Ok but personally I would have started with the people in the Panama papers.
You can’t tax people with money!
Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
141–150 of 335 posts
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK, the difference would pretty much be that they actually have (pretty loose) limits on what they can spend money on, and on endorsing electoral candidates - and they'd have to publish information about their finances. If you argued that religion was not an intrinsic social benefit then you might start saying that some of what they do is not non-profit work. That could get interesting.
> AFAIK, the difference would pretty much be that they actually have (pretty loose) limits on what they can spend money on, and on endorsing electoral candidates - and they'd have to publish information about their finances. I'm not from the US, so I 100% expect those things from churches already. These sound like completely reasonable demands I would have on any public institution.
Theoretically churches are already legally forbidden to endorse candidates but in practice this is effectively bypassed with the fiction that priests/pastors/etc can say they are sharing their personal opinion, not an official church position.
https://ffrf.org/outreach/item/14005-churches-and-political-...
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> some Soviet community centers before Could you elaborate?
I was born in the exUSSR and there, if you want to find the most apocalyptic, neglected, boring and useless building which lives by renting out itself to some strange businesses (if at all), you can ask for the local community center.
Have you considered that you might just be jaded? Why should a 1980 USSR concrete building be your idea of the best that a "community center" can be, in the USA in 2020?
Doesn't your complaint have more to do with the USSR than it has to do with community centers?
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#144To briefly make a few points:
- Fundamentalism and literalism is a fairly modern phenomenon which is mostly a Protestant reaction to the Enlightenment and the lionization of scientific, empirical knowledge over other forms of knowledge. Early Christian leaders didn't believe in literalism. In the Middle Ages, there was a fourfold method of interpreting scripture. And so on.
Church father Origen (184-253 CE), due to his familiarity with reading and interpreting Hellenistic literature, taught that some parts of the Bible ought to be interpreted non-literally. Concerning the Genesis account of creation, he wrote: "who is so silly as to believe that God ... planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and set in it a visible and palpable tree of life ... [and] anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism
- There have been near-infinite forms of Christianity (and every other religion) since their founding. To say that "Christianity is XYZ" is simply wrong. It has embodied entirely different values at different times and the Christianity of 2020 would be nearly incomprehensible to the Christian of 1600 or 1000 or 500. This is true even today.
- Many of what are considered "humanistic" or "secular" values are more-or-less directly traceable to the influence of Christianity. Universal value of human beings, that is, that everyone has fundamental dignity, rights, the ability to vote (democracy), and similar human rights concepts that have Western origins are almost direct extensions of Christian thought. In many ways, modern secular Western democratic society is post-Christian one, in the sense that it's a direct extension, not a radical departure.
- The concept of secularity has been redefined and come under attack in the past few decades. See writers like Charles Taylor, who have argued that secularity hasn't resulted in less religious beliefs, but merely their multiplication and changing of form. This falls in line with other social trends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age
TLDR: It's complicated.
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I was raised by a famous “pastor” who traveled around and “preached” to both receptive and dismissive congregations across the US. I experienced more churches than most people. I’m telling you this whole Christianity thing is a scam. sudo apt-get remove religion It’s a mental cancer.
And you'll replace Christianity with what? Another religion? Atheism? Other religions have the same problems and Atheism is its own religion - requires faith to believe. Humans are religious beings... you won't get rid of it by only focusing on the negative aspects of your own experiences.
> Atheism is its own religion - requires faith to believe.
Atheism is two (or more) different things. It is both the active belief in the non-existence of any God, and also the passive lack of any belief in any God.
It’s not like I have to have active faith in the non-existence of Quetzalcoatl to have no interest in worshiping that deity.
And I’m saying this as someone who went from Catholicism via Wicca to something in the general area of Apatheism or Ignosticism.
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> where people connect with the spiritual world In the USA, this is quickly becoming an obsolete understanding of religion. Regular church attendance is down from 70% to just over 50% in the last 20 years, according to Gallup. People are leaving the churches. The real question is what will replace them. If people need community, build community centers. There are other solutions that do not rely on continuing to prov…
You should see some Soviet community centers before thinking they can replace anything. USA is highly uneven. In some states like Florida you can see churches on every other corner, and they are very active and developing, serving not only as community centers, but also as halls, child day care, hospitals, schools, galleries etc. No freaking "community center" can replace that.
Indeed, I have seen community centers in the US that do all that (perhaps with the exception of Hospitals).
I don't recommend going to your church when you need to go to a hospital. Go to a hospital. Doctors spend 12 years in school for a reason. The best outcome is that someone may do some first aid and call you an ambulance. The worst is you may die because you wasted time.
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#147Everyone commenting about how great churches are? You’re absolutely delusional. The gross majority of these organizations are bigoted and racist. I grew up in the southern United States and experienced all manner of churches. I don’t care how great your church is. Give me 20 minutes with your congregation and I’ll find the racists and bigots. These assholes promote terrible mental and physical health. They don’t beli…
> Christianity in the USA
The article is about Montreal which, last I checked, isn't in the USA.
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is such an important point. It's going to go against the grain at hackernews, but taxing churches in the US is a terrible idea. If you wanted to further the divide between the "liberal city"/"conservative rural" American cultures, this would be a great way to do it. If you grew up in a rural area of the flyover states you would know that churches form the backbone of these rural communities. For example, the chu…
Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?
I have been on a budget committee for a Methodist church. There is no profit, no money left over the next year, the largest expense is the pastor who is an employee (50k per yr in this case).
Mega-churches might have money left over but by law they are supposed to spend their money as their nonprofit charter says or they could get audited by the State and fined or have their charter terminated.
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax? Land and buildings for one could be taxed. Churches bought or were given land ages ago, before there was a Manhattan or Boston, as we today know it. Go ahead and pay property tax on land worth $250 Million when you barely make income to keep the lights on.
A solution to this is to give back the land to the local city and have it handled as cultural heritage, with an authorization to practice religious activities at specific times, but it’s governed by local administration overall. That’s how some cathedrals are managed in europe for instance.
Cool, and all the people have to do this with any property held corporately? Or only groups of people who identify as Christians?
The upkeep of a Cathedral is hella expensive, St.Paul's in London claims its building's upkeep cost is > £5.2M ('more than £10 per minute').
A building ownership tax seems sensible, but I'd be amazed if any Capitalist government considered it.
Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?
I don't know about the US tax system, but at least in my experience here in Australia, not every expense incurred by a business or partially-taxed non-profit is necessarily deductible. For example, I formed a company with some friends for the purpose of work on a single contract, and the expenses we incurred in incorporating the company were only deductible at a rate of 20% per year over 5 years, so we ended up havin…
That’s depreciation on capitalised assets. Churches would like have very few assets that depreciate apart from buildings.