A spate of articles in prominent venues (such as Time and the Washington Post) have argued we should do away with “tax exemptions” for churches. In the most recent volley, David Niose claims that religious tax exemptions equal religious subsidies. Since fewer Americans are going to church, he suggests it’s time to stop subsidizing religion.
The claim that tax exemptions for churches (or for religious organizations more broadly) are just the same thing as subsidizing religion is absurd. As our friend Francis Beckwith points out, that’s a lot like saying the government subsidizes each of us because it doesn’t tax our income 100 percent (there is a formal equivalency in the two positions). But for the sake of argument, we’ll put the absurdity of the position to the side.
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