This is such an important point.

It's going to go against the grain at hackernews, but taxing churches in the US is a terrible idea. If you wanted to further the divide between the "liberal city"/"conservative rural" American cultures, this would be a great way to do it.

If you grew up in a rural area of the flyover states you would know that churches form the backbone of these rural communities. For example, the church in my hometown organizes youth gaming nights (yes, D&D style), widow support groups, and hosts food drives along with so many more things. They're so poor that every year they have a board meeting and the board divides up the operating expenses that are unpaid and they pay them out of pocket. The board members are 'well-to-do' community members with job titles like firemen and teacher. If they were not tax-exempt, they would have to shutter.

This is not to condone or justify the negative impacts that some churches have on this country, and religion often serves as a cloak for a lot of bad cultural habits like racism. I understand why people want to combat abuses of the non-profit status of the church, but taxing them is not the way to accomplish this.

Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?

I have been on a budget committee for a Methodist church. There is no profit, no money left over the next year, the largest expense is the pastor who is an employee (50k per yr in this case).

Mega-churches might have money left over but by law they are supposed to spend their money as their nonprofit charter says or they could get audited by the State and fined or have their charter terminated.

I'll just leave this here as one sample of many:

https://images.cdn.circlesix.co/image/1/1366/0/uploads/posts...

Let's just say that not every church is the same as your Methodist church.

What are we supposed to be looking at here?

Russian Orthodox priests in Romania and Bulgaria are absolutely terrible. They prey on a gullible and very poor population while living in opulence and flaunting their wealth. In Bucharest, Romania, they are currently building a church to the tune of 100 million euros.

https://balkaninsight.com/2018/11/23/heavy-price-tag-oversha...

70% or more of that came from public funding, essentially tax payer money rerouted to build this monstrosity, something the country really can not afford.

And all of that for a pissing match about who has the tallest church.

Meh.. I find it difficult to care too much on a site whose population regularly fawn over a billionaire who stands to make billions more, largely due to booking sale of taxpayer-funded carbon credits to his company's most recent quarterly earnings as profit.

People around the world have different value systems and tolerances. For me it's impossible to consider state-funded excesses of the church without drawing comparisons to the likes of Musk. As for their relative social benefit, that's another topic entirely..

Those have pretty clearly stated profit aims. Churches, not so much.

Your complaint was about use of public money:

> they are currently building a church to the tune of 100 million euros.

> 70% or more of that came from public funding, essentially tax payer money rerouted to build this monstrosity, something the country really can not afford.

In Tesla's case, $428m of public money contributed almost one third of all profits made by the company in a single /quarter/, at a time when the dollar's future as a reserve currency is being called into question due to panic spending to support a system on the brink of collapse.

The trick will likely qualify it for inclusion in the S&P 500, making it further eligible for more of that sweet public money over winter, as the current administration discusses that index's performance as an explicit target on an almost weekly basis.

No, my complaint is about churches and their lack of transparency with regards to how they process their income and the fact that they don't pay taxes. The should never receive taxpayer funds.

Thank you for commenting, I had no idea there was that much public money going into Tesla.

How is that any different than America where preachers tell their poorest congregants that they should give 10% of their income before they pay their bills? If they come up short on their bills are short, “God will provide”?

Some are even willing to use credit cards to pay their tithes if they come up short.

It is quite similar.

This is the same in Poland.

The recent elections confirmed the conservative direction of the country, fueled along others by the catholic church.

The good thing is that religion is not compulsory anymore. There used to be a time where not bring part of the church meant beung a real outcast.

This included the communist rulers who were quick to chistianise their children because otherwise they wild have hell in the family.

That was acually not bad as the church balanced the state.

Now they are omnipotent, and this is also the reason more people can be outside of church - because church is not unanimously seen as a savior anymore. Quite the opposite in the ranks of 30-50 yo people.

I lived there for a few years in total, I'm well aware of all this and it is a sad thing to see this raise its ugly head again. The church was instrumental in getting rid of the communists but they are a huge problem by themselves as well.

>>Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?

Land and buildings for one could be taxed. Churches bought or were given land ages ago, before there was a Manhattan or Boston, as we today know it. Go ahead and pay property tax on land worth $250 Million when you barely make income to keep the lights on.

A solution to this is to give back the land to the local city and have it handled as cultural heritage, with an authorization to practice religious activities at specific times, but it’s governed by local administration overall.

That’s how some cathedrals are managed in europe for instance.

What a perfect way for the state to exercise control over religious organizations! You’d quickly end up with every such state sponsored “church” as disruptive to state interests as the Church of England, the Lutheran State Churches of Scandinavia or the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

China aside given that it's an authoritarian state I much prefer the control the state has over the church here in Germany, because it eliminates virtually all religious sectarianism and has led to the church having adopted teaching and a curriculum that is largely in line with the basic constitutional law and secular values rather than existing outside of it. Same in the UK or Scandinavia.

One of the reasons Islamic extremism is so hard to combat is because Islam exists largely outside of the control of the state, as backyard mosques can basically preach anything regardless how extremist it is, often deliberately recruiting people out of organizations that try to integrate with the state and society at large. I assume this is similar to radical Evangelicalism in the US.

Parallel societies are bad, they're a breeding ground for extremism.

> China aside given that it's an authoritarian state I much prefer the control the state has over the church here in Germany, because it eliminates virtually all religious sectarianism and has led to the church having adopted teaching and a curriculum that is largely in line with the basic constitutional law and secular values rather than existing outside of it.

The picture you paint of government control over religion sounds very authoritarian to me. As far as “parallel societies are bad”, what happened to “diversity is our strength”?

Diversity is a good thing, that's not changed. But diversity doesn't mean 'anything goes'. There's boundaries in a civil society for a reason.

Religious practice is fine but withholding a secular education from children or ditching modern medicine, or attacking the rights of women or exercising corporal punishment isn't.

