Separation of Church and State Is More Important Than the Good Works of Religious Organizations

To the Editor:

Howard Husock’s op-ed “Removing the Tax Exemption for Religious Congregations Is the Wrong Move for Our Polarized Nation” (November 17) may be accurate, but his arguments are not fully relevant to the question he is addressing. The reason churches and other religious organizations should not be tax exempt has nothing to do with their worth to society. Plenty of churches do good work, and many secular nonprofits sadly do not.

There are two reasons religious organizations should not be tax exempt. First, they engage in politics, which is illegal. The IRS’s website states that the law prohibits political campaign activity by charities and churches by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one “which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”

Yet here we are. Even Prestonwood Baptist, which Husock highlights as a church doing good work, has no trouble endorsing political candidates, many of whom are on the far right.

Religious organizations also lack transparency, which is the second reason they should lose their tax-exempt status. Like other nonprofits, they should be required to file a 990 form, which provides the public with information about these groups. If an organization wants to sell itself as a tax-deductible enterprise — meaning it uses public money in its operations — then it must be accountable to the public.

Those who claim separation of church and state can’t have it both ways. More than six years ago, I wrote in the Chronicle about how that principle is endangered by tax exemption for churches and other religious institutions — “Trump’s Mixing of Politics, Religion, and Charity Spells Trouble” (June 27, 2016). Nothing has happened since then to change my mind.

Doug White
Philanthropy scholar and author, most recently, of Wounded Charity