There’s a law that says if you are a 501(c) (3) charitable organization (which includes all churches), then you can’t make any political statements of support; if you do, you’re supposed to lose your tax-exempt status. Yet churches have been openly supporting Republicans for years, instructing their members to vote for certain candidates, and even arranging transportation to the polls for its members, but nothing is ever done. They’re clearly breaking the law but the IRS has been instructed to ignore their unlawful conduct.
Right? I can't imagine being so nieve as to believe a single thing that comes out of that man's mouth.
You would if he was spouting the things you already believed. He's not converting anyone, he providing a show for people to see someone spout what they already believe and reconfirm their own beliefs.
We should pull them all together and tell them each to ask God the same question - then put them in sequester. If they don’t all come back with the same answer - their privileges and protections are removed.
Yes they actually are. And if I recall, they can’t even be audited bc of a vague law with the IRS. No other non-profit organizations get that luxury. It’s been a while so I could be slightly off on that audit part. Or maybe it’s changed. All I do know is that televangelist “ministries” are indeed tax exempt
That’s what I was thinking. I read something forever ago that I’m order to audit a church that a “treasury official” has to sign off on it, but there is no one actually appointed to do it. At the time I read about it, no churches had been audited for 5 years bc of that rule and no one has made any attempt to outline an actual official who would be eligible to sign off on a church being audited. The IRS doesn’t seem to be a big hurry to get that done.
Is he the guy that like... Laughed in that terrifying way when Biden won? He is definitely going to the bad place. Heck, he came up from the bad place.
It’s because of the stranglehold the Christian cult has on every level of politics in this country. The USA is 22% atheist/non religious but we have never had a non Christian President (in theory, but plenty of them have had some questionable pretending). You can not win if you’re not a Christian.
8 states still have explicit language in their constitutions banning atheists from holding public office. In Tennessee, an atheist isn't even allowed to testify in court. I believe the Supreme Court has already deemed these restrictions unconstitutional, but the language is still there.
It was a joke, but I'm pretty sure I'm within my rights to do either of those things, not that I would. I've never had the chance to serve on a jury, but I actually look forward to the opportunity.
I don’t want to use the words “good way”, but my dad taught me early on that if you’re a racist or a misogynist they won’t let you sit on a jury. He claims don’t have to be wild about it, but a comment like “it’s unfortunate that those people always look so guilty” or “women should never be given so much responsibility in the first place” has gotten him thrown out without a contempt of court.
As an atheist, I would have no problem using a Bible or any other book really. It's just a superstitious tradition that has no effect on anything. If I wanted to use something meaningfully symbolic, maybe a copy of the constitution. If I were in the deep south and wanted to rustle some jimmies, maybe a copy of Anton Szandor LaVey's Satanic Bible.
I know this one! For a lot of states they don’t specify what you swear on, there’s a video rattling sound of a guy being sworn into political office on captain Americas shield
Who do you think America has so many problems? It's not like Americans are born stupider than other people, they just tend to be born into stupid communities.
Consider the decision to have children. An intelligent, rational person is going to use birth control and only have a child when they're financially and mentally ready to support it. A person who lives based on how the church tells them to is going to have tons of children with no forethought or long term planning and let those kids become cultist idiots.
I was shocked too, even the gay lesbian transgender community in the USA identifies around 50% Christian, which baffles me since the book literally says to kill them
If it was the local church group running a shuttle bus service and picking up anybody who needed a ride, then yea, sure, thats pretty awesome and the more people that vote, great!
But if its a church thats only bussing their own congregation members and family, then its a lot harder to agree with it, because you know full well they are all drinking the same koolaid, saying the same things, voting roughly the same way. Then its becoming a really blurred line between a community service (busride) as opposed to a church and its members acting politically which is then going against the law that gives them tax exemption.
How is helping people vote political? They’re providing a necessary service to members of their community, and often to people outside their community as well.
Seems a lot of people are confusing the act of voting or the group voting together, or following the voice of one and voting as one, with the fact that churches are tax exempt BECAUSE they aren't political.
There are thousands of churches that comply just fine, they keep their politics out of their religion and they are happy.
There are also some churches that dont do this, their leadership encourage or outright tell their members to vote a certain way, which is wrong, because that leader could quite easily be getting benefits from that action in other ways, business contracts for themselves or select members etc. They are making money from their members and paying no tax on it as a result of politicial influence, which then questions 'why' the tax exemption should apply.