I don't see how having the ability to put a stop to it is authoritarian, at least not any more than religious extremism itself is. The alternative to government exercising control over religion is having religion exercise control over government. The problem doesn't go away.

> Religious practice is fine but withholding a secular education from children or ditching modern medicine, or attacking the rights of women or exercising corporal punishment isn't.

Fair enough. That’s not what I thought you meant by “keeping religious orgs in line with state secular views” or whatever. Even still, you don’t need state control over religion to achieve those ends, and indeed in the US where the state is constitutionally prohibited from interfering with religion, these things aren’t problems (at least not to any reasonable interpretations).

The First Amendment strongly prevents something like this in the US. There is no way the state can control a religious organization here and that’s a good thing. Americans secularism >> European “secularism”.

Islamic extremism in your country is not due to lack of state control of their mosques. It’s how you have treated generations of Islamic immigrants (Turks on work visas, no citizenships, open borders with lots of “refugees”, etc). Of course they will make parallel societies. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Most Turks in Germany are citizens (requirements are if anything laxer than in the US), and there's practically no religious extremism among Turks, so that's just a wrong claim.

And actually extremism among Turks is absent for the very reason I outlined above. In Turkey there's a long tradition of either religious integration in the state in the Ottoman era which had a strong scholastic tradition, or laicism under Atatürk, so there was very little room for sectarianism.

And yes, a lot of extremism is present among refugees, but that just proves the point, where do refugees originate from? Countries with failing state authority.

> Americans secularism >> European “secularism”.

You conveniently forget that the church has no qualms about controlling the state in the US

Which church?

Mostly Southern Baptists and Evangelicals.

Have you been blind to politics in the past few years? From forcing intelligent design into schools to full assault against planned parenthood etc.

I don’t live in, or generally care about the deep south where the Southern Baptist and Evangelical churches apparently share control of the state, so in a sense yes.

I thought you were talking about the USA as a whole, my mistake.

I could not have hoped for a more perfect illustration of my point. We are in perfect agreement on the outcomes, we just disagree on whether the state being in charge of determining public morality is good or not. You, a product of a state indoctrination system, agree with its values. The same thing happens in other countries where the state has different values.

Religious orgs can still do what they want, they just don’t get to use historical buildings willy-nilly.

Then if we’re talking about the UK, it feels weird to argue about religious buildings ownership in a kingdom, where the Queen has a religious role.

Thankfully the First Amendment prevents America from doing that here. I prefer American secularism over the weird European theocratic states that you describe.

Cool, and all the people have to do this with any property held corporately? Or only groups of people who identify as Christians?

The upkeep of a Cathedral is hella expensive, St.Paul's in London claims its building's upkeep cost is > £5.2M ('more than £10 per minute').

A building ownership tax seems sensible, but I'd be amazed if any Capitalist government considered it.

> A building ownership tax seems sensible, but I'd be amazed if any Capitalist government considered it.

I'm not sure I understand your meaning. Are you referring to something different from property tax?

A better solution is to keep it as it is. It has survived millennia. It's their land and states can renege their promises.

American Indians know that state and federal govt is honest to a fault!

> It has survived millennia.

By "millennia" you mean "at most 300 years, maybe"?

Here in USA. Oldest churches are from the 4th century elsewhere.

For the record: I don't think that priests should be able to buy $50M jets or keep 40% of total land of x country tax free, but they should not be forced to sell buildings because property tax is too high.

Yes. My comment was about "here in the USA" because the grandparent comment talked about churches existing "before Boston".

Churches are routinely handed over to the state or to commercial entities in order to preserve them because church membership is in rapid decline and its very expensive to take care of the church building especially if it has "survived millennia".

edit: got it wrong as per below comment

I assume they meant "here in USA" with regard to the comment about 300 years, but are pointing out that outside the US there exist churches as old as 4th century.

What has survived millennia “as it is”? The United States? It was founded scarcely three centuries ago. The Christian church? Ever hear of the reformation, of Calvin, of Protestantism? I.e. one of the main reasons the United States exists?

It absolutely has not survived millennia. What you call your Christian church today would be unrecognisable to the faithful of a century ago, never mind two, or five, or ten, or twenty. Or are you acknowledging that Christianity is the cult of Mithras, and that it’s still a death cult?

In the UK our local church is physically about 850 years old, But there was a church on the site back in 1086 and presumably before, as it was mentioned in the domesday book. It’s Anglican now, before then it was catholic, maybe it used to be a pagan worship site, maybe in future it will be for the cult of Cummings.

It has severe financial issues at the moment - maintaining the courtyard alone costs £1k a month. I’m waiting for more detailed finances on that.

Maintaining finances for any organisation is a basic bread and butter protection against corruption. I don’t see what harm there is in taxing religious organisations the same way as any other charity.

Or you could just build a huge multi-apartment building instead having a church on the first floor (maybe several floors) and actually resolve some of the housing issues in the area at the same time.

Churches in the UK own property that they lease, such as expensive business high steet stores.

> the people giving money to churches to attend that church, should pick up the cost of going to that church. which includes property taxes. if they are not willing to pay for that, it's their problem. excusing churches from these taxes puts the burden for the church not on its members, but on everyone.

Your whole premise here is that property taxes should be considered part of the cost of attending church (your first and second sentences from the quoted section above), but that’s exactly what is up for debate. You need to support that premise if you want to say something more persuasive than “I think churches should pay taxes because I think churches should pay taxes”.

umm, no I don't. everyone pays taxes by default. it is you who needs to say something more persuasive than churches should not pay taxes because they are churches.

No, you (not I) made a claim: churches should pay taxes. I didn’t make any claim, at least not here. I only pointed out that you didn’t support your point. Secondly, I don’t see why the “separation of church and state” position needs further defense. It’s an established precedent and status quo for hundreds of years. To that end, your “everyone pays taxes by default” claim is obviously wrong because churches don’t pay taxes by default. Moreover, proponents of separation of church and state don’t need you to find their arguments compelling; their will is law—your position is the challenger and it needs persuasive support if you would like the status quo changed.

