Today’s question:An initiative to remove the property...

Today’s question:

An initiative to remove the property tax exemption for churches has qualified for the November ballot in Colorado. Backers say if churches and other nonprofit groups pay property taxes, homeowners will pay less and have more money on hand to support community organizations of their choice. Furthermore, they argue, it is only fair that all who use police and fire protection and other public services should share the costs of paying for them. Is a rethinking of the tax-exempt status of churches in order across the nation? If not, why should churches qualify for this special status?

Father John P. Daly

Director, Center for Asian Business, Loyola Marymount University

Traditionally, churches in the United States have enjoyed a tax-exempt status in recognition of the important role religion plays in all of our lives. For most church communities there is a never-ending struggle to collect sufficient funds just to pay a small salary to a pastor or to a minister and to maintain minimum facilities for a suitable gathering place to worship God. There are exceptions, of course, but if church communities were also burdened with property taxes, I suspect that many small churches would close. The question is not, should churches be tax exempt, but what importance and what respect do we wish to accord the practice of religion in our country.

Miriyam Glazer

Chair of Literature Department at the University of Judaism

How and what a nation taxes is as much a moral and spiritual as an economic decision. Mortgage interest deductions, for example, encourage related industries--as well as home ownership, a sense of permanence, community-building. In the state, exempting places of worship from property taxes underscores the separation of church and state vital to a free society, while recognizing how religious values enrich our lives. But we need careful regulation, caps, auditing: Modest houses of worship, churches serving community needs, are one phenomenon; Mammon-inspired architectural grandiosities, bloated salaries for religious leaders, and religious organizations as a facade for politicking are quite another.

Karen Baker-Fletcher,

Associate professor of theology and culture, Claremont School of Theology

Property tax exemptions for churches should not be removed. The citizens who make up congregations are already paying for public services as citizens through a diversity of taxes, including property taxes. With removal of the exemption they would be taxed once again because of their religion. This would violate separation of church and state, a constitutional right. If the government can tax churches, it can tell people what to believe and do, violating the freedom of religion. Such taxation could be constitutional only if we were a state-church-governed country, which we have never been. The Puritan founding ancestors fled such a system to freely practice religion without impositions from the state.