If all institutions or groups of like-minded individuals received the benefit of tax exemption, a better defense might be made of the practice, although it would still involve an injustice toward those who are perfectly good and useful citizens, in spite of their choice not to participate in the affairs of any organization. But the favoritism extended to bodies of a religious nature is at once invidious and unjust. While the whole theory of our government is hostile to special privilege, the church arrogates to itself the right to be made an exception, and to become a particular pet. It ardently craves parasitism, and is not denied its wish. When other groups of citizens meet together to consult over their common affairs, or to engage in common activities, they are not pauperized by the community. If they occupy land and build upon it, they pay their share of the public burden, based on the property they possess, just like any other person or persons, and do not sell their self-respect for the sake of saving a few dollars. It remains for the one institution which constantly puts on airs of superior virtue, and which expects to take front seats on all occasions and to have everybody kowtow to it, to come with the beggar's whine, and to demand charity of the state. Its dishonesty is only excelled by its impudence.
CHURCHES NOT PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS.
The church cannot be heard to claim that it is a public or a quasi-public institution. It exercises no public function of any description which should warrant granting it immunity from the general laws binding on all members of the community. Its mission is to preach something which it calls the gospel. By its own insistent declaration, it derives its authority to teach solely from the being whom it worships as its deity.* It is not in any sense commissioned by the state or by the people, and asks no permission of either to carry out its purposes. Its members are held together by a body of doctrine accepted by them all; and they maintain a form of worship which they count pleasing in the sight of their God. If they are mistaken, it is labor and devotion thrown away; if they are right, they will be individually and collectively rewarded by heaven, either in this life or in some other. All this is strictly their own business and that of their deity. It does not concern the state in any way whatever. The state has no means of knowing whether they are right or wrong, and is not being served in any way by their ceremonials. Its work and theirs do not lie parallel in a single respect. The further function of the church, as a church, is simply to seek to convert others to the body of dogma which it puts forward as the message of God to man and the revelation of the divine will. Here, again, the state is in no way concerned, provided the alleged divine will is not an incitement to any form of lawlessness or crime. If the attempt at proselytism fails, the community is in no way affected; and if it succeeds, the state receives no possible benefit, and owes the church nothing for the putting forth of its activities. As God is the only possible beneficiary of the church's efforts, it is for him to pay its taxes*, if it is itself unable to do so. The state is under no moral compulsion to discharge his obligations. If he does not see fit to come to the rescue of his needy representatives, their conclusion must logically be that he expects them to pay their own bills. The church, like every other organized or unorganized group of human beings, receives certain definite and regular services from the state, which cost money to render, and which create a debt just as palpable as the debt to the carpenter who builds the meeting house or the coalman who furnishes fuel to keep it warm. If the church had any adequate conception of common honesty, it would pay its taxes without a whimper and as a matter of course*, just as it pays its gas bills or settles any of its accounts with individuals. It does not inform its private creditors that it should be exempt from payment for services rendered, just because it is a religious body; and it would be given small shrift by any court, should it attempt to evade such claims on such a ground. As little has it a moral right to take from the public without returning an equivalent in material remuneration.
* Even by a miracle if necessary. It is recorded that when
Jesus was called upon to pay taxes in Capernaum (Matt, xvii)
he made no argument for exemption, but straightway
dispatched his disciple Peter after the didrachma, with
which, it is assumed, the debt to the community was
discharged.
THE NO-PROFIT SOPHISTRY.