> ah yes. the tax exception for a church means churches don't pay taxes by default. i like that circular logic. just like women not being able to vote for hundreds of years - they shouldn't vote now.

That's not the argument I'm making. I'm arguing that the onus is on you to persuade, not that the status quo is inherently superior by virtue of being the status quo. I was very clear about this.

> your claim was that I needed to prove my point that churches should not pay taxes. i said the claim is invalid, because taxes are paid by default, by everyone, unless an exception is granted.

The exception has been granted and is well-entrenched in precedent. You can disagree all you want and demand that someone needs to make an argument that persuades you; nevertheless, the law protects churches and you don't agree with it, so you must be mistaken about the burden of persuasion.

> my position is not a "challenger." rules and laws are not written in stone as the word of god you pretend the bible is. they need to be reexamined frequently, and someone granted a tax exemption needs to prove again why that exception is still valid.

The law prohibits taxation of churches, and your position is that we should change the law, ergo it's (by definition) the challenger (the status quo being the incumbent). No one here is claiming laws are written in stone; our disagreement appears to be whether or not changing the laws requires a persuasive argument, and here you are mistaken. Specifically you're mistaken that churches are legally obligated to reprove the validity of their tax exemption--you may wish that churches were so obligated, but they aren't, and if you insist there is such a legal obligation, it's incumbent upon you to furnish evidence to support your claim.

Anyway, this conversation has diverged from an interesting subject to litigating burden of persuasion which is well established and obvious. I'm not interested in debating the obvious unless there's some evidence that can call into question its obviousness. If we can't agree on obvious matters, I don't think this conversation is likely to enlighten, so I bid you adieu.

> the onus is on you to persuade and I am saying this is false. but it is expected you believe this. the status quo was people believing in a god. now we don't. it is not on us to prove there is not one. it is still on you to prove there is one. just like it is on you to prove an exemption should still be given, or you don't get one anymore.

yes, that is my opinion. this is what we do in comments on a subject matter. state our opinions on it. there is no need to prove to the irs churches should not be taxed. they take tax rules all the time and reexamine them, and drop ones that are no longer appropriate, which is soon coming for churches. as can literally be seen in this article being discussed.

Yeah, same with that useless ymca and that donated community garden.

correct.

This seems like a flaw in property taxes not churches.

yes, churches not being taxes is a flaw in the tax system, not churches. churches and everyone else can be and do whatever they want to. welcome to the discussion.

I don't know about the US tax system, but at least in my experience here in Australia, not every expense incurred by a business or partially-taxed non-profit is necessarily deductible. For example, I formed a company with some friends for the purpose of work on a single contract, and the expenses we incurred in incorporating the company were only deductible at a rate of 20% per year over 5 years, so we ended up having to pay tax without being able to deduct most of that particular set of expenses during the 1 year we were in operation.

Thats for items which depreciate in value over a multi year period right? I know that you were only in business one year but the tax system isn't really designed around 1 job incorporated companies.

That’s depreciation on capitalised assets. Churches would like have very few assets that depreciate apart from buildings.

Capital expenses, not depreciating assets.

In any case, my broader point is that tax law for businesses and other taxable organisations is not as simple as "we didn't make a profit and therefore pay no tax this year", and therefore as someone who isn't a qualified tax accountant, I can't really say with much accuracy what impact particular changes to tax law are going to have on the overall financial position of an organisation like a church.

One of the companies I used to work for - the joke was they are a land acquiring company under the guise of technology. They did tech too and made a lot of money, but they made decent sum from land too.

Same may be going on for churches too.

The tax being referred to in the case of churches is usually property taxes, which are based on property value, not profit or operations.

It's not just about the amounts, but the time tax, and the effort tax. Maintaining tax records is not zero-effort.

It's not exactly high effort either. If a business can afford to build a megachurch and run TV campaigns to fill it, it shouldn't have a problem finding the time/money to file a fucking tax return.

I'll happily to make an exception for any church that is truly run as a genuine non-profit charity, and most income really is spent on good work in the community - not on investments and buying really nice things for the pastors.

But that's going to exclude most of these businesses. Unless that changes they won't get any sympathy here.

I remember watching the collection round at a church once. Pensioners who literally had breadline incomes were all putting significant amounts of cash onto a plate - for the Catholic Church, which is literally one of the richest and longest established businesses on the planet.

I will never, ever forgive that organisation for leeching off its poor devotees quite so shamelessly. Likewise for any other church with significant wealth.

The Catholic church has also claimed over $1.4bn in PPP loans too.

I would find that especially galling.

Why should the non-religious non profit organisations have to maintain tax recods then?

That is a great question!

>It's going to go against the grain at hackernews

I really wish people didn't do this. I agree with your post, but it's preemptively combative to make the first thing you say, "you're going to disagree with me." It makes you sound like you're trying to present yourself as an underdog in the face of a monolithic enemy.

I agree. I'm here because I like being part of a community where folks are balanced and measured and without outrage culture.

What he's saying is true though, there is no reason to sweep it under the rug because it hurts a few feelings.

Should a non profit foodbank not get the same treatment as a church?

Churches can be opposed to abortion or same sex marriage. At the same time care for the needy. However also sometimes be biased at only serving the needy that they think need to be served.

I think that’s the main issue here. If churches are non-profits, treat them like other non-profits.

earthscienceman says>"It's going to go against the grain at hackernews, but taxing churches in the US is a terrible idea.<

I fail to see why.

All financial dealings of churches go unaudited. They should be subject to annual open public audit, at the least. I think they should be taxed as any other corporate entity. They frequently compete with normal corporations and should be given no preference. As it is they pay neither federal nor local taxes in most jurisdictions, if not all.

