This article certainly made me choke over my Sanitarium cornflakes.
L Ron Hubbard, he of a powerful imagination, is said to have claimed: "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." That's assuming you're not already getting tax breaks from an existing one, of course. Scientology fits perfectly into the pre-existing pattern.
It is fair that charities, including the charity arms of churches, get tax exemptions. On the other hand, there is no reason to favour institutions which make breakfast cereal, own property in the Vatican or structure their asset holdings so that they can't be sued by victims of sexual abuse, in a manoeuvre known as the Ellis defence.
And a record of good church work over millennia? Yes, a record of schools and hospitals, along with burning heretics, making war against adherents of the wrong form of Christianity, whatever it was at the time, oppressing women and gays etc. A mixed record indeed. Marriage equality, anyone?
Lyle's argument is that the churches can serve God and Mammon. It's not impressive, except in its audacity.

The previous comments have said it all.

However, one additional point I'd make is to ask: Why should female taxpayers indirectly fund the tax-exempt status of such a patriarchal institution as the Catholic Church and similarly gynaphobic religions?

mac - What you say is right and is the problem, they like the catholic church should reports of exactly how much they get from donations and from businesses they own or control then they should say exactly where that money went if it really went to helping people or straight to the Vatican coffers.

Jon J - Quote ""If it taxed churches, the church would certainly be funding the state" So you prefer that the taxpayers are forced to support the charities and the money making enterprises that some control.

Any money that they put into banks or money gaining assets should be taxed, but not money they use for charitable purposes.

$10 says you can't get even a small percentage of the big charities to show you there accounting books.
Why because if you see how much goes to charity as opposed to administration costs people would be very angry.

Since I posted here I've come across a new article by Marion Maddox ("Right-wing Christian Intervention in a Naive Polity: The Australian Christian Lobby), all about the pastoral "wheeling and dealing" of the ACL, of which Lyle Shelton is the managing director. The movement's founder is one John Gagliardi who wrote the "manifesto for Christians working in business", whom he designates the "Kings" of the new order. It seems we're living in the end times and this will involve a "great transfer of wealth". According to Gagliardi God (presumably) shall "supernaturally" generate "enormous, prodigious, colossal and stupendous" flows of money channelled by his "Kings".

Maddox summarises, "ACL's business-heavy board, corporate structure, and market-oriented training programs further reinforce an image of middle-of-the-road respectability, congruent with a political system in which both parties largely seek neo-liberal, business-oriented solutions to social problems". The ACL "appear[s] to anticipate a gradual transition of power away from secular institutions into Christian hands, achieved by market forces"

This is the same mob "which places mainly evangelical chaplains in mainly public schools"!

Shelton and the ACL are not mainstream or representative of Christians, as they claim to be, and I would argue that the article here provides further evidence of his and his organisation's fundamentalist (economic and religious) agenda and ambitions.

Indeed I'll add hypocrisy to the list of charges. They don't want to pay tax but they're also in receipt of untold wealth in the form of corporate donations!

Squeers, I think, if memory serves, the end times, will be where things are reversed.
That the rich will become the new poor and the poor will become the new rich? It will also be marked by a blending of religion and politics or theocracies?
In my own living memory, I have seen the most poverty stricken nations on the planet, lift billions from enduring poverty; and formerly rich nations, become debt laden basket case economies, only surviving, on the financial goodwill of the formerly poor nations!
In Christian mythology, the only reason to have wealth was the good works you could do with it, like the examples of the Good Samaritan, or the good master?
The other example, where unearned wealth was transferred to the greedy by the gullible, the Master took up a whip and lashed the money changers out of the temple.
Esoteric Christians lived simple humble lives, met each other, in their own humble homes and built no towering edifices to glorify God!
If Peter was the first Pope or Christian Leader, then his eldest daughter was the second, or so called female Pope?
The first and only eyewitness account of the life of Jesus, was the gospel according to Mary Magdalene? Everything that follows, is patent plagiarism?
The self deluded or those hiding their evil deeds/intentions behind them, will not get rich by some heavenly act!
For if heaven were to intervene, heaven would start with the poor and persecuted first, and the sick and infirm immediately following.
For if there is a God, and is all pervasive everywhere present, then surely that God is represented by unconditional love, and not all that different from the love of a parent for a newborn and helpless child?
The church needs to be built again from the ground up, using truth as the only foundation; and then emulate the example, of its founder and early esoteric leaders!
Starting by whipping the greedy and the power hungry, (spot the difference) from its ranks!
Cheers, Rhrosty.

In past centuries churches provided many services.
Churches were virtually the only organisations offering schools, hospitals, mental asylums.

But in the 20th century, the state took over these roles.
They also provide subsistence payments for the otherwise-destitute ("alms for the poor").
And the state is funded by taxes.
The church-based services are now redundant.