Nicely done. The question is not the change or whether or not they're going along with society. The question is, or whether or not they're going along with society. The question is, are they going with a Christian worldview or are they not? And so that's why I don't think you can expect to see a large movement of Christians towards same-sex marriage and homosexuality and all those sorts of things.

I mean, hopefully, if they're going to stay faithful. Thank you, Greg. And I would also point out, the people who went with the crowd were wrong. And they ended up going along with all sorts of harms to society. And that's the argument we make. If you go away from the nature of how we are created, and you fight against that, the result will be pain for our entire society. And so I hope that we don't go in that direction, although the fight's getting harder, because the more pressure you get from society, the more people go along with it. You know, there was a time way back when Christians, I think they had almost gotten rid of slavery in the West.

I can't remember. There were people, Christians have been arguing against slavery since, you know, way back when, the early Christians. So this kind of movement in that direction was not based in Christianity. So finally, I wanted to say something quickly about women's suffrage. So finally, I wanted to say something quickly about women's suffrage. And Nancy Peercy addresses this in her book, The Toxic War on Masculinity. And again, I don't know if there was a particular view that Christians took or not. It might be hard to tell because everyone would claim to be Christian.

I really don't know. I don't know about that. However, what I do know is that based on the research Nancy Peercy did, is that this wasn't about what people assume it was about today. So people think, OK, people were against suffrage because they didn't think women were human beings or they weren't valuable or they weren't smart. That actually wasn't why people were opposed. In fact, there were a lot of women who were opposed. And here's what she says. She says they understood clearly that universal suffrage implied a shift from the household to the individual as the basic unit of society. So here's another anti-suffrage said this. They said the vote would strike at the family as the self-governing unit upon which the state is built. So what they didn't want was for the government to start intruding into the family and they didn't want the family to be broken apart into individuals. They wanted it to be seen as as a group. So the explanations were not quite what people think today. And maybe there's more merit to it than we've understood. And I don't know that much about it. I only know what she wrote about in her book. But there's something to consider.

She's a very good researcher,'s suffrage for that reason. And I can imagine there was also probably a lot of misunderstanding even then, or maybe people mocked it or said they're really against women. I really don't know. I don't know the history of this. Well, Hollywood, the media control the conversation and they control the terms of it. So you put this into films as having been a certain way and people believe that's the way it actually was. And many times it wasn't that way at all. You look at the historical record, you find something entirely different. So there were a lot of women who wanted to be represented as a household rather than as an

individual for legitimate reasons, whether they were right or not, I haven't done enough research on that, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just bigotry. So, there you go. Christians, I mean, like every human being, we sin and anyone can be bigoted, but Christianity is not bigoted. Christianity is based on truths about reality and how we were created. And we learn to be wise by reading God's law and finding out what is good and what is right. And so the more people, the closer they get to that, the better our society will be. And that's what Christians truly believe. But people assume we make all sorts of decisions based on anger and malice and all those sorts of things. And I just wish they would take time to understand where we're coming from. Atheistic secularism was not the incentive for stopping slavery.

In fact, when you look at the philosophical foundations of atheistic secularism, there is no foundation for doing that. You can have individual people who are atheists who have a personal belief about these things, but you cannot—the question I ask is, what is the moral principle inherent to atheism that dictates this particular public good? And the answer is there is none because there are no moral principles inherent to atheism. Atheism is molecules in motion, all right? That's what you're left with is a simple way of putting the worldview. And that means all kinds of things that are entailed with a theistic worldview, what we're talking about, which is morality and rights and humans made the image of God and all kinds of other things. The atheistic worldview is evacuated of all of those things. When you hold a worldview, the worldview entails other things, okay? If there is a God that entails, at least in principle, a whole host of other things, if you hold that there is no God that eliminates those things

that are dependent on God as part of the worldview, okay? Again, atheists can be, in a certain sense, as good as Mother Teresa, but there is nothing in their worldview that informs that. That's an individual decision, and they could just as easily decided otherwise and still been completely consistent with their worldview. Of course, then they'd have to deal with guilt because the Christian worldview is the true one. And so then they'd have to, you know, it's not so easy for people to do wrong without feeling guilty, which of course is evidence, I think, for the Christian worldview. Yeah, which has an answer to the guilt issue. Right. Well, thank you, Sherry and Sherry, the two Sherrys today. We look forward to hearing from you with your question.

This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.