BTW I'm very conservative. My inclination would be to do what the British and the French did centuries ago - confiscate all the properties of the churches.

Well why is a countries system so broken that you need these churches to do charities.

Why is a country's moral system so broken that instead of charitable giving you take from people under threat of force instead?

I think the fact that you consider taxes to be such a nightmare scenario shows that your moral system is broken. Society cannot exist without cooperation, and refusal to participate in society (at everyone’s expense) is an immoral position imo. We can certainly argue about the specifics of what that participation should look like (ie taxes and conscription and whatnot) but when your position is that the government should never ever be allowed to force you to do things, then we’re on completely different planets, and I think your moral code is flat out broken.

Oh, worry not, I firmly believe that sometimes the government absolutely should take your money under threat of violence, but we should always remember that's exactly what taxes are.

Every time we propose the government spend money on something we must remember where that money comes from and seriously consider if it's justified.

Well, that's good, and in that case, I agree with you. However, I guess I'm also just much more pragmatic than you, because from a purely utilitarian perspective, the government running various "charity" programs is much more efficient than private charities running them. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-char... The general attitude here in Europe also is a much more favorable outlook on taxes as well, and while it is true that people give less, overall, society is better, and people know and don't mind that their taxes are going to help those less fortunate. It's just that generally speaking, government run programs (when not being constantly tried to shut down) are able to provide an overall better service.

That's not to say we can't have differing opinions on where precisely to draw that line, I think debate on that is good and healthy, and it's important to strike a good balance between too much and too little social welfare. But it's also better to have a more efficient and effective solution than to have one that "feels" better.

Maybe you could earmark the collected taxes for creating secular alternatives? Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.

Churches provide much more than just money. Solace, peace, love, community etc... I'd say this is more important than money.

I used to be a Christian. There are a lot of bad sides of Christianity and that is why I left. But it does help many people and after studying Buddhism I understand how the right approach to Christianity can bring a lot of peace to believers:

Unconditional love. Many people grew up made to feel they had to earn their parents' love.

Letting go of control. You can't control everything in life. Whatever is going to happen is up to God now.

Forgiveness. When people ask for God's forgiveness, it helps them to forgive themselves.

Gratitude.

I feel these things should exist without God. That is, they can be helpful to non-believers too. But I am having a hard time creating secular versions of these.

I think the root of the problem lies in the fact that God here is an abstract entity with whom the believer communicates but no such abstract entity exists for non-believers (duh!).

May be some form of general artificial intelligence can fulfil this role in the future?

Real people can fulfil this role too but they are probably not abstract enough. edit: And hence not "powerful" enough (to forgive, to protect etc.).

Just spit-balling here. Also not trying to offend anyone here.

The purpose of being a Christian is to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself. In if you wonder how far the love of your neighbour stretches, the goalpost has ben set at the very end: Love your enemies.[See: Mark 12:30-31 and Matthew 5:44] And this follows and is natural because God is LOVE [1 John 4:7-21].

I have a hard time believing AI will fulfil this role. For would it be optimized for gains here and now, or actions of sacrifice now that will be payed back fully in an everlasting life and that is built on faith? :-)

And I must admit that love is hard and I mess up a lot! But i try to do the same as is written here:

"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."[Philippians 3.13-14]

What about all the people who are considered "sinners" ? There's no love for them in the Bible

If that was the case, I would be the last in line! ;-)

But God's whole purpose was to save sinners like me and you through Jesus Christ: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us". [1 John 1, 8-10 NKJV]

So hell is not a thing ? i'm confused ?

I feel like you must have never read the bible, or even interacted much with a christian, to say this.

EVERYONE is a sinner. That sin is then forgiven.

But who ends up in hell then ?

Churches provide love? As long as you are one of “them”. Go into your typical small southern church if you and your spouse are different races - many church goers still believe that “miscegenation” is a sin - including Bob Jones University.

I wonder how many churches would be as “loving” if “Adam and Steve” walked in?

https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/deja-vu-all-over...

Not only that, but the idea that we should have some sense of mercy, grace, forgiveness, etc that even permeates secular society. It’s an important value, and we’re seeing it break down as mobs of allegedly grown adults harass strangers for decades-old off-color remarks made as children, or for remarks made by family or acquaintances, or etc. I think Hitchens said that he didn’t like Christianity, but it may have been a bulwark against worse things. I think he was speaking about extreme Islam, but I think there are other pseudo-religious toxic philosophies (and thus toxic behaviors) that Christian ethics defend against as well.

I'm sure Hitchens was against all dogmatic religions and ideologies.

The point of his quote is that he realized they weren’t uniformly bad. I’d go further and suggest that it’s not even possible to have a successful secular society without a religious cultural substrate, at least not for very long. I don’t mean this as a slight against atheists or agnostics; only that religion is eminently functional to the extent that we don’t find significant societies that exist without a significant religious substrate in any place or time. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s certainly an interesting question in my mind.

I really hope you are wrong. Science is relatively new, it's just a matter of time until we figure out how to solve it all without faith, god and dogmatic religion. One thing's for sure, the most developed countries in the world are running away from religion.

Science isn't incompatible with faith, but moreover, I think you're making a mistake by assuming that perfect rationalism is optimal. Many atheists believe religion serves an evolutionary function by motivating people to irrationally put the good of the group over the good of the individual, and the mechanism in question is the belief in a deity or karma system that punishes injustice and rewards justice. Note that this doesn't mean that a perfectly rational individual would never work for the good of the group, but he would only do so to the extent that the good of the group benefited him (as is often the case); however, he wouldn't put the good of the group above his own good--he wouldn't die for the group, for example (and of course there are many less extreme examples, especially under the rubric of "tragedy of the commons"--cheating, stealing, etc when the odds are good that one can go unpunished). Of course, many non-believers have died for things they believe in, but in doing so they were acting irrationally. So perfect rationality is actually less optimal than certain kinds of dogma, but not all of those "positive dogmas" are religious.