A weak attempt to justify church graft consists in the affirmation that it is engaged in purely altruistic labors, and is not a profitmaking institution. It is not engaged in any openly commercial undertaking. Salvation is free, and all are welcome to its inestimable blessings. The sophistry and lack of ingenuousness which make it possible to present such an argument with a straight face can scarcely be characterized in parliamentary language. It fairly reeks with self-evident fallacies. First of all, if the church chooses to run its affairs on a non-profit basis, that is strictly its own business, and does not concern the state in any way. If it has no property, it escapes taxation as a matter of course, like the individual who has nothing. But if it is able to own property, it immediately incurs a specific obligation to the state, which is totally independent of the use it makes of its property. The man who retires from business, and lives on his income, is not thenceforward exempted from all taxation, because he is no longer making money. Nor does it serve as an excuse that he is making no profitable investments, but is using up his bare capital, and is spending his time and part of his means in philanthropic work. In spite of all this, he is a member of society, and must meet his obligations as such, whenever the tax collector comes around. The same is true of an organization. The church takes up just as much space, receives as much social protection and as much benefit from every civic improvement, whether it is making money or not. The state does not forbid it to make money or to engage in commercial enterprises; and its failure to do so is purely voluntary, and is entirely irrelevant to the discharge of its pecuniary obligation to organized society. Its privileges may be free; but what does that mean to those who count them as worthless? It is a cheap evasion of responsibility to offer in lieu of the specific payment of a debt, to render the creditor some form of alleged service for which he has no possible use, and which means nothing whatever to him. This remains true, even if the unbeliever is under the spell of error, and ought to appreciate the blessings of religious counsel. The dance may be one of the most beautiful forms of art; but if Vernon Castle offered to discharge a monetary obligation to a blind creditor by the execution of the most wonderful Terpsichorean evolutions in his presence, there would be no payment of the debt, even though the artistic performance might be intrinsically worth far more than the sum owed, and would be readily so appraised by all who had their eyes. No matter how valuable religious exercises may be in themselves, nor how much satisfaction they may give those who believe in them, the civil rights of the unbeliever remain on a par with those of the believer; and it remains true that the offer by the church of un-desired services can in no way constitute an obligation. Let the church be supported by those who accept its offer, and who desire to profit by its privileges, such as they are. This remains no affair of other persons, or of the state. The benefits of religion are subjective and strictly personal; and the state is in no way qualified to pass on their value. To say that non-churchmen should help pay the expenses of the church because they can become churchmen if they wish to do so, is to say that a debt can be contracted without a consideration.
* Not that the church always regards the payment of its
private debt as "a matter of course." The Rev. Dr.
Huntington of Grace Episcopal Church, New York city, and
William R. Stewart, one of the church wardens, in 1908 asked
an architect, J. Stewart Barney by name, to prepare plans
for extensive and expensive alterations in the church
building. The architect did the work in good faith and to
the full satisfaction of the church, but was deliberately
cheated out of his pay on the pretext that, though the
church wanted the work done, knew and approved of its being
done, received and was fully pleased with the benefits of
it, yet it had not technically authorized its pastor and
warden to give the order! Grace church is one of the
wealthiest religious bodies in New York. Such is Christian
honor and morality, the exalted character of which is
supposed to lay the community under a burden of gratitude
toward the church!
THE CHURCH'S COMMERCIAL ASPECTS.
It is not strictly true, however, that the church is in no sense a profit-making institution, or that it has no commercial aspects. If the church were not successful in a business sense, it could not accumulate property or capital, and would not have to worry about exemption. There are more ways of making profits than by straight buying and selling. An organization which is able to play on the hopes and fears, the superstitions and sentiments, the beliefs and enthusiasms of its members and of those who come under its spell, and thereby to secure the means of buying land, erecting buildings and paying v current expenses, cannot honestly pretend to be a purely benevolent society. Let its teachings be true or false, good or bad, the principle is precisely the same. It receives money from individuals, who believe that they receive, in spiritual, to some extent in intellectual and esthetic and even in physical values, an adequate return for what they pay. This is a plain business proposition, whether the value is really there or not. The fact that no definite price is fixed for the services, but that payment is at least nominally voluntary, is wholly irrelevant. A restaurant conducted on the liberal plan of "eat what you like, and pay what you think it is worth," would be no less a business enterprise, and its property taxable as such. As a matter of fact, business men in some lines have actually been known to follow a similar plan. How successful the church has been in this regard may be seen by the enormous wealth which various church corporations have acquired, always under the claim of being non-profit-making institutions. Trinity Church corporation of New York owns hundreds of houses, and pays taxes on some $15,-000,000 worth of property, which it cannot deny that it uses for purely commercial purposes, besides its immense holdings of valuable land and buildings claimed to be used by it only for worship and hence exempt from taxation, amounting to approximately an equal value. Where did Trinity church, which keeps up the sham of representing the faith of the poor Nazarene reformer, who "had not where to lay his head," and who lived mainly by hand-to-mouth charity, get the means of purchasing some $30,000,000 worth of property, if it is a purely non-profit-making institution, which has honestly followed its alleged master's express injunction to "take no thought for the morrow," and to "lay not up treasure on earth"? Exemption on that part of its property used "exclusively for worship," by setting free a large proportion of the moneys accruing to it from its members and benefactors, which would otherwise have been used in paying its debt to the community, enabled it to use its surplus in investments which were of a directly commercial nature. One hand washes the other, and the state is the dupe of the pious legerdemain.
A STRICTLY CASH BUSINESS.