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Religious orgs are a time-tested model for providing sustainable and widespread social cohesion, which is a huge positive externality and also protects the most vulnerable against marginalization and oppression. The tax exemption seems obviously warranted on that basis alone, even abstracting away from any of the more visible charity work or social support that these orgs usually provide.



As a gay man, I can tell you that churches did not help protect me from oppression growing up. Quite the opposite. Your assertion about positive externalities seems highly suspect to me, and dependent on the institution.

Charities also often have positive externalities, but they have far more regulation than churches. Again, why the special treatment?

The social cohesion aspect of churches is gone at this point as well. That may have been true 50 years ago, but not today.


I'd definitely not agree with the "protects the most vulnerable against marginalization and oppression"

Perhaps if you are a member of the church, but definitely not if you don't abide by the exact, often conservative , rules of a given church.

Look at slavery, equal rights for lgbtq and people of color, abortion etc. Not only do people in power use the churches to hide their personal beliefs behind, many churches use their power to oppress others.

I mean the crusades were a thing...

I'll agree churches provide social cohesion but often at the cost of tribalism against people outside that given churches norms.


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And I never said this applied to all churches but it does then go back to the central question of this thread: why do churches automatically receive tax exemptions? When it's not provable they're necessarily acting charitably?

The crusades are no longer a thing, but lobbying has arguable replaced it with churches able to do much the same with the vast amounts of money that some of them have earned.

Similarly missions and other forms of preying on vulnerable people is still a thing.

Conversion therapy and forced compliance to church norms are still a thing.

Just because it's not a literal war, doesn't mean it's not achieving the same things.

Besides the point of mentioning the crusades was to point out that oppression powered by the churches is nothing new. It's been a staple of competing views since time eternal, whether in churches or not, but because churches get a free pass, they can greatly amplify oppression as much as they could mitigate it. It's just that you historically and today see much more in the form of oppression than fighting oppression.

And that goes back to churches being able to amass unchecked power and financials by which they can fight anything they perceive as a threat to their model. Just like any other political entity.


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I never mentioned ethnicity or "race" in my post. That was your own take. Slavery existed around the world.

Per the former, you'd have to be ignoring the argument that many slave owners made during the slave era up to today with many pro Confederates, who claim slavery was a God given right. This was not fought by many southern churches to my knowledge.

The point of mentioning the crusades was to point out that church powered oppression is a thing that's gone on through history.

I don't really understand your argument here. The point I was making, and others, was that the churches have no historical or current consistent fight against oppression, and have often been the oppressors themselves.

Nothing you said refutes that. It just says you don't care. Which are two different things


> Yes, a defence after centuries of aggressions from a people and religion that stole huge territories.

That might prove grandparent's point, actually. But it's a fact that tribalism was a big force in the ancient world, and that likely provides the best explanation. The religious group that the crusaders fought against "stole huge territories", but so did the Romans before them. Who knows how relevant the religious motivation really was to them.


But then that disadvantages groups which might perform the same role outside of a religious context. Thus in practice it only serves to have Government favour a specific genre of cohesion.

(Not to mention that your so-called “cohesion” also includes Scientology, Westboro Baptists and prosperity theology.)


Government does not perform "the same role" of building up social capital at a truly grassroots level, unfortunately. Not even close. And the jury is still out wrt. non-religious social organizations, though some do appear to help quite a bit along those same lines, viz. labor unions and perhaps similar "interest-focused" mass groups.


"The jury is still out"? On what, the Rotary club?

Your underlying assumption that churches are unique as providers of social capital in modern society is... peculiar. The fact that churches are tax-exempt is a consequence of the dominant position of the Catholic church in the middle ages, and the compromises made in the subsequent struggle to remove the church bureaucracy from the government.

I expect that as religiousness across the US population declines, churches will gradually be required to behave more like other non-profits. But that will probably take many decades.


“ and also protects the most vulnerable against marginalization and oppression“

I hear this a great deal, but would love some actual numbers to back it up. My own experience supports that this is true in a limited way for members of the church going through a discrete crisis, but pales in comparison to the good done by, for instance, WIC and SNAP.


> Religious orgs are a time-tested model for providing sustainable and widespread social cohesion, which is a huge positive externality and also protects the most vulnerable against marginalization and oppression.

See women’s rights, gay and other sexual orientation rights, minority rights, catholic pedophilia, Mormon multiple wife and underage nonsense, Scientology, etc.

It provides a certain tribe a tax exemption, that may or may not do good deeds with it. No reason to provide any tax exemption (not that anyone should have one in the first place).


> Religious orgs are a time-tested model for providing sustainable and widespread social cohesion

I think we have read different history books.


Any sources on that? The genocide of pagans in the dark ages and the persecution of Jews by Muslims among other events point me to believe the opposite.




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