The Church of Atheism

Exerpts of what kurafire wrote:

Suppose we (“we” being my fellow militant atheists and I) were to create a “Church of Atheism” where everyone who joins it becomes part of the organization. Providing it gets big enough, it would give the Church organization—and hey, everyone who is a member—a complete tax break. You’d be employed by this church as well and suddenly have a loophole through which you can create a way for you to no longer pay taxes.

you can bet your ass-wallet on it that a lot of people care more about money than their faith. I mean, all those TV evangelists? They themselves care more about money than their faith, for fuck’s sake.

Now obviously such a movement would cause an outrage among the religious right and the Government will be forced (by religious groups with influence) to pass a law closing the loophole, but wouldn’t it be interesting if it managed to bring to table the discussion of ceasing tax exemption for religious organizations? Either that, or stop providing them with any of the public services, as I joked about earlier.

It would be true equality, and from then on the only thing that would separate us from one another is our willingness and ability to be good, respectful, tolerant human beings. Or, for those that can’t muster up such simple things, to not be able to suppress the rights of others—including their right to be good, respectful and tolerant people.

Several responses:

1) It is not true that “people who work for churches don’t pay taxes”.

Clergy are actually classified as “self employed” and therefore pay twice the social security tax that a regular employee would make. On the other hand, clergy are NOT considered self-employed for the purposes of income tax (which would HELP them).

So clergy get screwed by taxes just like everyone else. In fact, slightly worse.

Non-ordained folks who work for the church (and members :-) are taxed as usual.

2) I agree with you about TV evangelists being general fuckwads, but let’s not cast everyone with religious beliefs in with the worst extreme examples, shall we?

Our church, for example, started a program to provide food (that was either easy to cook or didn’t require cooking) for grammar school kids whose live in homes where they may not be any food for them to eat over the weekend (i.e. children of drug addicted parents who sell the welfare checks for drug money). It’s not a long term solution to the drug problem, etc etc etc but food got to kids who need it. This was all donation-driven and started because of our members who teach in the schools started to hear about kids who get free/reduced school meals during the week went all weekend without anything to eat.

We’ve provided backpacks and school supplies for many years, which became popular enough that a lot of other churches in the area started doing it as well. The schools contacted us and asked us if we’d take on a different project: sneakers. We now have a closet full of sneakers and fund that we use to buy new ones when needed which are given to kids who need them. (These aren’t fancy name brand sneakers for fashion conscious kids, these are sneakers that fit for kids who would otherwise be wearing ones that were too small or worn out.)

There’s no cafeteria at our high school, which is 2 blocks from our church. About 10-12 years ago a guy in our church started preparing and serving lunch to our youth group kids. Pretty soon they started bringing their friends. We now feed 80-100 high school kids every week. Those who can pay $2 for as much as they can eat. Those who can’t pay get the same open door. Every week, all school year long. Two other churches in the area heard about the program we started, and they started similar lunch programs.

We have an Emergency Needs Fund which helps people in dire situations keep their electricity from being shut off, or helps them pay for prescriptions that they need. About a year ago someone made a list of all the various “social welfare” programs that the church supports and came up with a list of about 30.

How big is the church that’s doing this? We see between 80-100 in worship on most Sundays, at least half of whom are retired on fixed incomes, located in rural Appalachia.

I’d be willing to bet that you would find more churches doing this type of work than those filled with hateful people. The problem is that, like most groups, it’s the extremists who make the news.

Painting all religious people with the same brush is a lazy argument and a stereotype. I’m guessing you’re against stereotypes, so let’s not make an exception that stereotypes are bad “except for those awful religious people”.

3) I would be in total favor of the Mormon church’s tax exempt status being challenged after the lobbying work they did against Prop 8 in California. (For that matter I would be in favor of removing tax exempt status from churches which refuse to ordain women and/or gay/lesbian people.) Once your “church” has started pouring that much money to influence elections, you’re essentially a lobbying firm, not a church.

4) I think the USA ought to do what Europe has done for ages, which is to separate the religious and civil aspects of marriage.

Tax breaks, Durable Power of Attorney, Inheritance, Hospital Visitation, all of those “civil” liberties would come with the certificate you get from the Justice of the Peace at the courthouse (or whatever), and should be available to anyone over the age of consent to anyone else over the age of consent.

Want a religious service? Go to a church, but the religious service doesn’t give you the civil aspects of marriage. That you get from the courthouse.

That way churches can decide who they will and won’t marry (as seems appropriate to their beliefs) but there is absolutely no reason why the Mormons not wanting gay people to get married should prevent a gay couple from being able to get health insurance.

(I don’t think anyone can make a coherent anti-gay marriage argument without a religious component, which means that it ought to be allowed in a country which is supposed to separate matters of church and state.)

As I mentioned on Twitter, I know a lot of people (my Dad was one of them) who said that he would have considered getting married “in the church” but not “in the state” because he wanted his assets to go to his kids. There are a lot of people in that situation.

I completely understand the anger that people feel when they see the extreme religious right zealots out there. Just remember that they’re extremists, not elected representatives. (I suppose the Pope is sort of elected, but there are a lot of Catholics who think the Pope/church’s stance on condoms, etc is narrowminded and stupid, and the Pope certainly doesn’t represent the bulk of Christians, nevermind Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.)

Those arrogant talking heads get on TV because they make for a better story than our little church way out in the country which is going around trying to make the world a better place for those in need.

For what it’s worth.