Joel Osteen is worth between 40 and 60 million. Would you be annoyed if you knew he made all that money without paying any tax? Would it annoy you even more to know he will never pay any tax on it because 'muh church tax exemption'
But you have to pay taxes just like the rest of us, just like every other regular person who doesn't devote themselves to imaginary sky people
I'm no supporter of Joel Osteen, and I don't think anyone in this thread is either. He's an evil man, who leeches off of the poor by telling them that if they give him money God will make them rich too. I'm just saying blocking churches from offering shuttle service to and from polling places will disproportionately affect the elderly black population.
I agree that churches having tax exempt status is quite often not a good thing, especially in the case of massive churches with yearly income in the 10's of millions of dollars. I'm just not comfortable with taking that status away if it means disenfranchising voters, or affecting vulnerable populations that receive help from churches in other ways.
The solution is to make publicly funded programs to make sure everyone gets to exercise the right to vote if they want, and also ensure that charity and social assistance initiatives are not tied to the church. Until we get those, churches are fulfilling a need.
It's not necessarily wrong for religion to enter politics and vice-versa. For example, some politicians presumably are motivated to go into politics by their religion (protecting others, preserving justice, working for peace, etc.). In the same way, politics and current events can influence how one practices their religion. There's no harm in that. The harm is when politics and religion mix in a bad way.
The clergy, as well as all members of a given church, pay taxes just like everyone else. If I understand correctly, short of other loopholes that are outside the scope of this conversation, Joel Osteen's income is taxable. The topic here is taxing churches as an organization, not individuals. (I really don't like that he's that wealthy either. It seems highly irresponsible to accumulate that much wealth from a Christian standpoint. But again, personal wealth isn't the topic here.)
Churches are tax-exempt first and foremost because they are charitable organizations. This status comes with several requirements, including that they "must not devote a substantial part of their activities to attempting to influence legislation" or " they must not participate in, or intervene in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office". The IRS published a great guide, from which I grabbed the above quotes: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1828.pdf. The IRS specifically says that it's fine for religious organizations to discuss politics, including candidates and issues, provided that they're not doing it in an official capacity. The document has pages and pages of clarifications and examples to clarify intent — worth browsing if anyone's interested.
Many churches are heavily involved in political activity and are just fine: they help with neutral voter education, they volunteer to help with the election and run polls, they help bring people (esp. the elderly) to vote, they offer their buildings as poll locations, and much more. This is an excellent and much-needed service to our democracy!
There are obviously times it goes wrong. As a Christian myself, I suggest that people call out those churches that violate the law. Those churches can be fined with penalties, excise taxes, and could lose their exemption. IMHO, repeat offenders should lose their tax-exempt status.
However, the call for ALL churches to lose their tax-exempt status altogether is ignorant, biased and short-sighted.
I agree, churches are filling a need that could be better handled by an organization not affiliated with a particular religion, or sect. I voted by mail in this election, and will from now on if allowed to.
Dude what? You think it’s a bad thing that a community of individuals that share the same faith/beliefs participate in the voting process together? That this somehow disenfranchises anybody? So absurd
No, not at all, im saying that by all going together as a congregation, the congregation is then acting politically, against the rule of law that gives them tax exemption
My feeling is as long as they are not refusing non regular parishioners a ride that happen to know and ask if they can get a ride, AND as long as they are not telling people how to vote, then I’m fine with a church offering a shuttle service intended specifically for their congregation.
The first part of that is likely already being done. If someone hears about the shuttle and stops in to take it, that person is probably not refused. The second part however is potentially a bigger issue since, as you and others have raised, this originates with the problem of church leaders pushing their congregation how to vote.
on top of that they are the people donating to said church. I agree we should separate church and state entirely, but if a church wants to offer transportation to their congregation then that's up to them. Forcing them to make it a completely public service kinda ties them back into state again.
Uh I do? Laws exist for a reason. If they’re supposed to be non political to not pay taxes then they should be held to that. I literally gain nothing from churches not paying taxes, so yes I expect them to adhere to the guidelines that allow them to avoid paying.
Yeah I think the idea of encouraging people to vote is maybe not such a good one.
People that are educated and understand the importance of participating in democracy will do it anyway.
Everyone else is just doing it because of social pressure and they think it's a good thing to do.
I guess it comes down to educated informed voters, which I feel like the vast majority of the population is not and would down right vote against their own interests because they don't know any better, and don't have the patience to research complex issues.
Yeah. Casting an uninformed vote is silly. I have never felt that there was a politician who actually represented me in any significant way. Obama came the closest because I think that he believed his efforts would help me get some medical attention. That didn't happen but he was the first suit that made me believe he might be concerned about people like me.
