Separation of Church and State: Are They Really Separate?

My mother and I have a long-running argument going on about church tax exemptions. Well, it’s not really an argument — it’s more like my mother goes on a rant criticizing church tax exemptions, arguing that the city government should stop giving them preferential tax treatment because it’s not fair to the rest of the local taxpayers. Then she’ll give me that look only mothers can give their children and question once again why I haven’t written an article about it in “that magazine you write for.” I usually respond with something like, “Well, I’ll see if I can fit it in the queue,” or some such nonsense.

The first time she criticized church tax exemptions I explained to her that governments exempt churches as a matter of public policy, as churches have a beneficial and stabilizing impact on community life, like by operating soup kitchens, sponsoring activities for children, and other good works, and are thus deserving of, say, a property tax exemption. I also pointed out that churches are not wholly exempt from taxes: Churches collect sales tax at events they sponsor, even if those sales are connected to their religious mission. They pay tax on income earned from activities that have no connection with the church, such as renting out church property for nonreligious purposes. Then I pulled out the big gun: Tax exemptions for churches and other religious institutions foster a healthy separation between church and state, which furthers the free exercise of religion. This, I said, is a bedrock principle of our government that has been enshrined in the federal Constitution.

My mother has yet to buy into this reasoning. My family lives in a city where, in 2015, there was one church for every 800 or so residents. That’s a lot of churches. “Think of all the property taxes the city isn’t collecting,” my mother said. She was adamant that most of the churches in the city don’t engage in “good works.” Instead, the church buildings sit locked and empty six days a week, and on the seventh they are occupied for maybe five hours. In many instances, the majority of a church’s congregants live outside the city. “So much for influencing stable local communities,” she said. She did, however, acknowledge my points that churches collect sales taxes and pay tax on income earned from nonreligious activities.

This is where we left this debate, until recently, when my mother surprised me by going after my big gun. She told me that the separation of church and state is a fine thing, but what happens when the church involves itself in political affairs? I replied that when churches get political, they lose their tax exemptions. She then gave me anecdotal evidence of instances in which the leader of a congregation sermonized on political matters and asked who decides if a church has crossed the line. “The IRS,” I said. That’s when I learned that my mother knows more about this subject than I’d thought.

First, she told me, the IRS has a poor track record when it comes to investigating church violations. She pointed to President Trump’s 2017 executive order making it easier for churches to participate in political life by curtailing the IRS’s ability to threaten them with revocation of their tax exemptions when pastors speak about their preferred candidates from the pulpit. Then she told me about an article from a reputable news agency she’d read that described how pastors from all across the country routinely break the law on politicking from the pulpit, and even mail recordings of their sermons to the IRS. According to the article, this has been going on for years — and the IRS has done nothing. She pulled the article out of her file and showed it to me. “Sounds to me like nobody’s much concerned about your separation of church and state,” she said.

It struck me that maybe my mother was right. If churches are not going to “act” like churches, it doesn’t strike me as unfair that the IRS should revoke their tax exemptions. Under today's political climate, exemplified by then-candidate Donald Trump’s vow to “destroy the Johnson Amendment,”¹ it seems that churches are going to be able to have their cake and eat it too.