One interesting question is whether those "positive dogmas" have "staying power"--will they be around as the moral potency of religion fades from a culture (especially by decades and centuries)? Maybe an indicator would be a comparison of aggregate generosity between religious and a-religious people?

“I don’t like the design of your pacemaker; mind if I take it out and use the parts to build you one I approve of” is not a sales pitch that works often.

Makes me sad that anyone would compare religion to a pacemaker, if this is true then your country surely is lost

I’m pretty fiercely atheist, but the churches around me are where the local homeless get food and a reprieve from the cold. If you closed that today and diverted the money to a secular replacement, there would be a pile of bodies by the time it was operating.

No there wouldn’t. Not if it’s government driven (as it should be)

> Those in favor of lower taxes have argued that individuals are more capable than the government of allocating money to important causes, including people in need of assistance. But the study found that was not true. Donations do not match government assistance, and without tax money, social services are not funded as robustly.

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-char...

You don't find it strange that so many people are homeless ?

We already have secular alternatives, state welfare in many countries. A worse value for money system would be hard to imagine, populated with clock watching, work-to-rule types who actively use bureaucracy to avoid work.

So your telling me that churches are value for money? Could you give an example of one of these state welfare alternatives?

St Vincent de Paul is the one I'm most familiar with. Time and again you hear accounts from people who were refused welfare for one reason or another and turned in despair to the SVP. They're not an alternative but they are invaluable to the people who fall through the cracks in society. They rely on donations from churchgoers and all are unpaid volunteers.

> So your telling me that churches are value for money?

Incredible value for money - 90% of the services provided by our local church are staffed by unpaid volunteers who go above and beyond.

If it becomes a government service, it will instantly become a political target for budget cuts and regulations that will exclude people from getting help.

As an example, I have someone in my extended family that works for one of the state governments for employment services, and from the stories they've told me about how the department has been slashed and burned and forced to work with a skeleton staff, I'm not surprised at all that when the pandemic hit that everyone was having a hell of a time signing up for unemployment or getting the money they're supposed to be getting, and desperately need right now, or even just reaching a live person to talk to.

And of course that just makes the department look badly run, in people's eyes, which makes the average citizen even more likely to allow more money to be cut from them, because they just assume it's well funded already and "they suck at their jobs, what are we even paying their salaries with our tax dollars for? They should be fired!"

Whereas churches have a bit of a shield from that, at least, especially from the GOP in the US, who aggressively and consistently fight against social programs and non-defense government services otherwise, but their voter-base tends to be very religious, so they have an incentive not to hurt churches in any way.

You can’t create secular alternatives to religious organizations, it’s like creating an alternative to a bar with no alcohol. You get something vastly more different than that would suggest. Churches and other religious organizations are based on a belief in something higher or transcendent that is lacking in secular organizations. All attempts to provide them have been miserable failures. Sunday Assembly was the last major attempt in the US, failed, humanist associations have a long history of being for comically tiny minorities compared to even extremely marginal religious communities. Communities require people to show up, regularly, whether they feel like it or not, with family.

There was a wonderful article I read ages ago and can no longer find on the history of communes in the US over the 20th century. Not one secular commune managed to perpetuate itself across generations without turning into something vastly less communal. Most religious communes failed too but the Amish and Hutterites are practically ethnic groups based on religion and there are lots of smaller groups.

> it’s like creating an alternative to a bar with no alcohol

In many muslim countries in the world there are plenty of places like this because alcohol just isn't a thing.

Yeah, let's just give up on making the world a better place. We might never reach Utopia, but we can for damn sure get closer especially if we free ourselves from dogmatic thinking. Do you really want to settle for better than nothing?

Communism is what you are looking for... where all people are putting in all of their effort to the common goodwill with government guiding the effort.

That system that failed everywhere and people found the excuse that it was not applied right, but the idea is sound. I lost my younger years living in such a regime, thanks but no thanks.

Ah yes, clearly the only two options here are all-in capitalism or communism. Definitely no room in between those two points for anything more nuanced.

Aside from being plain condescending or outright rude, you've shut down discussion about any approach that may be different. A better response would have been to ask them to suggest something, or show a case (another country, say) where this was already done.

Define "works".

> Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.

Being handed everything by a welfare state is de facto charity for the recipient. The biggest difference is that charity is morally superior because it's voluntary.

Besides, the US has a very large welfare state. I get a big kick out of people pretending the US doesn't have an epic scale, highly dysfunctional, poorly operated, welfare state, that doesn't spend trillions of dollars per year. I just can't figure out what they're spending $8.1 trillion on every year. Must be roads and military. Where'd all that magic trillions of dollars in stimulus spending come from? That laissez-faire Capitalist US system surely. Those free market $1,200 checks raining from the sky.

Without exception every welfare state - including the US, which has one of the most progressive tax systems - heavily relies on rich people to pay an extremely outsized share of taxes.

How many trillions are churches spending, in dollars and hours, to provide basic services? And that with a dose of magical thinking, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and appeals to authority.

IME even the most progressive churches can do a lot of 'soft' damage to already hurting people. Secular services certainly have their own faults, but at least they don't have so many invisible strings attached.

Please also keep in mind that secular services compete for resources and mindshare against religious institutions. It becomes a self reinforcing argument on the right that we need to keep the latter because the former is so bad.

> where people connect with the spiritual world

In the USA, this is quickly becoming an obsolete understanding of religion. Regular church attendance is down from 70% to just over 50% in the last 20 years, according to Gallup.

People are leaving the churches. The real question is what will replace them. If people need community, build community centers. There are other solutions that do not rely on continuing to provide tax exemptions to organizations that more and more people are fleeing.

You should see some Soviet community centers before thinking they can replace anything.