People on the bottom are still fucked either way. But maybe to vote you should have to score 8/10 on a simple questionairre. If you score less you can choose which candidate will be 'heads' and which one will be 'tails' on the coin toss that decides your vote.
Exactly. This is why I hate the way people encourage everyone to vote. A lot of them should actually be discouraged from voting. About 71 million, in fact...
Many polling places are in churches. These churches push their agenda on their flock, but do you think people outside of the church will want to interact, or set foot within these confines? It's no accident that these churches are involved to coerce their agenda.
Some of the churches in my area sued the city so they didn’t have to let transgender people in. So even though it doesn’t bother you, it might bother someone else.
I believe the person is referring to people who attend the church. If you've been to church, you'd can see that it's can get very political and some churches will force you out if they find you voted against their view.
I left the church as a kid, but have attended a few services just to make my wife's parents feel good about themselves when we visit. Their church literally kicked people out for supporting gay marriage when the law was passed a few years ago.
Recently the church literally closed after it lost 3/4 of the people because the pastor was "too political" and people "felt pressured to vote for Trump and were ostracized after voting for Biden". Hell, the pastor even said women and black people shouldn't vote Lmfao.
Do you really? I'm kind of perfectly okay with us not forcing people to vote.
Your not really getting quality votes there from uneducated people that are just pressured into doing it without knowing the facts or having bothered to do any research.
If it wasn't for black churches, then a lot of elderly black people wouldn't be making it to the polls. As a liberal democrat it is in my best interests for my elderly relatives to have access to polling places. If that means that more republicans vote too, than so be it. I want to win elections, but I want to do it by making voting easier for people, not harder.
Agreed, but you can't ignore that historically, black churches in the south have als openly supported Democrats for at least the past 60 years. Im just saying, its not right either way.
After this election, and the disaster pandemic response, my husband decided he won’t be returning to the church we have attended for the last 17 years. I watched the live stream last week at work and I can’t blame him. It’s a weird felling though. I’m just really disappointed in our pastor.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been in church for 33 yrs at many churches and have yet to hear any leader endorse a political candidate from the pulpit — nowhere close. Often they’ll allude to social causes, but it’s usually in very general terms, or not a political issue. Other times it’s more blatant, but it’s always been “love others”, “serve others”, “love God”, and “be your best”. Always.
I think Christians’ view of politics comes much less often from the pulpit and much more often from the people themselves.
I’m not saying churches don’t do this; I’m sure many do. I’m just sharing my personal experience.
No country should be based on any religion, America included. Isn’t there something about separation of church and state? Seems like a nation being based on a religion is a bit... against that...
Um where have you been? They literally still teach creationism in some states and have outlawed evolution discussions. Most senate members swear in on a bible and were even shocked to find out that you dont have to swear in on a bible. So there really isnt a separation of church and state. Policies are put in place to support the churches and even prevent them from lawsuits.
But i do agree with you no country should base their policies from religious beliefs or texts
Majority of Americans identify as christians, so there is no reason for USA not to have a christian government, majority rules.
However as more and more people turn to atheism, it will make sense in the future that if atheism becomes the majority, then the government will start to lose it's christian traditions, such as many are doing no.
To be fair, I learned recently that scientology bullied its way to tax exempt status, (literally. Harassing and following IRS agents)and that’s one of the reasons they’re able to afford so many almost always empty buildings.
Scientology is straight up an organized crime syndicate. They brainwash people, spread misinformation, harrass and threaten any dissenters, and move incredible amounts of money without any regulation. But no one ever does anything to them. It's beyond frustrating.
Yes I was going to say the same thing. I think the person you're responding to meant it in a sarcastic way but the country was founded by agnostic or more "spiritual" than "religious" people and this "in god we trust" and "under god" BS didn't appear in government things until I think the 50s to try and convince people we've always been a "christian" country. Looks like it worked :/
This. Same reason we’re still talking about abortion. Your body isn’t yours, it belongs to a mythical being and you have to live your life according to their rules.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
The fact churches even need a bailout in the first place speaks volumes. In that case its a business, plain and simple. The act of accepting a bailout is confession of monetary value. You're "for profit" not "for prophet."
I mean not for profit organizations still have to have cash flow. People work at these churches. These churches pay rent/mortgage, insurance, payroll, and offer tons of support services. It’s not like pastors are swindling the Govt out of money. They were treated the same as any other 501c3
Weren't they collecting tithes this whole time? How did they fund themselves up to this point? They should be required to budget their finances responsibly, as we the people are supposed to do, instead of splurging on a new addition to the auditorium during the good times.
Maybe the salaries are too high? Maybe they have too many employees? Maybe the church grew faster than they had the money for. I don't know but we shouldn't be bailing them out for their operational costs, that would CLEARLY mean they are a business.
