Exempting the Churches Part 4

Carroll, LL.D., "Religious Forces in the United States," edition of 1912, pages 378-381 and 418-421. Dr. Carroll was in official charge of the department of churches in the census of 1890 and is a recognized authority on church statistics. Active in Methodist circles all his life, he may be trusted to resolve all doubts in favor of the church, and his testimony cannot be put aside by church apologists.

WEALTH INCREASES FASTER THAN CHURCHES.

Ill.u.s.tration of the looting of the public treasury by church exemption may be drawn from New York. In this state church property in 1890 was valued at $140,123,008. In 1906, a period of fourteen years, it had risen to $255,166,284. Here, as elsewhere in the country, Dr. Carroll points out ("Religious Forces" Introduction, p. 59) that the increase in church buildings comes nowhere near keeping pace with the increase in values. In the country as a whole the increase in values from 1890 to 1906 was 85.1 per cent., while the increase in church edifices was only 35.3 per cent. In New York, the increase in the number of buildings within the period given was only from 7,942 to 9,193, or less than 16 per cent., as compared to the increase in value of more than 82 per cent. Even with this small increase of churches, it is notorious that more buildings exist than are needed or used. But taking the figures as they are, it is self-evident that for this huge increment of value the community gets nothing. Even the friendly Dr. Carroll is forced to admit this, and to draw the inevitable conclusion (Int., p. 60) that the increase results from more costly edifices and the "natural" increase in values, which can mean nothing but speculative land values. This removes the last faint pretext for exemption. Even supposing that the services rendered by the churches were indispensable to the community, it is palpable that the performance of such service draws upon only a fraction of the wealth possessed by these bodies. Out of the immense margin they could well afford to bear their honest share of civic burdens, and would not be compelled to curtail their beneficent activities in order to do so. Honest church taxation would merely prevent the storing up of superfluous wealth at the expense of the whole people.

Since the most valuable church property is concentrated in the cities, a glance at their statistics should not be omitted. Figures for 1890 are given by Dr. Carroll in the volume cited, pages 400-415. From these, it appears that in that year $313,537,247 of the total previously given was situated in the 124 cities of the first, second and third cla.s.s. The population of these cities amounted to 13,988,938 in 1890; that of the whole country to 62,622,250. Thus were the enormous profits from the exemption graft poured mainly into the swollen coffers of the city churches. While serving considerably less than one-fourth of the population, they had ama.s.sed nearly one-half of the property owned by all the churches of the country. The churches of New York city alone owned in the year stated property to the value of $73,352,437, more that a tenth of all the church property in the country, although then, as now, containing only about one-twentieth of the population. While no exact figures are at present available as to the value of church property in the metropolis to-day the amount cannot be much short of a quarter of a million dollars. In a printed brief presented to the Committee on Taxation on the New York Const.i.tutional Convention, William D. Guthrie, retained as attorney for the Roman Catholic interests, estimates, according to figures as of May, 1914, the amount at $170,445,725.* As his whole aim was to minimize the amount of exemptions this is certainly none too high a figure, and is probably much too low. Allowing it to stand, however, a comparison with the foregoing data will show that either New York churches are at a fearful rate growing richer and richer at the expense of the other churches of the country, or that the total of church property in the land has risen to the appalling figure of at least $1,700,000,000.

* In 1913 an a.n.a.lysis of the official figures given in the City Record to show the amount of exempt property in New York City was made for The Truth Seeker. The exempted church property listed was appraised at $244,-445,955.

POPULATION AND PROFITS.

Taking the church population instead of the general population as, from some points of view, a fairer measure of the degree to which the city churches ama.s.s wealth at the expense of the country churches, we find that the total number of communicants in 1890 was 20,618,307 in the entire country. In the 124 cities of importance, the number was 5,302,018. It should further be remembered that the Roman Catholics are concentrated in the cities, about one-tenth of all the Catholics in the country being in the single city of New York; and that this sect does not keep honest records of its communicants, but practically forces all the children of nine years of age and above, born in Catholic families, to become communicants, and then on the basis of "once a Catholic, always a Catholic," counts them forever after in its doctored figures.

Thus the hundreds of thousands of born Catholics who have turned Protestants are counted twice in making up religious statistics, once as Catholics and once as members of the denomination to which they have transferred their allegiance; while the ex-Catholics who have left the church altogether are still counted in to swell the total. Thus through accepting the crooked Roman Catholic statistics, the ostensible number of church members in the country is greatly overestimated by Dr. Carroll and others, while the proportion of Catholics to the whole number is likewise immensely exaggerated. Could we squeeze out the water from the religious statistics, it would be found that the actual percentage of genuine communicants in the cities is much less than one in four. Even from Dr. Carroll's figures, however, it is but little more. Thus a church member in one of the cities is a partner in twice the wealth of a church member in the country; and "where the treasure is, there will the heart be also." By the same census, the number of communicants in New York city was only 866,564, or less than one-twenty-third of the total, and this in spite of having much more than its share of persons dishonestly counted as Catholic "communicants." So, according to the system of church exemption, the rich New York churches, with less than one church member in every twenty-three in the country as a whole, have swept into their hands, by the method attributed by the author of the Proverbs to the daughters of the horseleech, more than one-tenth of all the church wealth. No wonder they can afford to hire expensive counsel to appear before the state legislature and the Const.i.tutional Convention to demand that they be left undisturbed in the profitable enterprise of impoveris.h.i.+ng the community to provide more luxury for themselves.

