Due to separation of church and state, churches aren’t supposed to participate in political speech either but the largest ones pretty unanimously do every major election. Legally that’s supposed to trigger taxation but it’s political suicide for anyone to go after them for this.
Tax-exempt charities are prohibited from using tax-exempt funds to engage in certain kinds of political speech. Those that do electioneer or conduct lobbying, for example, have separate non-tax-exempt branches that handle it, with their own funds and strict financial firewalls separating them from the rest of the organization.
Churches, on the other hand, get to flout those rules all the time. And I do mean churches; other religions don't tend to enjoy quite the same latitude.
And that selective enforcement by the government is a separation of church and state issue.
Didn’t America have churches before tax exempt laws? Tax laws came later. Your problem is with taxes and government spending. Remove taxes churches are exempt from and raise sales tax.
Sales tax is very regressive. I'd rather see income tax raised. But honestly, property tax does make a lot of sense. I'd suggest a property tax exemption for all properties that are used for community gatherings, which includes open church services, but also other clubs and organisations that bring people together. I think that's justifiable, and it frees churches from their most unavoidable tax costs.
A church that engages in direct political advocacy for a specific politician can and will lose its tax exemption. Like PACs, they can only advocate ideas, not people.
I don’t see the difference. When a religious person is being political their activity is making the state religious. The state is not a football for religious games and it undermines people’s freedom to encourage this behavior. Religions use the state to beat up other religions by changing laws, rules, school resources, and public staff.
Separation of church and state doesn't mean churches can't voice their opinion or run political campaigns, it just means they shouldn't be involved in actually running the state, and that the state shouldn't be involved in religion either. I believe there are some limitations on churches as a precondition to their tax-exempt status, but those don't really flow from separation of church and state.
> Separation of church and state doesn't mean churches can't voice their opinion or run political campaigns...
You are mixing up three things as if they are the same. Opinions are fine.
But no, churches cannot run political campaigns. They are exempt as a religious organization, and in the U.S., religious organizations, like charitable organizations, exempt from income tax cannot participate in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate for public office.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was an American citizen capable of supporting any candidate he liked. His church was not. His church was, however, as all churches are today, able to lobby. Lobbying is not campaigning. Also, they were and are able to speak out for or against executive actions of the government. Doing so is neither lobbying nor campaigning; office holders are neither legislators nor campaigners; they are actually in office.
I meant "campaign" in the general sense, rather than the more specific "political campaign". As in "MLK's campaign for civil rights". I should have been clearer, sorry.
The only thing that prevents them from doing that is that they are a 501(c)(3). The Johnson amendment requires they not be politically active.
However, if a church decides to register as a 501(c)(4) they absolutely can endorse or condemn candidates tax free.
So why aren't they 501(c)(4)s? 501(c)(3) allows you to deduct contributions to such and organization from your taxes. 4 only gives a break to the organization, not their donors.
> churches aren’t supposed to participate in political speech
You either misunderstand or misstated. The entire reason they are protected is because of their political speech. They aren't supposed to be actively endorsing, funding, or participating in campaigning for a politician. Most everything else is fair game.
It's kind of true? It's stated a little awkwardly but there is truth there.
If you are funding a political campaign (not just any political speech, but an actual campaign) you have to be set up as a political campaign rather than a church.
> 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes charities and churches, from engaging in any political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact strengthened the ban. The most recent change came in 1987 when Congress amended the language to clarify that the prohibition also applies to statements opposing candidates
People should still report to the relevant authorities when churches do political speech.
If nothing else it would keep them from actually saying "You must vote for X" and diplaying electoral posters.
It could even happen that somebody high in a decision chain ends up claiming "we don't care they can do whatever they want" which could be a minor scalndal.
You're not wrong. It's also why this is an excellent argument for the private practice of religion. And taxing them if they want real estate and monetary income.
I'm open to a discussion about this. It just so happens that I have recently witnessed many very generous people give out 100,000s of dollars in scholarships to local high schoolers. I'm willing to consider that those donations should also be taxed.
I'm also open to discussions of a flat tax and abolishing food tax and lots of other tax ideas. Including allowing tax deductions for charitable giving and tax exemptions for lots of things. I'm ok with allowing some, but I see the room for abuse. We'll never eliminate all abuse and we'll never get everything exactly fair. But we can keep making tweaks in the never-ending pursuit.
What if the authorities don't mind the churches doing so? It seems like, especially leading up to elections, you see videos of this almost every day. How can someone actually make sure that some consequences happen?
> How can someone actually make sure that some consequences happen?
You can’t, because the IRS steadfastly refuses to pursue these violations. I’m an active lifetime member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation; and through our organization these near-constant occurrences of political endorsement by churches have been reported numerous times. To no avail.
