California Tax Bill Seeks to Punish Scouts for Gay Ban

[paynen] I think I was fairly clear. I enjoy the benefits of the Church being tax exempt. Yet it is not our right according to any document or view. Our responsibility is to follow the law in regards to taxes, fair or not. …..

Whoa, whoa, whoa - hold the phone! When our government was set up, the founders created a government that was to exist separately from the church. The government does not tax the church because it does not “own” or control the church. The First Amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

The power to tax is the power to control. Tax exempt law in regards to churches (or other religions) finds its basis in the First Amendment. However, since this does not apply to “clubs” and other Non-profit entities, the govt. can decide whether or not to tax them.

[MShep2]

[paynen] I think I was fairly clear. I enjoy the benefits of the Church being tax exempt. Yet it is not our right according to any document or view. Our responsibility is to follow the law in regards to taxes, fair or not. …..

Whoa, whoa, whoa - hold the phone! When our government was set up, the founders created a government that was to exist separately from the church. The government does not tax the church because it does not “own” or control the church. The First Amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

The power to tax is the power to control. Tax exempt law in regards to churches (or other religions) finds its basis in the First Amendment. However, since this does not apply to “clubs” and other Non-profit entities, the govt. can decide whether or not to tax them.

Your actually thinking of this backwards. If all are taxed the same then there is not right for the government to tell you to do things. If you are given privileges then the government has a say in what the requirements are to meet those privileges. Since the church is using capital which, is tied to the government, then it is prospect to whatever rules the government decides, unless it can pull off its own form of currency. But if what you say is true in any way shape or form, as in churches exempt status is different then other non-profits, then we can shut down this thread due to the fact that what happens to boy scouts has no effect on us at all… which I don’t think is true…

I would agree with Jim as well. I would tell whoever asked me that what happened is unfortunate and if you can vote against it… but we have no right to disobey the government. We are not going to refuse to pay those taxes. What else can we do. I would also tell him the last several things I said as well. The government made laws regarding our taxes and we have to obey them. We must render to Ceaser what is Ceaser’s. The government is not forcing us to do anything immoral or anything against what God is asking us to do. So we have no merit to disobey them. It may make things more difficult and our pockets tighter, but God is still on the throne and will still provide what we need so long as it is His will for us to be here. Once the government crosses the line, as far as requiring us to do what God doesn’t want us to do or vice versa then we will deal with that when it comes.

[paynen] Your actually thinking of this backwards. If all are taxed the same then there is not right for the government to tell you to do things. If you are given privileges then the government has a say in what the requirements are to meet those privileges…..

No, you said a tax-exempt status “is not our right according to any document or view.” My post contradicted this assertion of yours, not how some have used the tax code to control non-profits. Again, this is not a “privilege” given by the government, since our government has never had the constitutional right to tax churches.

Obviously using a tax-exempt status as a means of control has been practiced by the IRS since Lyndon Johnson was able to alter the IRS code in 1954 prohibiting non-profits and churches from endorsing or opposing political candidates. He did this because conservatives were opposed to his reelection. However, this has never been challenged in court where a church had its tax-exempt status revoked for allowing political speech from the pulpit.

[MShep2] Paynen: if you do a quick search on the internet you can easily find the “documentation” that makes it unlawful to tax churches - the document is the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, Article 1.

From this link: http://churchesandtaxes.procon.org/

1. Exempting churches from taxation upholds the separation of church and state embodied by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court, in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger in Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York, decided May 4, 1970, stated: “The exemption creates only a minimal and remote involvement between church and state, and far less than taxation of churches. It restricts the fiscal relationship between church and state, and tends to complement and reinforce the desired separation insulating each from the other.” [5]

2. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution bars the US government from limiting the free expression of religion. By demanding church taxes, the government becomes empowered to penalize or shut down churches if they default on their payments. [12] The US Supreme Court confirmed this in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) when it stated: “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

I think one of the best arguments is from McCulloch v. Maryland - “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” If churches are taxed, they can be shut down for not paying taxes and it would be easy for the govt. to craft a law to shut down certain churches by giving them an onerous tax burden they could not pay.

[paynen]……you misunderstand what I mean by documentation. Somebodies interpretation is not official documentation. Separation of church and state does not “protect” from taxation. Taxation is based on the flow of capital not religion. As Long as churches use government capital that capital is subject to tax unless the government decides it is exempt. The government can decide who is worthy of exemption. We can influence that based on voting, not by ranting and raving about rights.

The SCOTUS is not just “somebody” and their interpretations carry the force of law. Actually, this is not even new to the U.S. since in the U.K. they use the vast history of common law to also give churches tax exemption.

