05-12-2011, 01:12 AM
Grace62 wrote:
rj you are completely ignoring all that went on late 18th century? Many of the colonies (then later states) actually had "state religion" well into the 19th century, something they had inherited from England. So the church not only didn't pay tax, it actually received money from the state to operate, and in some places, like New Hampshire, only Protestants were allowed to serve in gov't. That went on until late in the 19th century. Things wound down to where we are today in very different ways across the states, but the consistent thread was the belief that churches should be allowed to exist free of intrusion from the state.
And, about the Supreme Court, here they are 200 years later...
Walz vs. Tax Commission of the City of New York, 1970
"The Supreme Court stated that a tax exemption for churches "creates only a minimal and remote involvement between church and state and far less than taxation of churches. [An exemption] restricts the fiscal relationship between church and state, and tends to complement and reinforce the desired separation insulating each from the other." The Supreme Court also said that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy." Taxing churches breaks down the healthy separation of church and state and leads to the destruction of the free exercise of religion." "
The quote "The power to tax involves the power to destroy" was coined in 1819 by Justice John Marshall, in a case having nothing to do with religious tax exemption. It was, rather, a case that established that states and localities cannot use taxation as a political weapon against the federal government. The last part of the quote about taxing churches breaking down separation of church and state does not come from the Walz decision, which was not about a constitutional right to tax exemption but about the constitutionality of the exemptions themselves. I'm not sure where that part of the quote comes from, but it's not from the SCotUS.
I didn't mean to ignore the 18th century, or the 19th. I was just trying to get at the specifics of tax exemption for religious organizations, and the legal justifications that support it. There is not a constitutional right to be exempt from taxation if you are a religious organization; it's a matter of statute, and the statutes didn't appear until 1896. And from then until now, the statutes have been inclusive of religious groups without being exclusive to them; these laws have always been about public benefit, not religious freedom.