I feel the same way about Churches and their tax exempt status. It's so vulnerable and it's just a matter of time before it gets leveraged for some political purpose.
The problem with the churches isn't the tax exempt status. The problem is the government grants for those religious charities that cooperate with government in such things as illegal immigration, asylum for refugees etc.
Well this is a difficult area because some private charities are far more effective than government social programs. We have already seen some government hostility emerging towards Salvation Army, Catholic Charities and others. If you don’t place babies with men who like Thailand trips you’re discriminating. Etc.. The charities want to help as many people do turning down big grants seems wrong but so too is betraying thousands of years of moral teaching to cooperate with destructive trends.
I'm completely aware that private faith based charities do better work than government programs. You pointed out the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities. By a long shot, both of those groups have better results for individuals and society at large. You also pointed out that government is also encroaching on the morality of those charities. Adoptions by Catholic Charities is compromised by courts that have ruled that they must place infants with same sex couples and that they must allow same sex couples to host foster children. The Salvation Army has been accused of other ridiculous things, such as mixing faith with business ...umm, duh. That's as stupid as arguing that Catholic schools shouldn't have crucifixes on walls because the government often pays for the text books.
however, the elephant in the room here is how poorly run the faith based charities are when it comes to immigration, asylum etc vs the other work they do. It started decades ago when little churches all over the country would "sponsor" an immigrant as a church and then dump the immigrant on welfare. It's gotten a lot worse since then.
I feel the same way about Churches and their tax exempt status. It's so vulnerable and it's just a matter of time before it gets leveraged for some political purpose.
The problem with the churches isn't the tax exempt status. The problem is the government grants for those religious charities that cooperate with government in such things as illegal immigration, asylum for refugees etc.
Well this is a difficult area because some private charities are far more effective than government social programs. We have already seen some government hostility emerging towards Salvation Army, Catholic Charities and others. If you don’t place babies with men who like Thailand trips you’re discriminating. Etc.. The charities want to help as many people do turning down big grants seems wrong but so too is betraying thousands of years of moral teaching to cooperate with destructive trends.
I'm completely aware that private faith based charities do better work than government programs. You pointed out the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities. By a long shot, both of those groups have better results for individuals and society at large. You also pointed out that government is also encroaching on the morality of those charities. Adoptions by Catholic Charities is compromised by courts that have ruled that they must place infants with same sex couples and that they must allow same sex couples to host foster children. The Salvation Army has been accused of other ridiculous things, such as mixing faith with business ...umm, duh. That's as stupid as arguing that Catholic schools shouldn't have crucifixes on walls because the government often pays for the text books.
however, the elephant in the room here is how poorly run the faith based charities are when it comes to immigration, asylum etc vs the other work they do. It started decades ago when little churches all over the country would "sponsor" an immigrant as a church and then dump the immigrant on welfare. It's gotten a lot worse since then.