Exempting the Churches / An Argument for the Abolition of This Unjust and Unconstitutional Practice

by James F. Morton

The curious argument has sometimes been urged that churches raise the value of adjacent property, and should therefore escape taxation. If this be indeed a fact, it proves either nothing to the purpose or a great deal too much for the comfort of those who put it forward. It is difficult to see why the taxpayers of an entire city should reward the church for enriching the few property-owners canny enough to secure land adjoining clerically owned property. By merely increasing the value of certain pieces of property at the expense of land less fortunately located, the community as a whole is not made a substantial gainer. Even taking the most favorable view, it is certain that the "unearned increment" of the property adjoining the church will never rise so high as to overbalance the total value of the church property withdrawn from taxation; and hence the encouraging of church-building by tax exemption must represent a net financial loss to the community. Moreover, every improvement on land increases the value of neighboring property; hence the argument, if valid at all, warrants the exemption of all improvements from taxation, and the equal taxation of all land values, whether the land is built on by churches or otherwise utilized, or left wholly unimproved.

The fact should also be recognized that to many the existence of churches adjacent to their property is anything but a benefit. So far from regarding the value of their property as increased by the coming of a church, many an owner will resent the intrusion, and sell out at a loss, rather than be exposed to some of the features of church activity in his immediate vicinity. To many, the ringing of church bells is an intolerable nuisance and a positive grievance. The collection of crowds, even of the most decorous nature, is most objectionable to others. In New York and other cities, property in certain sections is highly restricted by deeds which provide against the erection of churches, no less than of livery stables and other structures considered undesirable in a residential neighborhood. Real estate men do not bear out the claim that the inevitable or even the usual result of the erection of churches is to increase the value of property in the vicinity.

SOPHISTRY AT THE NEW YORK HEARING.

The weakness of the case for the exemption of church property is apparent from the fact that the foregoing easily refuted claims represent substantially the entire case in its favor. At the New York hearing of 1915, and at all other hearings before the various legislative bodies of our land, they have been the only points on which stress was sought to be laid. Incidentally, of course, minor assertions have been made, such as the alleged fact that the church is a public utility, in the maintenance of which the community has a direct interest. This plea, on which small reliance is usually placed, has been fully disposed of by the analysis on a preceding page of the function of the church. Sometimes attention is called to the apparent preponderance of interest in favor of exemption, as witnessed by the number of speakers who appear in its favor at committee hearings and by the number and size of the organizations which they represent. This is obviously the most transparent sophistry. Principles are not to be gauged by numbers. A country in which the mob may dispose at its lightest whim of the rights and liberties of the individual or of the minority is a land of tyranny, and cannot prosper in the end. Moreover, the alleged preponderance does not even prove that the majority of the citizens are in favor of the special privilege dishonestly demanded by the churches. It merely furnishes fresh evidence of the well-known fact that parties with special interests to be subserved by class legislation will organize more efficiently than those appearing for the general interest of the citizens, but not backed by powerful existing organizations well supplied with funds and having much to gain or lose in a financial way by the passage or defeat of the proposed legislation. It is hard to stir up popular interest to the point of action in matters that involve the civic conscience. Nevertheless, the people are slowly awakening to a realization of the iniquity of the manner in which the churches, for their own profit, have played upon the religious emotions of those under their influence; and a day of reckoning is imminent. The sentiment in behalf of the repeal of the dishonest exemption laws is growing continually stronger, and must finally become irresistible.

It has sometimes been asserted that precedent is against the taxing of churches. At the New York hearing, this was gravely put forth by a Presbyterian preacher as a serious argument; and he sought to dismiss the proposition by cavalierly remarking that it was part of the present craze for new taxes of all sorts. His deliverance was echoed by a lawyer hired to represent Grace Episcopal church, the church which showed its moral standards by cheating its architect out of his fee on a contemptible legal technicality. "I am old-fashioned enough," remarked the lawyer, metaphorically patting himself on the back for his astute appeal to religious prejudice, "to believe that the house of God should not be taxed." In other words, whatever is, is right. No old abuse must ever be abolished, and every new idea must be wrong. Could there be a finer admission that the bent of the churchly trained mind is against all progress, and prone to resist change merely because it is new?