Your argument about capital and taxation of churches is specious. The “government” doesn’t decide if there is to be a free press - it is given as a “right” in the constitution. The “government” doesn’t decide whether or not people have a right to a jury trial, it is given as a right in the constitution.

The original purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to delineate what the Federal govt. could do. Anything not found in the Constitution was not allowed. However, many of the States’ representatives felt that without a Bill of Rights, this would one day be misunderstood and the government would go outside of its bounds of authority, so they demanded its adoption as a condition of their acceptance of the Constitution.

While I do agree that we need to express our beliefs by voting for good representatives to Congress, referring to our rights given in the Constitution is not “ranting and raving.” The history of the Congress is full of Representatives and Senators voting what they feel is the will of their constituents and then having the law struck down by the courts when it seen to be against the Constitution.

There are two other issues that you need to reconsider, but I don’t have time now to go into them. First, you seem to refer to “government” as an entity that exists entirely to itself. There is no such thing. This is seen in the Declaration of Independence:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

and reflected in what James Madison felt should be the first article of the Bill of Rights:

First. That there be prefixed to the constitution a declaration That all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from the people.
That government is instituted, and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Second, your understanding of capital and currency seems to only go back to Nixon’s time when the gold standard was abandoned for the “fiat currency” system. (This is defined as money that is intrinsically useless; is used only as a medium of exchange.) While it is true that the U.S. government (in a sense) creates money and we use it for exchange, that does not mean that all who use this fiat currency are subject to whatever whim the “government” may decide to do with it.

Now, your arguments hold much more weight if you are talking about the govt. giving the Kiwanis club or the Red Cross a tax exempt status - they just don’t apply to churches.

Actually, Paynen, it appears we do have a God-given right. Gen. 9 establishes the institution of civil government as authority established by and through men. The argument laid out in the Declaration of Independence follows this line of reasoning. Government authority is derived from God through the governed, much like elder authority in the church comes from God through the members in congregational polity. We not only have a right to resist ungodly government, many would argue it is our responsibility.

@paynen - I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone. Every time I respond to one of your arguments you change your point either slightly or completely like you did in your last post. I cannot carry on a conversation like this. Therefore, I’m bowing out.

[MShep2]

@paynen - I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone. Every time I respond to one of your arguments you change your point either slightly or completely like you did in your last post. I cannot carry on a conversation like this. Therefore, I’m bowing out.

I’ve not changed anything at all. What I am asking for remains the same. I am looking for you to give me biblical support that gives us these tax exempt rights or whatever. I’m looking for biblical support that gives us rights to disobey the government beyond biblical commandments. You keeping talking about the constitution and the bill of rights… but those are not God given anythings. Those are government documents explaining how the government should be run. Now the government should obey them because the government established itself with those documents. Yet if the government decided by whatever means to no longer abide by those documents do we as Christians have the right to disobey… The obvious answer is no. We are to be subject to our government. And going further your interpretation of Separation of Church of State is far from a definition even with the supreme court making a decision on it, that does not mean that it is still not an interpretation. Their is no binding document such as the constitution that defines SCS that way. The supreme court could change that definition tomorrow if it wished. And even if their was documentation on it within the government that doesn’t change the fact that it would be a government document that could be changed if the government wished. The issue here isn’t what the government should do morally, but what the government can do and what we as Christians actually have a biblical “right” to do in response. disobeying the government requires the government not allowing us to obey God. That is clear biblically there is no other way around it… in fact I think it would be fair to say that any establishment of oneself as an authority between government and God is a heart issue. This is not to say that the government has its responsibilities of what it should do. The government has God given responsibilities, yet if they don’t follow those responsibilities that does not set us free from our responsibilities to obey.

Let me use the family as an illustration. It is the Husbands job to love His wife and to lift her up. It is the Wife’s job to be submissive to her husband. Yet, no where in scripture does it give the wife the right to lack submission if the husband is being unloving. and nowhere does it give the husband the right to be unloving if the wife is being disobedient… It is the governments job to not bear the sword in vein and to punish evil. Yet if they don’t that doesn’t give us the right to disobey them. Our responsibilities are not dependent on the other party fulfilling their responsibilities. The only time we have the right to disobey any authority over us is when obeying that authority would be disobedience to God. This is an open and shut case biblically.

I, too, share this same frustration. You speak about things as if they are an abstract theory, an idea to be analyzed. You appear unwilling to take a stand at all. It is nice to write about the role of government, but do you want to see faith-based organizations have tax exempt status or not? Yes or no?

Nobody is advocating rebellion against the government. Please don’t mention it again. I’m also not interested in your theories of government. I can read The Federalist Papers if I want.

I simply ask you again - do you want to see faith-based organizations have tax-exempt status or not? I am asking for a purely personal opinion, not a treatise on the role of government in people’s lives.

If you could answer succintly, I would be grateful.