Grr.

[chipotle]

The good folks in Texas have decided that
Unitarian Universalism is not a religion because it "does not have one system of belief." The state comptroller's office denied them tax-exempt status, and says for any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have "a belief in God, gods, or a higher power."

Now, I'll grant that UU is an unconventional religion -- being less about the destination than about the path (which is, I submit, what attracts people to it) -- but it has a long deist history, not to mention a close association with several of America's founders. And what about Buddhism, which isn't a theistic religion at all? Do we deny it religious status as well?

While it's easy to wonder why this is coming up now in particular, the more concretely disturbing issue is summed up in a brief excerpt from the Star-Telegram article that reported on this: "What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world's great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller's office."

So when did the idea of separation of church and state fall so far out of favor? The country was undeniably founded on Christian principles, but it was explicitly not founded as a Christian state. Anybody else remember that? That was the specific intent of many of those founders -- people like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, Unitarians or Universalists all. (From the very beginning, they were the denominations of "freethinkers" -- deist and, in most ways, Christian, but always willing to question authority, even seemingly divine authority. The actual doctrines that both unitarianism and universalism name are, by canonical Christian doctrine, heretical.)

Quite frankly, I'm not sure how many of them would have approved of the idea of a tax-exempt status for any religion. (Ethan Allen, who UUs claim but who had little use for anything resembling organized religion, surely wouldn't have.) Yet I can't help suspect they'd be uncomfortable with how Texas is drawing the line.

Comments

[elusivetiger.livejournal.com]

Witness the Catholic charity in California being made to offer birth control coverage to their employees, though it is utterly contrary to their belief. The church was essentially made to PAY FOR something it believes it is a sin, simply because it provides help to those who are not Catholic. Unbelievable.

That was the final blow for me and the ACLU - they described it as a "great victory for California women and reproductive freedom."

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Exactly the example I'd forgotten about, yes.

I never know what to think about the ACLU. Every time I start respecting it, it does something stupid. Every time I'm ready to utterly discount it, it does something I respect. It's by no means equal parts piss-off/please.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

The California law specifically exempts religious employers "whose main purpose is to inculcate religious values and who primarily employ and serve people who share their religious beliefs." Catholic Charities conceded that they don't provide a religious service, their work is directed to the public at large, and that three-quarters of their employees were not Catholic. CC is not associated with the church, and it looks like about 75-80% of their funding comes from government grants and private secular sources. (Their web site lumps donors in with a 14% that also includes monies from the United Way and the 'Combined Federal Campaign' drive, with the rest coming from program fees and investments.) Essentially, the argument was that if you run a charity organization, it may be a non-profit, but the determination of whether it is a religious non-profit is based on who you serve and who you employ, not what you believe -- even if your motivation and guiding principles are founded in your religious beliefs. One may argue with this interpretation, but it doesn't strike me as so intrinsically outrageous.

At any rate, this is somewhat far afield from whether churches should be able to get tax-exempt status. Churches themselves have been tax-exempt on the grounds that they're churches since 1919, if I'm remembering the year right, and traditionally the church doesn't even have to file for that status -- it's automatically granted. This usually runs into challenges when the church group itself is becoming politically active in an official capacity, that is, endorsing or opposing specific candidates or legislation. (Taking positions on political issues that are obviously also religious, like gay marriage or abortion, is a different matter.) When it chooses to break the church-state boundary on its own, it may lose some of the privileges that separation has been deemed to provide. Obviously, the case can be made that a church is, in some sense, freer if it goes ahead and forgoes the tax-exempt status.

[elusivetiger.livejournal.com]

So if the Catholic charity had only been more Catholic (for which they would have been bashed on many other grounds) and less generally helpful to the community, they would not have had to spend money to provide birth control.

Great state.