USA is highly uneven. In some states like Florida you can see churches on every other corner, and they are very active and developing, serving not only as community centers, but also as halls, child day care, hospitals, schools, galleries etc. No freaking "community center" can replace that.

>You should see some Soviet community centers before thinking they can replace anything

The concept was good and they did work. In many towns, it's usually the only place where you could run cultural evens,some more important community gatherings and so on. What did happen once the Soviet occupation ended, was the lack of funding of these places. The town I grew up in, 15k population and the culture center large enough to be suitable for a pretty large city,so the maintenance costs are substantial. That's where people go for theatre,concerts,and so on.

As for the churces, they do a lot of charitable work, however my own experience with churchgoers in many countries is that it's too often ' It's our way or no way at all'.

Churches in USA are not nearly the same as in most other countries. They are funded bottom up and also have to survive by serving their community well. If you need to ask for some community center funded from some abstract government, you don't have the local community, at the first place.

> from some abstract government

The.. local municipality funded by the same local community as your churches?

> Churches in USA are not nearly the same as in most other countries. They are funded bottom up and also have to survive by serving their community well.

Where do you think other churches get their funding? Where do you think municipalities get their funding?

Municipality is too top down for these purposes either and should not tell people how to entertain or take care of themselves. I don't want it to spend even a penny on that, ok? Enough to help emergency services and such - no one will want to opt out of that.

I can't imagine your model working for any town/city except the very smallest ones or those inhabited by rich people only: to have an independent building,where the community could do whatever they think is right for them requires capital and some sort of management. So if it's a small village in the middle of nowhere, building something is probably realistic,but what about a few thousand people town? You'd need a piece of land, substantial amount to build it or even to rent it. And how a larger community would finance it? Joe may want to contribute but Mary won't and so on. Once you have the place,who runs it. Self elected local activist or elected person? How would they decide that events they plan to do fit well within the community, especially if it's more diverse? Whether it's national or local, the main problems around its use would remain the same.

Churches already do that organically, no?

In the city I grew up in in Canada, the nearby community centre was a relatively nice building on a big piece of land surrounded by a park and playgrounds. Not every one, but many had large halls and gymnasiums, some were collocated with schools, some with art galleries, etc. In the winter many distributed sand and salt, and they just generally acted as hub for anything the community required and anything the government needed to provide to the community. They also served a purpose as a shelter and support site in the event of a natural disaster.

As a child of a relatively poor family, I spent a fair bit of time there because the local government sent us a catalogue a couple times a year detailing all the programs they were running which due to our income level were more or less free (being a whopping $30 or something otherwise).

Based off this and your other comments, it seems a more visceral reaction to the phrasing “community centre” than that you have any real argument against them.

Indeed, I have seen community centers in the US that do all that (perhaps with the exception of Hospitals).

I don't recommend going to your church when you need to go to a hospital. Go to a hospital. Doctors spend 12 years in school for a reason. The best outcome is that someone may do some first aid and call you an ambulance. The worst is you may die because you wasted time.

You should see some American churches before thinking they are substitute for schools and hospitals.

Nowhere was communism ever mentioned, only the potential for a "community center" which is a rather generic term that can exist independent of communism.

What are you talking about? Sounds either made up or completely twisted Russian history.

If you compare to official textbooks from "both sides", yes, it sounds made up. It takes some time to find the history in witnesses' words. And.. things are largely unchanged until today in that region, easy to check.

> some Soviet community centers before

Could you elaborate?

I was born in the exUSSR and there, if you want to find the most apocalyptic, neglected, boring and useless building which lives by renting out itself to some strange businesses (if at all), you can ask for the local community center.

Have you considered that you might just be jaded? Why should a 1980 USSR concrete building be your idea of the best that a "community center" can be, in the USA in 2020?

Doesn't your complaint have more to do with the USSR than it has to do with community centers?

Yeah this veered off into personal opinion real fast, I'm like we have thousands of Community hubs in Australia and they're great and only getting better.

For example: https://southperth.wa.gov.au/our-future/projects-and-places/...

I didn't even realise there was a connection to Russia until he brought it up.

I thought that would be the reply, but a community centre isn't a building but a function (that happens to need a building), but they're not the same.

Exactly that. Community centers there are useless and only work as a cheap building for rent

> If people need community, build community centers.

Granted I've always been the last person to know where the party is and still don't know where to buy weed in a state where it's legal if it hit me in the face, but what I do know is that if I ever wanted to meet people the last two places I would go to is the local community center and church like it's 1971. In my experience, joining a hospice social club would be an equally bright experience.

> If people need community, build community centers. There are other solutions that do not rely on continuing to provide tax exemptions to organizations

Community centres are an order of magnitude more expensive than providing tax breaks to churches.

I have to imagine that's because people spend 10% of their income on the churches that you aren't accounting for.

The people are paying one way or another, the question is whether public society will fill the gap or leave it to commercial businesses.

> I have to imagine that's because people spend 10% of their income on the churches that you aren't accounting for.

That is one part. However, it is naive to assume people would pay the same for community services.

The other is most of the church work is at heavily discounted rates.

My hourly rate is $160/hr in my day job and I do about 10/hrs a week for my church at $20/hr.

Does your typical government worker ever do such heavily discounted work?

Are people fleeing churches or have they never been?

People are fleeing, in fact. An important thing to remember is that in these polls, when they say things like "No religion in particular" they don't actually mean that these people are Atheists. They mean they don't ascribe to a specific dogma, like Catholic, or Baptist. These people often may still think of themselves as "christian" but, for one reason or another, have rejected organized religion.

From 70% to 50% is such a large change in 20 years. For this to be caused by a change in _parenting only_ would mean that probably every child born 38 years ago until today never attended a church. (this data counts adults, so they would only start counting when they turned 18). That seems very unlikely.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/248837/church-membership-down-s...

Do you mean in generational terms, or individual life experiences?

