The Forum > Article Comments > The case for an end to religious privilege > Comments
The case for an end to religious privilege : Comments
By Moira Clarke, published 26/11/2012Australians might be interested to learn that one of the ATO's definitions of 'charity' is the 'advancement of religion'.
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Posted by Yuyutsu, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 12:36:39 PM
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The way I understand it, there is a multi-stage leakage of public money due to the special tax treatment accorded to religious organisations: donations to them by individuals, companies or other bodies are tax-deductible to them; these donations are tax-free income to the religious organisation; the church itself, its "staff" and property receive various tax exemptions (eg from GST, payroll tax, fringe benefits tax, property taxes etc); the organisation pays no company tax on the profits of any business owned and operated by it (eg Sanitarium Health Food Company, owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the music publishing business owned by Hillsong Church). It can go even further: if a business is owned by members of the religious organisation (eg Gloria Jeans/Hillsong), it can make large tax-deductible donations to the church, which is then tax-free income to Hillsong. This untaxed income can be used to pay huge salaries and/or other preferentially taxed benefits to the church's "staff". This is a disgraceful situation.
Posted by Rosemary Sceptic, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 1:38:03 PM
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Yuyutsu wrote: “ I believe this sad trend began when the church first accepted the state's financial handouts.”
Dear Yuyutsu, From the fourth century when Catholic Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire until the sixteenth century church and state were united in the western world. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10725 describes an incident leading to the separation in Europe, and http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10790 tells of the separation in the United States. From the latter article: Devout Christians such as Anabaptist Balthazar Hubmaier, Catholic Lord Baltimore and Puritans Roger Williams, John Milton, and John Locke have supported separation of church and state. Some Christian supporters appeal to the words of Jesus. Matthew 22:21 ... render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. Spinoza, the great Jewish philosopher, supported secularism based on his reading of the Jewish Bible. Those anxious to keep peace in a society with many different beliefs favour it. Those who have beliefs which are in a minority favour it as they wish to be left in peace to worship as they will. It serves both state and church. The United States has the highest proportion of religiously observant people of any developed country. Although there have been outbreaks of religious bigotry the United States has been fairly free of it. People of any faith or none are free to say or do what they will as government has no authority in that area unless there is a violation of law. Unfortunately there are those who wish to tear down the separation to be free to impose their beliefs on others. Separation of church and state has served the United States well, and I think that it would further both freedom and peace if other countries adopted it. Posted by david f, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 2:07:07 PM
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YuYutsu, I'm trying hard to work out what you are trying to make us understand.
"Rubbing shoulders with the secular state corrupts the church. Suddenly it is no longer sufficient to love and worship God, but it becomes necessary to "prove" that He exists." Wouldn't the normal sequence of things be that you establish whether something exists before you decide to love and worship it? "Existence is a modern secular term …": Do you seriously mean that the term was unknown before modern times and that when introduced it was only by secularists? Remember what a secularist is. It's a person who believes (as I suspect you do) that religion and state should not intrude on each other's areas of responsibility. "Existence is … materialistic nonsense and foreign to religion" But Christians insist that God exists, that Jesus existed (which almost nobody seriously doubts, by the way) and that there existed a need for people to be redeemed from the original sin committed by their original ancestors who, of course, must have existed to have been able to sin. "Only objects can exist …": Are people objects? What about music, love, disappointment and respect? What about death and taxes (or tax avoidance by religions, which is what this article was about)? "…claiming "God exists" degrades His Holy Name so people come to think on Him as an object": May we ask what religion you subscribe to that regards God as something that doesn't exist but nevertheless needs to be loved and worshipped? Posted by GlenC, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 2:25:18 PM
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This article has become a touchstone for a thread of discussion for those for or against religion and that part of the independent school system run by various Christian denominations. Those comments have no bearing upon the article itself. Then again parts of the article itself strayed into a polemic about relgion and religious institutions. The issue is the tax status of charitable institutions. Moira Clarke states "Many have urged abolishing the tax concessions that are automatically granted to religions and replacing them with grants to organisations that undertake charity work that contributes a social benefit." Those "many" display an otherworldliness about service delivery. The proposed prescription is more centralisation, more form filling, more applicants waiting to see which agency or department will consider whether to approve or reject an application. Why does Moira think Government is the solution to the problem? Talk to academics who spend too much of their life writing applications for grants. Government tends to be hopeless at this sort of activity. Slow and inept at properly targetting the problem. Charities and non profits, eg Smith Family, are far better at service delivery. There are big legal problems in working out what is purely religious and purely charitable. A soup kitchen run by a parish or vicerage. Is that religious or charitable? Of course it is hard. To say otherwise is to permit prejudice to override logic.
Posted by Viniger Joe, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 3:17:25 PM
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RevDek,
Anyone who claims to base their faith on academic grounds is simply being dishonest with themselves. Those who were not indoctrinated as a child “find” God only when they’re feeling lost and/or their lives have hit rock-bottom. Any regular church-goer (quietly) knows this. So-called “academic” conclusions reached in a theist’s “journey” are either drawn from an incredibly biased search - where anything not supporting a particular premise is ignored - or is riddled with logical fallacies. C.S. Lewis is a classic example of the latter with his false trilemma that fails to take into account the fourth and most likely ‘L’: Legend. Even if the Gospels and the vague and questionable non-Christian accounts of a person, who may be Jesus, can be believed, what does that say for a God who chooses to convey the most important message to mankind by only revealing it to certain individuals, who then write it down so that thousands of years later we need to rely on copies of copies of translations of copies by anonymous authors with no originals? The God that Christians believe in is incredibly stupid if it wants to actually achieve its goal of spreading its message to humanity by relying on texts, by relying on languages that die off, by relying on anecdotal testimony. That's not a pathway to truth and anything that could qualify as a God would know this - which either means that God doesn’t exist, or he doesn’t care enough about those who understand the nature of evidence to actually present it. There’s no amount of anecdotal, testimonial reports that could be sufficient to justify believing that the events actually happened as reported - no amount - and anything that could qualify as a God would not be relying on ancient texts if he wanted to convey this information to people in a way that was believable. There is no such thing as a reasoned faith. Faith is the antithesis of reason. Faith is the excuse people give whey they don’t have a good reason to believe something; it’s where reason goes to die. Posted by AJ Philips, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 3:38:37 PM
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I watch in pain how religion is degraded when respected ministers of God bend down in front of secular society and their idols, thus bringing shame on God's Holy Name.
I believe this sad trend began when the church first accepted the state's financial handouts.
One cannot serve two masters at once. Rubbing shoulders with the secular state corrupts the church. Suddenly it is no longer sufficient to love and worship God, but it becomes necessary to "prove" that He exists. Existence is a modern secular term, it is materialistic nonsense and foreign to religion (if you believe in the devil, then you can say it comes from the devil). Only objects can exist, so claiming "God exists" degrades His Holy Name so people come to think on Him as an object. Next, people who as lost sheep consider God to be objective, start worshipping God for material gain - and so religion falls to the level of trade, of trying to barter with Him.
You must let go of Caesar's coin before you can render unto God what is His.
Then you will no longer need to come down to the atheist's sinful level, to argue science on their terms and be found wanting, to try finding reason in that which never required a reason. If as a private person you walk where you shouldn't, in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, then only you suffer, but if you do it in your capacity as minister, then all the people of God suffer and become the atheists' laughing-stock.
I urge you to shake the dirt off your robes.
When GlenC writes: "you have to suspect a triumph of faith over reason", I say "Yes, This will be the day - Hallelujah!"