I’ve been reading through Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is truly excellent. At points it almost has a dreamlike quality. I highly recommend it.
What motivates this post is the point in the narrative where the German state church is confronted by the Aryan Paragraph designed to prohibit Jews (Christian Jews!) from membership in the German church. The point of the exercise was to sharpen the contrast between Jewishness and Germanness. Bonhoeffer and others, aghast at this turn of events, begin to develop an interest in the concept of a free church. The free church is the idea of the church as a regenerate body (voluntary) instead of a comprehensive one (coextensive with the political community).
This part of the book caught my interest because it perfectly captures the theme I’ve been pushing for a while now which is that Christians should aggressively push for separation of church and state while drawing a sharp line between separation and secularism. Separation means the state does not fund the church nor does it control the church. Separation does not mean the church refrains from engaging in advocacy or organization (political or otherwise). One of the primary features of separation is that it should free the church to criticize or applaud the state depending on the degree to which it pursues an unholy agenda or a more righteous one.
In other words, a regenerate church is not a private church. It is rather like a volunteer army. Members enlist for a mission to the world.
July 19th, 2010 | 11:02 am
Will churches give up tax exemptions? The government could sure use the money and the churches would have freedom.
July 19th, 2010 | 11:15 am
Tax exemptions are part of the separation. The government could use taxes to squeeze the church out of existence if it became hostile.
July 19th, 2010 | 12:30 pm
Tax exemptions are part of the separation? Come again? Churches are required to limit their speech in particular ways because of the tax exemption. And should the state try to “squeeze the church out of existence,” this would actually put the church in the position of a persecuted minority—i.e., the place from which Christianity actually took off and grew exponentially from the very beginning. I’m not sure how the state’s special favor of tax exemption can be glossed as an exemplification of the separation you’re seeking, which I’m otherwise very inclined to support.
July 19th, 2010 | 2:11 pm
Tax exemption for churches is indeed a reflection of the state’s limited jurisdiction over religion. As Hunter’s note echoes, the judicial axiom is that the power to tax is the power to destroy. The Supreme Court also noted in Walz v Tax Commission, a case about whether churches may be exempt from property taxes under the Constitution, that “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.” Whether churches should be limited in their political speech because of tax exemption is an interesting and somewhat controversial issue (See the ADF’s pulpit initiative) but the alternative – the taxation of churches on their income and property – would mean even greater regulation and interference of the state in church matters.
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