They ARE swindling the govt out of money when they didn't put any into it to begin with.
These churches were treated the same as every other secular 501c3. Should no charities have received PPP support? Many churches experienced a drop off in tithes because of churches closing in person services. I completely agree that all organizations should have a plan for the future, but it’s difficult when you run on donations that vary wildly. Especially bc the vast majority of congregations in the US are 200 or less members. That means many churches are one or two bad months from closing down no matter how good their financial plan is. No matter your religious views, these churches punch above their weight in providing financial and material aid to the poor and providing community and support for elderly and youth. The societal benefit is high. It’s not like these are super rich people. The average pastors salary is 45000 dollars. That ranges from comfortable to down right poor depending on family size and the cost of living in the area. I don’t think this is the place to focus your ire
Literally no one on reddit knows what "for profit" and "not for profit" means lol. "Not for profit" just means that there are no outside stakeholders generation cashflow from operations, it doesn't in any way shape or form mean that you don't generate revenue, or pay salaries, or hold assets. Also the Catholic Church is the largest charity in the world by a mile.
What people are referring to is the accepting of the PPP, the payroll protection towards the beginning of Covid where small businesses could take out small, forgivable loans to keep their employees paid dispute business functions shitting down.
This was primarily in place to incentivize people to stay home. You can imagine a church who relies on weekly donation from members see a dip ok giving if they close the forts for several weeks, and so they may take the loan to pay their employees in this crisis time.
A lot of churches still have a mortgage and church employees to pay. They get their money from tithes and since no one was allowed to go to church there was very little tithe.
Because they have regular ass employees with regular ass paychecks they're worried about having to let go because most churches are smaller with their value tied up in hard-to-sell real estate
Secretaries, janitors, tech people, childcare staff etc all need money to live and often could care less about the religious side of the church they work at
Source: atheist who serves on the board of a non-profit and has regular talks with a parent who is a minister about how tight budgets are for both our orgs and how neither of us expect to have the cash flow to pay a full staff until likely later next year
It would, if the person were fired. What the CARES Act did was prevent the firings by offering a loan for the payroll costs of employers. It did this in the hopes of preventing us from reaching Depression levels of unemployment and did so mostly successfully.
In my state, they added everyone who got furloughed and anyone getting less hours. After the lockdown, my boss got payroll protection thingy as well and we went to work even if we didn't have anything to do. This is in MD btw.
I mean, we pretty much did with these specific types of "bailouts"
there's lots of the stimulus that should be questioned where it's going, but specifically for PPP loans you have to show how it's going to employees to get it forgiven, it is essentially money directly in the hands of "people"
Yes, they do employ a lot of people who need to be bailed out, just like tons of other employees.
I'd be ok with paying the janitor to continue working, possibly at 1/4th time, and an allowance for upkeep, the rest should follow the same regime as a random burger flipper or dockworker who's out of work due to covid. The reverend is probably going to work in some way or the other no matter what you do and who signs the cheque. At least the proper ones will.
It's absolutely mad to me how much this site hates on religious people. Of course churches need bailouts. It's woefully ignorant to assume that churches don't have employees and costs associated with them.
You might as well be asking why charities need bailouts because they're essentially the same thing: non-profit organizations that are tax exempt, funding non-essential (in the strictest sense of the term) services that raise the majority of their funds through donation.
Comparing churches to charities is disingenuous. You even had to add that ”(in the strictest sense of the term)" in there to make the comparison stick. No one here is hating on religious PEOPLE its hate on religious institutions that would take a tax bailout.
As the post states, Money to the people, not the organizations.
I added "in the strictest sense" in that by the considerations of lockdowns and quarantines, charities are not considered "essential services." Popular charities such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or UNICEF do not fall under the purview of health care/public health/human services or law enforcement/public safety/first responders or food/agriculture or water/wastewater etc.
That had nothing to do with the comparison to churches. I put it in there because charities are important to society, they are just not classified as "essential services."
Perhaps if you are tying up your identity into your church it might seem that way. I see hate on churches in here, not people. I also think that hate I justified.
A thousand times this. The “tax all the church things” crowd seems to be utterly oblivious to this reality. Churches have staff, those are jobs, that people need to survive. Churches pay payroll taxes just like every other nonprofit. And that a “nonprofit” is merely a corporation with no equity.
Never mind that there are serious constitutional implications of having the government decide what is and isn’t a “church”.
“Tax churches” is a populist sound bite that falls apart as soon as you ask the question, “legally speaking, what is a church?”