Well, then just leave them untaxed, and let "the problem" take care of itself. My parents go to a typical < 100 member Protestant church, which is filled with nothing but gray hair, and they are the young ones. When the boomers are gone, I figure at least half of the churches in America will simply stop existing. I don't know what happens with all of that property.

(The problem is that the only way to keep the lights on in these churches is to appeal to people in their 60's and 70's, but programs geared for that age bracket will turn away people in their 20's and 30's, and deprive the church of new people, new perspective, and new funding. These kinds of churches are slowly starving to death, victims of simple attrition.)

> obsolete

>just over 50%

k

(I feel like the glib single-character response stands on its own, but more verbosely: yeah, the trend isn't good, but a) there's no reason to assume it's linear, "fair-weather believers" is a thing, and b) I'm not a TIOBE follower, but let's say java use was 70% 20 years ago, and down to just over 50% today. Is "obsolete" the word you'd use?)

> this is quickly becoming an obsolete understanding of religion

Yes, I stand by my words. If you read them again, you'll see you are arguing with something I didn't say.

If 29% of religious people have left the church (50/70=71% still attend church)... then that is a major shift. It would be foolish to continue with previous assumptions about the role of churches going forward without taking into account how religious people are changing their behaviors.

Just wanted to point out this might not be true of other religions in the US. Yes they make up a smaller number, but I know for a fact that Muslims are religiously more participatory than they were 20 years ago in America. It could be sheer rising numbers, but I and many of my peers have also become more involved in our religious centers than we used to be.

So what if, in order to accommodate the changing role of the church in America, you prevent the other minority religions and minority communities from ever having their centers grow in the same way churches were able to?

When it comes to religion, America is the (massive) exception.

My local church, that drives 10,000s of nearby resident crazy by ringing it's bells, had 3 people attending last time I stuck my head in.

3.

People only use it for weddings, christenings and Christmas.

They're not been a part of the community for decades.

Well, actually, Europe is the main exception to the rest of the world. America is in-line with most of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, India, and South America in that religion still plays a major role in everyday life. In fact, religions are growing, not shrinking, worldwide.

Perhaps I should have been more clear, America is the exception of the wealthy countries that can afford extensive education. What might have previously been commonly called first-world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_and_religion#/media/Fil...

See how the US is an outlier?

The thing is, the concept of religion as a distinct, separate part of culture is basically a Western concept itself - and one that many scholars don't find to be very solid. Take Japan for example: Shintoism and Buddhism are very woven into the culture of modern Japan. Rituals, shrines, and other associated practices are quite prevalent and most of the population interacts with them on a regular basis. Yet your link lists Japan as being the second-least religious country, after China, which also has a number of beliefs that essentially qualify as 'religious' in nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Japan

In the Western world, the concept of humanist, egalitarian democracy is more-or-less an extension of certain Christian ethical beliefs that preceded it, so again, this definition of 'not-religious' is itself pretty problematic.

One problem I see is that church is also leading the cause to marginalize gay people from society by force of government.

There's a reason why during the Bush presidential candidacy a big news item was the push for a Constitutional amendment to exclude gay marriage. The Mormon church spent a great amount of money advertising in California with regards to how dangerous gay people are to kids.

People talk about "intolerance" of "cancelling", but cancelling is about the exercise of free relations by withdrawing. And then there's the force of law.

> church is also leading the cause to marginalize gay people

This might be the case of some church organizations (specifically those that make it a point to be politically active), but claiming that all churches do this, or even a majority of them, is just not accurate - guilt by association.

I grew up in Catholic schools, and almost every priest that taught us was incredibly kind and open to gays.

These priests are some of the nicest people you'd ever meet.

Yet their foundational texts at minimum call homosexuality unclean. Then the are the laws prescribing murder for homosexuals. This is just one problematic topic among many.

Church culture evolves but not always in the progressive direction. Propping up these ancient institutions just because they are old--and sometimes do good--comes at a high cost to marginalized groups.

This article in particular seems to be about better use of church space to not let empty rooms stays unused, albeit in a somewhat aggressive way.

But more generally, I think an angle to the whole question would be to apply either or both:

- treat religious organizations as any other non-profit, with no specific religious exemption. If they can’t continue doing the same in that legal framing they need to adapt.

- give all non-profit orgs a path to have the same advantages as religious organizations, so they can help the community in the same ways.

Sounds fair but why can't these things just be a not for profit? Don't know about the US law, but often in my country there are for-profit non-profit.

> Sounds fair but why can't these things just be a not for profit?

They are. There is no difference tax-wise for a non-profit and church.

>They are. There is no difference tax-wise for a non-profit and church.

While both churches and non-profits don't pay tax, they are treated differently. Secular non-profits have to account for the money coming in and out of the organization, while churches don't have to account for the donations or expenses.

Afaik churches in the US doesn't even have to report anything, so there's no way to know where the money is from and what they are being used for. That's a pretty big difference

Even a church ought to be accounting where is moneys are going from and to... I have no qualms with the government being able to inspect those records too.

To me, reporting makes sense. For an organisation as big as a church, employing a few accountants seems like value for money simply because then fraud will be deterred.

While they aren't required to report, many register voluntarily for fundraising and discounts. AmazonSmile, Kroger Community Rewards, and similar programs often outsource basic eligibility to GuideStar. GuideStar will not add you without proof of exempt determination by the IRS.

Alright, so all churches doing charity work now set up a non-for-profit. Problem solved?

AFAIK, the difference would pretty much be that they actually have (pretty loose) limits on what they can spend money on, and on endorsing electoral candidates - and they'd have to publish information about their finances.

If you argued that religion was not an intrinsic social benefit then you might start saying that some of what they do is not non-profit work. That could get interesting.

> AFAIK, the difference would pretty much be that they actually have (pretty loose) limits on what they can spend money on, and on endorsing electoral candidates - and they'd have to publish information about their finances.