PREPONDERANCE OF CITY PROPERTY.

A final comparison will prove even more startling than what has gone before. In 1890, the total number of church buildings in the country was 142,639; in the cities referred to, the number was 9,722; and in New York city it was 917. That is to say, 124 cities, with less than one-fourteenth the number of church buildings, possessed practically one-half of the church wealth; while the single city of New York, which absorbed more than one-tenth of the wealth, had less than one out of every 155 of the church buildings of the country! No wonder the churches of the large cities, and of New York in particular, howl b.l.o.o.d.y murder when asked to part with some of their popular graft and pay their debts!

To them, at least, Christianity is no longer a religion for the poor and disinherited of earth, but the special enjoyment of idle wealth and heartless vanity.

What New York lacks in number of churches to the population, it makes up in the luxurious elegance of those it does possess. Its houses of wors.h.i.+p are magnificent religious clubs for wors.h.i.+p on the _de luxe_ plan. What the poor, wandering Nazarene, if any credence is to be placed in the story of his life, would have said to this cynical burlesque of his teachings, may be left to the imagination. Were there any honest excuse for asking the state to bear part of the burdens of the church, it would apply in a tenfold degree to the struggling country churches, which form a much more organic life of the community than do the city ones, and may much more plausibly be credited with genuine and community-wide social service. As has been seen, however, tax exemption going in the main to multiply the superfluous wealth of the city churches, does next to nothing for them.

THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR.

In addition to all the other unanswerable objections to the exemption system, it is thus irrepealably convicted of a systematic discrimination in favor of the rich as against the poor. This, in a nutsh.e.l.l, is the spirit of present-day Christianity. The plethoric churches of the cities are the main foes of economic honesty. It is they, rather than the country churches, which, feeing expensive lawyers and maintaining elaborate lobbies at our state capitals, menace our politicians with ruin and bring all forms of pressure to bear to terrorize our legislatures, in order to prevent the withdrawal of the special privilege that heaps up in their hands the earnings wrenched from others by legal favoritism; and in all this they are not seeking to protect their existence against threatened destruction, nor to keep themselves from being crippled in their legitimate work, but to add more millions to the superfluous treasure they have already extorted from the people, and to cater to the decadent demand for extravagant display.

Isolated instances of churches engaged in serious attempts to grapple with the larger social needs prove nothing to the purpose. Such churches need no graft to win the cooperation of devoted workers and benefactors.

If they join in the cry for exemption, it is because they are made catspaws by the parasitic churches, and have not enough faith in righteousness to shun the practice of doing evil that good may come.

In order that the issue might be made as clear as possible, the discussion has been confined directly to churches and church property.

Of the property of religious and semi-religious bodies other than churches, and of the educational, hospital, philanthropic, reformatory and other inst.i.tutions controlled by religious bodies and exempt from taxation--although in many cases making their ostensible activities a cover for sectarian proselytism, and in all cases using their otherwise excellent work as a means of advertising their sects--little has been said. The reasons against exemption of church property apply largely, if not fully, to these as well, although they have at least certain specious grounds for favor which the churches cannot show. It cannot be doubted, at least, that the more completely society, in city, state and nation, performs all its collective functions directly, rather than through the medium of any semi-private inst.i.tution partly withdrawn from its direct supervision and control, the better. If some compromise is found necessary, it should be looked upon only as a temporary expedient, and not as a permanent policy.

The evils attendant upon subsidizing any form of sectarian inst.i.tution, whatever its social services, are too great to be ignored. Yet, making the largest possible concessions to these bodies, such grounds of expediency as may at present be held to justify their exemption from taxation cannot legitimately be extended to the churches, whose mission is in no way allied to any function of organized society.

The taxation of church property is demanded by every consideration of sound public policy, common sense, democracy and justice. In the day when these principles are heeded, the people will come into their own.

The matter in this pamphlet is an expansion of the argument made by the author, June 1, 1915, at a hearing held in the Senate Chamber at Albany, New York, before the Committee on Taxation of the Const.i.tutional Convention, in support of an amendment offered by James L. Nixon of Buffalo, to abolish all exemptions of church property from taxation.