Tax the Liberal Churches

It has been popular of late for liberals and atheists to agitate for, Taxing the Church. Facebook has their graphics traveling about with claims that the civil government could raise $70,000,000,000 a year by this means. Man, that is a huge sum! As a practical matter we can be certain the idea would never work as its promoters claim. Many smaller churches would simply move to a house-church model, some would be unable to pay and go out of existence, and others would fight the action in court for years to come.

However, the main point of trying to have the churches taxed is not to raise revenue. The main object is, rather, to suffocate and damage the American church in a fresh new way. Theological and social liberals hate the true church and want it deleted like a virus, from our public life. They also understand that with taxation comes regulation. Liberals would love to impose political objects on the Christian church. Nothing would serve them better than having legal pretense for ruining faithful churches with taxes and regulations designed for that very purpose. Tax the church, kill the church – that is the hope.

One of the oddities of this movement is their apparent acceptance of the taxation of  liberal churches. This is peculiar because liberal theologians and churches were the pervasive force that birthed the progressive political movement. They worked tirelessly to smash the foundations of the evangelical belief in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. Liberal churchmen, like Walter Rauschenbusch and Josiah Strong, promoted the philosophy of the social gospel. It was through their work that the broader church was ensnared to discard many of its core doctrinal convictions, and pursue social justice as a form of salvation for society. The works may have been good in many cases, but the motivation was perverted. Good works could never, in themselves, produce a prosperous and moral society. The social gospel always was a dead end philosophically and practically. An insufficient gospel leads to failure in the realm of social helps. What is essentially a lie (the liberal social gospel) cannot bring happiness to a nation. The tree is known by its fruit. A bad tree produces bad fruit.

The liberal social gospel of the late 1800s became the Progressive movement in politics in the early 20^th century. Progressives turned the social focus of the liberal church into a social movement in civil government. This was a natural evolution for liberalism because by severing the true gospel (salvation by grace through faith in Christ, for the individual) from the faith, and replacing it with discussions about social change for the society, the concern for the redemption of man became secondary to the redemption of the culture. Unredeemed men were marching out to redeem the world with a wrong gospel. That project was destined only for failure from the start. Unredeemed men do not have the personal commitment, or spiritual power, to help their neighbors using their own resources. Instead, they covet and steal their neighbor’s goods by means of tax codes. This is their normal source for giving. Liberals are hypocrites. They want to save the world but not with their own resources. The social gospel is a false gospel and its ministers are hypocrites.

Progressives became recognized as failures and tyrants (think Prohibition) and changed their public moniker to ‘liberal’. This did not change who they were, it only changed public perceptions. However, as liberal programs became massive failures (think Great Society), the liberals have found the word liberal has now become an epitaph. It is a word that brings derision. Hence, the liberals of late have, once again, shed their outer skin and returned to calling themselves progressives. It only takes people one generation to forget. But, the new (old) word not withstanding, the progressives are still liberals, and their philosophies remain rooted in liberal church doctrine. They are skeptics who will do whatever is required to rip down the true church. If it means suffocating the liberal church organizations with new taxes, then so be it. After all, liberal philosophy has so infiltrated the schools, news outlets, judiciary system, and all else, that it will continue to permeate society even if the liberal churches shut their doors. The true church does not have all these cultural sanctuaries and thus will be hurt worse; or so their thinking goes.

Even if the liberal churches are headed for further failure, there is merit in taxing them anyway. They are more deserving of heavy taxation than any group around. We ought to hit them first with an inheritance tax. They are the heritage of earlier liberals who stole, then perverted, the moral and just foundations for society, laid down by the Pilgrim Calvinists. It was Christian Calvinists who originally settled the east coast. Liberals morphed that religion into a package of empty deceptions, claims against the veracity of Scripture, and attacks on the Savior, that have helped lead to the near collapse of the 21^st century church. Tax them for the inheritance they stole.

Impose a sales tax on the liberal churches. They are the ones who have sold Christianity’s children a pottage of worthless propositions against the God of heaven. They successfully sold skepticism about the authority of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture. They purveyed Lower Criticism which was skeptical of what the Scriptures say, and spread skepticism about the power and wisdom of God. They are salesmen trailing the smoke of Hades in their footsteps. Tax them for the evil goods they sold.

Pass a gas tax against them for having fueled a century and a half of flight from the Biblical God to gods of perversion, greed, war, and death. Let a passing gas tax suffocate them as their wicked works have stoked the engines of deception and ruin for the true church and her children. May their gaseous effusions churn their own bowels as they earn their just taxation, paid in denominations counted at the gates of hell.

Tax the liberal churches for capital gains. They have stolen all of the Christian theological capital that provided the foundations for western society. They attempted to take the many societal gains for good, built up since the reformation, and remake them into their own. Liberals abrogated the American direction toward justice. Their undermining of righteous foundations have nearly collapsed the church in our nation. Liberals squandered the capital of the age of Christendom and have replaced it with a perverse imitation. Tax them for the cultural capital they destroyed.

Tax them with a large real estate tax. Liberals have falsely called themselves churches. They are frauds. While denying the cardinal doctrines of the historic church they have hijacked the words, the language, of the church for devious purposes. Liberals use the language of Christianity but deny the power thereof. They are hollow shells. Due to their rejection of the core teachings of Scripture they are only Christians so-called. They are by historic definitions, not Christian. They are in fact, promoting a different religion. Liberalism is not a form of Christianity, it is a different religion. Therefore their churches are not churches at all. They are posers who claim the untaxed real estate status of true churches. Tax liberal churches for their real estate. Raise their rates continually.

Liberal churches ought to, by right, be taxed with every tax conceivable- excise taxes, death taxes, business taxes, and license fees for their unjust existence. They have taxed the American nation with their ruinous doctrines and empty words for decades. Use their own suggested weapon against them. Tax the liberal churches.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach

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