Where Are the Anti-Liberty Guns Pointed?

Last week, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, Beto O’Rourke, drew headlines for announcing that churches should lose their tax-exempt status for opposing same-sex marriage.

“There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for any institution or organization in America that denies the full human rights and full civil rights of every single one of us.” (Reported in Deseret News)

The comment sparked a lot of commentary, including from our own Kevin Schaal here: “What Does Your Church Hold Dear?” Al Mohler surveys the attitudes of all Democratic candidates and other leaders in “The Cultural Left Bares Its Teeth: An Open Threat to Churches and Christians Who Hold to Biblical Conviction.” Walter Olson at the Cato Institute touches on legal ramifications in this piece, “O’Rourke: Churches That Don’t Support Rights Should Lose Exemption.” Ed Stetzer at Christianity Today talks about his surprise at the lengths to which the Democrats are going on this issue in “The #EqualityTownHall Was Loud and Clear: The LGBTQ+ Community, Beto, the Equality Act, and Evangelicals.” And over at Rewire.News, cases currently before the Supreme Court bear direct connection to this issue: “In Latest Round of LGBT Discrimination Cases Before SCOTUS, Religion is ‘The Elephant in the Room’.”

I’m sure there is more; one can only take in so much information at once. It seems that a great deal of the talk so far is about the impact on institutions. The Democrats are talking about taking the tax exempt status away from churches as institutions (and perhaps from Christian colleges and other parachurch organizations). To a certain extent, speaking about this on the institutional level depersonalizes the issue. Making the topic “institutional” makes the issue a problem for non-personal entities in our life. An institution, like a church, is a corporation. A corporation, an institution, can be penalizes as a bad actor in our world, and it only serves that entity right (so the thinking might go in the mind of John Q. Public).

The reality is that the corporate nature of the institution is really a legal fiction. The site Investopedia.com defines a corporation this way:

A corporation is a legal entity that is separate and distinct from its owners. Corporations enjoy most of the rights and responsibilities that individuals possess: they can enter contracts, loan and borrow money, sue and be sued, hire employees, own assets and pay taxes. Some refer to it as a “legal person.”

Here is Dictionary.com:

an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.

In talking about removing tax exempt status from a corporation, a verbal sleight of hand (intentional or unintentional) occurs. We are talking about an entity, not individuals who might be members of that corporation. We see the corporation as distinct from its principles, the people who make it up.

Our Christian commentators quite rightly see these threats as an attack on our Christian institutions and on religious liberty. They certainly are correct, that is exactly what they are. However, the attack is far more serious than that.

If a non-profit institution (a church, a school, a camp, what have you) lost its tax-exempt status, what would that mean? In the short run, it would mean that the institution would have to file corporate tax returns and be subject to paying taxes. Most such institutions are not making boatloads of money, however. The immediate tax burden might not have an immediate impact on the institutions (although I am sure the attacks would not end simply in the matter of annual taxation).

However, when an institution loses its tax-exempt status, the much more immediate consequence is that individual would no longer be able to claim a tax deduction for their donations. They could still donate, of course. But they would have to pay to do so! They would be taxed on their donations, and any benefit their previously tax-exempt donations gained would evaporate overnight.

Al Mohler pointed out:

The first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court said that the power to tax is the power to destroy.

Exactly. But the taxation howitzers would first point at the individuals who dared to support these non-compliant corporations. The state would attempt to coerce individuals to change their behaviour (if not their beliefs) by taxing their discriminatory values (so-called).

To me, this is what is most troubling about this threat — these are the values of totalitarians. They do not approve of the way you think. That’s right, the “guns” of anti-liberty are pointed at you and me.

What should we do about all this? In democratic societies, we can exercise political action. We will need great wisdom and liberty loving allies to defend against those who will attack. We also need clear thinking about the way forward, as Kevin said in his piece yesterday. We also need to build up our courage and commitment to the Lord. And we need to pray that God will intervene. This first of all, and always, must be our response.

Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.