To make matters worse, clergy in the U.S. often receive a large portion of their income as a housing allowance which is not taxable, as I understand it. But the majority of course still take their mortgage interest deduction. It’s a racket.
I know several church ministers. They work hard and get paid very little. Maybe the tax payer should not be subsidizing them but to say it's a racket is not fair. Some celebrity church leaders live lives of luxury but the average needs the tax breaks just to survive.
> the average needs the tax breaks just to survive.
The question becomes: Are the umbrella organizations paying the ministers just the bare minimum to keep them on? So if the tax breaks are stopped, will the church organization cover the new difference, or lose the ministers?
It might still be a racket where the ministers are also getting screwed. The benefit of the tax breaks may not go to the minister who receives the tax break, but instead benefit the archdiocese/convention/council/conference/synod/assembly/convocation/etc who pays
For those outside the USA they may be surprised just how many churches in the USA are effectively independent franchises with no real central authority. People think of “Catholic Church” as the large multinational agency, but when you hear people talking about churches in the USA it’s often small Protestant churches.
(Some Protestant churches do have national structures, true, but you’re not often hearing about Lutherans doing things)
I don't think that there is any chance[0] that the autorities will go after the churches for things like these.
But even if everyone tollerates the authorities turning a blind eye to the issue many would not tollerate the autorities making it an official policy or slipping up and saying stuff like "a church could run for office for all I care".
The state is protecting churches in ways it should not; you likely cannot defeat this protection, but you can put pressure on the state so that it will be harder/riskier to keep doing it.[1]
[0] at a trend level, or at least for the well connected churches with armies of lawyers.
[1] I must warn that this is close to declaring a war (on a very small scale) and as such you could come out in a worse position than when you started.
It seems like some kind of transparent federal oversight is desperately needed. As you say any kind of change will be interpreted incredibly negatively, so any local approach will be suppressed.
Has anyone ever actually seen this happen? I feel like this is some boogeyman worry floating around the internet.
I grew up in the south and have been in different churches for most of my life. Outside of supporting soldiers and an occasional American flag in church I’ve only seen a preacher get political once in my entire life. Even that was roundabout too.
I picked a variety for illustrative purposes. But there's a bit more to the stories: https://ffrf.org/news/news-releases/item/29320-ffrf-sues-tru... This type of "using the official church to endorse/condemn specific candidates and parties" happens all the time, and isn't limited to national politics.
“Separation of church and state” doesn’t require that at all. It’s required by churches’ non-profit status, the same as non-religious non-profits. But non-religious non-profits also get involved in political speech in every election.
This is the same thing as where people fail to distinguish the First Amendment from free speech as a principle.
If we are talking about law, you are right - the US limits on religious groups getting involved in politics are in the tax code, not in the establishment clause. If they are willing to give up their taxation privileges, they are allowed to participate in politics as much as they like. And, since the tax code is just a statute, Congress could change it to allow them to meddle in politics without losing those tax privileges, and I doubt such a tax law change would be held to violate the establishment clause.
However, “separation of church and state” is also an extralegal principle. And, maybe, too much involvement of religions in politics violates that extralegal principle even when it doesn’t violate the letter of the law.
I'm not religious as an adult but I was raised so. I attended Catholic school and went to church twice a week during the school year. In addition, I attended several churches in the region for different events over the years growing up. Never once did the church become political while I was there and I had substantial time there. In addition, it was a major denomination. I can assure you just because someone goes to church does not mean they belong to one political party either.
Read the last sentence of your comment, then read your comment. (Edit: they edited out the last sentence, a line about not judging and reading carefully)
Then read OPs comment. compare the general, nonuniversal statement they made about political advocacy vis a vis tax status laws in the United States, to the judgements you envisioned of religious people and yourself and your religion.
Update 2: thanks for the reply actually. I went back through the entire thread and realized somehow my comment replied to the parent comment. I was not trying to respond this the parent comment. I was trying to respond to a sub comment on the parent comment that someone said the major denominations all engage in political activity during elections. I realize my comment looked extreme now because it was out of context. This was not my intent. Thanks for responding. And you were absolutely correct.
I deleted it immediately because it did jump to a conclusion that wasn't there and I recognized it and corrected it. But regardless, the rest stands true. The most political it got during election was "please pray for our elected officials to guide us". Which is completely fair.
I agree with you. The way things are setup now, religion gets all sorts of special dispensations. To do this, government has to determine what is a real religion and what is not, which sounds to me like it goes directly against the separation between church and state. Religion should be treated the same as any other belief structure.
I realize this doesn’t apply directly to taxation but we defer to religion in multiple ways in the law.
Separation of Church and state isn’t even in the Constitution. The right to religious freedom is. And religious freedom absolutely includes moral teaching for adherents, including teaching that supporting this or that immoral policy by voting for a politician who supports it is sinful.