I'm not from the US, so I 100% expect those things from churches already. These sound like completely reasonable demands I would have on any public institution.

Theoretically churches are already legally forbidden to endorse candidates but in practice this is effectively bypassed with the fiction that priests/pastors/etc can say they are sharing their personal opinion, not an official church position.

https://ffrf.org/outreach/item/14005-churches-and-political-...

I think it's because publicly funding this stuff is inefficient, and religion/spirituality seems to be the most effective motivator for sustained charitable work.

They also spend a lot of money and effort on promoting their own religion and interests. They could easily create subcharities that are seperate entities designed to do the charitable work while being taxed on their non charitable areas.

Church charities are often marketing in disguise.

> U.S. churches are still where communities meet

So is conference halls. So is Zoom for that matter.

Churches are also places where parents force their children to go against their wishes, where creepy priests make unwanted advances etc.

> also the ones doing most of the "heavy lifting" on any kind of charity activity

Any kind? Really? What about NGOs? Volunteering nurses? FLOSS communities? People 3D printing masks in maker spaces?

Here in the U.K., the National Health Service put out a call for volunteers to help and tens of thousands of people signed up, regardless of any church.

You don't need these for significant charitable activity to occur.

I am not saying that churches don't do good, just that they're not needed for charitable activity to occur and we need to determine whether the good that occurs because of churches outweighs the bad, (which btw often doesn't even come to light due to victims fearing retaliation).

It's evident by your opening that you have a bone to pick with religion, so I'll keep this short. 3D printing masks for an emergency and other one offs don't come close to the amount of non stop, year long, permanent activity in charity and community of churches and mosques.

> 3D printing masks for an emergency and other one offs don't come close to the amount of non stop, year long, permanent activity in charity and community of churches and mosques.

The problem is that in the U.S., the state has given up on helping the poor, especially when compared to EU countries, and it is then up to private institutions to fill in some semblance of what should have already been there as nonnegotiable basis of a developed society.

I am not from the U.S., (but with a lot of fiends from there), and I can tell you that a lot of what churches do in the U.S. is so basic that it should not be their role to provide. It is often used as a metric of "success" for churches and private charity in general, but in reality all it shows is a failure of the wider society where things like medicare for all are still not a thing, even during a pandemic.

When there's a possibility of thousands of dollars that need to be paid for an ambulance ride, that is a systemic failure of the system no church can fix.

I am not religious myself, but I want to make it clear that I am not arguing churches do no good. They absolutely do. I just feel that the awful shit they do is often overlooked as soon as something positive can be said about them.

There are multiple sides to every story, even characters you wouldn't think much about based on the overall picture did good, (one particularly repulsive character of history did a lot for animal rights for example).

I also feel like other forms of charity are often diminished in their impact because they're less visible than church charity.

Let's take FLOSS for example; I come from a relatively poor upbringing, without access to good education or the internet for the longest time. I have cerebral palsy and that means any kind of physical work is pretty much a no go for me. What I did have was a couple of friends who gave me Mandrake Linux on 3 CDs back in the day with GCC preinstalled and a book on C.

Now I am able to support myself as a programmer and donate to FLOSS on a regular basis. Because FLOSS gave me hope, I also found the motivation to exercise really hard and to preserve some amount of mobility for myself, even into adulthood.

Without it, I'd most likely end up dependent on people I wanted nothing to do with and without any kind of dignity, demotivated and miserable. I cannot overstate the impact the free software community has on me and I feel like it did more for me than any church ever could.

Yes, some of the stuff you said churches do that is a failure of the state has been called perseverance porn. Feel-good stories of people coming together to help pay for an out of control ambulance ride and so on.

> non stop, year long, permanent activity in charity

Just to point out, being an active developer/maintainer/etc of widely used FLOSS programs often seems to involve that. ;)

Only a small percentage of church’s budget goes to charity.

https://galileounchained.com/2012/05/14/are-churches-more-li...

The church is in only interested in keeping its own institution alive. If you ask the majority of Christians - who overwhelmingly went for a candidate who does not display Christian values - it’s because he furthered their agenda.

The church has hidden and continues to hide child molestation by their leaders.

They are pushing to reopen during Covid putting their congregations in danger - who are statistically older.

Churches are also one of the most segregated parts of society.

They consistently oppose universal healthcare.

One survey showed that 22% of Christians still believe that interracial marriage is a sin.

Perhaps then the US needs more welfare and more social right, but all that they got is churches and "people of good will".

I understand they are meeting places for the community but the fact they they worship imaginary beings and that makes them special is what gets people riled up. I understand worshiping and not worshiping is a critical element in tolerant human society, even in the 21st century that is supposedly made of science and enlightenment. What people really get angry with is when they get mixed up in politics and monetary activities promoting political agendas and want to maintain their tax exempt status even though they claim to be nonpartisan groups.

I would say many churches in the US have now become glorified concerts [1].

Great production, acoustics, cameramen, and often to peddle and push the organizers products [2] (books, DVD's, etc)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjpWTsh07k0 [2] https://store.harvest.org/

communities? no. churches are where a group of people from the community meet, that exclude others on the basis of religion. if a bagel shop did that, people would be up in arms. if they want to give away free food, why would getting taxed on profits stop that?

i'm also not sure what this has to do with taxes.

That's presumably because the US is so Christian. In other countries there are plenty of non-Christian charities. In general people aren't good because religion tells them to be.

Every major religious book preaches against women rights and other bad stuff. The churches(or any other religious organization's) goal is to make the society conform to the religion as much is permitted at that point in time.

> nor expecting you to sit through a sermon like the old days

Its because America has come a long way to instill the freedom in the minds of people and the church knows if they force too much people will not turn up. So they relax it for now but once people become enough religious, they will move the needle a little further until there are no independence left. Don't fall for the charity stuff.