CONFESSED TREASON TO AMERICAN PRINCIPLES.

The defenders of church graft never fail in the end to reveal their real position. At no public hearing has it ever happened that the shrewder representatives of the church were able to restrain their less subtle colleagues from avowing their disbelief in the separation of church and state, and their conviction that the government should consider the support of religion as part of its business. The important hearing so often quoted had several such confessions of treason to American principles. The Rev. Charles T. Terry of the Brick Presbyterian church of New York city, when asked whether he would think it proper for the state to appropriate money directly for the support of the churches, since exemption was but an indirect way of accomplishing the same result, completely missed the object of the question, and instead of attempting to distinguish the two methods in principle calmly assumed that there could be no question of impropriety in either, and explained that he preferred the exemption method as more dignified. If he had been entirely frank, he might have confessed his doubt whether a direct theft from the taxpayers would be tolerated in this enlightened period. The American churches would be only too glad to adopt the English method of open and unabashed robbery of dissenting citizens for the support of the churches in whose doctrines they do not believe. This, however, has become an impossibility.

In our colonial period we passed through the mental condition in which church and state were considered as one, and neglect of religious "duty" was punished as an offense against the community. In default of a return to those days, so blessed in the view of the enemies of religious liberty, the churches are willing to accept the indirect contribution of the state to their private expenses incurred in the interest of sectarian proselytism. True Americanism, however, finds no logical distinction between the one method and the other. A difference of degree may exist, but not one of kind.

The 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 that anybody should propose to "tax the house of God." The finely-spun fallacies of his colleagues, who talked of the "social services" of the churches and their alleged protection to the community from a flood of vice and crime, went down in the wind before his anguished yells at the thought that religious liberty and the separation of church and state were in danger of becoming complete realities in a democracy nominally pledged to the unwavering support of these great principles. In the same spirit, Herman Metz, a politician and former officeholder, irrelevantly remarked that the plea that non-churchgoers should not be forced to meet the expenses of an institution which is of no value to them is like the objection to paying taxes for schools if we happen to have no children, or for the fire department if our house has never been on fire! The utter lack of distinction between the ministering to private wants and the performance of a public function would do discredit to an imbecile. Still worse, because less excusable, was the assertion of Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, a man of education and formal culture, that a person who did not believe in religion should be taxed to support the churches just as an Anarchist should be taxed to support the government! With greater suavity and shrewdness, but no less indifference to historic fact and democratic principle, William D. Guthrie, appearing as attorney for the Roman Catholic interests, rejected the easy way out of pretending that the churches subserved some civic function, and defended their claims on the ground that "immemorial practice" sanctioned the exemption graft. In other words, a wrong becomes right, an abuse a virtue, if it is only continued long enough! Mr. Guthrie went so far as to assert that Christianity is part of the common law of the land. If this be true, our case even yet is not hopeless, for the "common law" of England, from which American jurisprudence is derived, did not drop down from heaven as a sacred deposit, forever perfect and unchangeable. As a matter of fact, most of it has long since been superseded by the constitutional law of the nation and the states, and by innumerable statutes. From the moment of the adoption of our Federal Constitution, expressly forbidding an "establishment of religion," Christianity, whatever its status under the common law, ceased to form an integral part of the law of the United States, and became simply one of many forms of private belief, the relative number of its adherents being totally immaterial. In the treaty with Tripoli, secured during the administration of George Washington, our first great President placed his signature to the specific statement that the government of this land is in no sense founded on the Christian religion. The forenamed gentlemen, one and all, far from lending strength to their cause by invoking the outworn traditions of the past and by appealing to the brute force of religious bigotry against the equal civic rights of all citizens, have turned state's evidence against their accomplices by the unthinking confession that the case for church exemption rests in the last analysis on treason to the Constitution and to the principle of separation of church and state. When the enemies of religious liberty and the rights of man thus come out in their true colors we know how to meet them. It is the insidious method of seeking to shelter church graft under pretensions of the common weal that is able to deceive the public for a time.

* See "Crimes of Preachers."