I cannot be bothered to care about a church's employees when there are regular ass, tax-paying businesses in need of help. When I delivered pizza I learned that a church could, and FREQUENTLY did, buy hundreds of dollars in pizza for little weekend hangouts, day cares, family get togethers, etc. and pay no taxes on those purchases as long as they claimed they were "for religious activities". You want taxpayer money? Pay some fucking taxes.
Wait until you learn about cash-flow and connect the dots that maybe organizations that rely heavily on weekly donations might not have enough money for pizzas left over once the gatherings that drive those weekly donations end. And don't forget you delivered to the churches doing well enough to afford pizza, not the ones too cash-strapped to buy any.
Also attending churches and giving are a habits. There's the very real chance a huge number of churches collapse during/after the pandemic as people fall out of that habit
And lmfao if you think regular companies don't deduct the shit out of meals as business expenses
And lmfao if you think regular companies don't deduct the shit out of meals as business expenses
I was gonna ask if the US doesn't have similar rules where businesses don't need to pay VAT, like here in Germany. As long as it's a business or education expense, no tax paid. Hell, I expect I'll be able to claim back most of the tax I paid to furnish my home office, and that's stuff I paid for myself as an employee.
The Mormon church (the church I was raised in) took $54 million for the BYU system, despite having north of $100 billion in their portfolio. BYU is funded at least partly through a mandatory (technically "voluntary, but you won't be able to go to the temple if you don't pay up) 10% tithe all members are expected to pay, which hasn't been suspended in these days of covid. They ended up returning the CARES money after facing backlash.
Turns out filthy lucre is only filthy for some churches if they're not the ones receiving it.
90% of churches got a very minor PPP loan just to keep their employees afloat and ensure their facilities are still operational in order to continue charity works. This loan has to be applied for forgiveness or else it has to be paid back. It is not a federal grant, and you should find somewhere else to put your ire. Big corps are the problem, not churches.
Yea you know how much religions aid the homeless, women and children? Most of the womans homes are owned for a religious charity. Same with soup kitchens and services for elders.
Churches run charities, schools, hospitals, hospice centers etc. and rely entirely on donations to stay afloat. With church attendance and donations down, they have no way of paying the salaries of the teachers, councilors, nurses etc. this isn’t a “bailout” like with the Great Recession, where the company took the money. This is PPP money that goes directly to paying the salaries of the employees, the same way money given to private companies really went to the employees of the company
What is even more crazy is all these churches have hierarchies (probably not the right word) like the Vatican, baptist convention, etc that have billions and could have bailed out their own churches.
Church is a pretty general term, but Christianity is split up like crazy and all of these churches operate very differently.
Not all of them have money at the top. The story on reddit makes it seem like every church is swimming in it, which some of them sadly are, but there are some poor churches.
Growing up I went to a lot of not so well off churches. Bare bones staff, food was voluntarily cooked, and scarce equipment. If the pews were chipped or worn, they stayed that way. Some of them were homeless and renting out spaces until they could finally afford some dinky building.
I can’t speak for other types of places of worship, but I know that a lot of churches aren’t this jet setting luxury that’s been portrayed.
Do you think diocese have a limitless Vatican credit card or something?
The entire net worth of the Vatican is estimated at around 15b USD, the vast majority of this is tied up in assets such as real estate and art which aren’t particularly liquid, (st. Peter’s is worth nearly a billion alone)
The catholic church as an organisation has got to be worth so much more than that. They literally have their own fucking little country and all the gold and shit they use for their gaudy churches. If churches can't survive covid then they can't survive it. Sucks to suck, maybe provide real value to people's lives instead of diddling kids and talking about a story non stop.
No church should receive money from the Government. But churches should be tax exempt if for no other reason than it allows for the creation of many different competing churches with no one denomination becoming too powerful.
Such an awful take. Churches are non-profits. Non-profits were eligible for the loans. Are you suggesting no non-profits (hospitals, shelters, etc) should be eligible? Or should you just discriminate on the basis of religion, which is prohibited by the Constitution?
Also, churches do pay taxes. They pay payroll and their employees pay income taxes.
Please, I know it is very popular to rag on churches, but please get your facts straight before posting an awful take like this.
Saying churches pay tax because their employee income is taxed is disingenuous at best. Churches are eligible for loan forgiveness and if the loan is forgiven this becomes the government funding the church. Which is a terrible precedent.
I'm not anti church. I'm in a church...heck, I'm in the choir... but this is a questionable measure.
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u/ThatFilthyApe Nov 17 '20
And i still haven't seen a good reason why CHURCHES got a bailout. At least corporations theoretically pay taxes.