Having our cake and eating it too

It often seems that the church wants to have its cake favorable tax treatment and eat it too demand no interference from the gubmint. That is the concern in a post at the Wall Street Journal today by Michael McConnell, Washington Wants a Say Over Your Minister. The topic at hand has to do with an employment dispute between an employee of a Lutheran school and the school itself. She sued and they revoked her "calling" making her no longer eligible for her prior position.

The federal statutes outlawing employment discrimination based on race, sex, age and disability contain no express exception for church employers. But for 40 years lower courts have applied a "ministerial exception," which bars the government from any role in deciding who should be a minister. Courts have reasoned that the separation between church and state protects the ability of churches to choose their own clergy just as it protects the state from any control by churches. The Supreme Court has never spoken to the issue.

But who counts as a minister? Cheryl Perich's duties included leading students in prayer and worship, but she also taught secular subjects, using ordinary secular textbooks. The sole disagreement in the lower courts was whether her job was sufficiently religious to be considered ministerial. The Supreme Court will consider, for the first time, how to make that determination.

But the Obama Justice Department has now asked the court to disavow the ministerial exception altogether. This would mean that, in every future case, a court—and not the church—would decide whether the church's reasons for firing or not hiring a minister were good enough.

Right out of the gate we have an issue here of violating Scripture. If Ms. Perich is a Christian, what business does she have in going to court against other Christians?

When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers! (1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

So we have a violation of Scripture right off the bat. I am not judging the merit of the firing or the lawsuit, I am saying simply that Christians should take disputes before the church, not before the ungodly courts of the world. The other issue is that the church has a serious double standard when it comes to how it relates to the state in America. For example Mr. McConnell says:

But the government, including the judiciary, is not entitled under the First Amendment to decide what qualifications a minister should have, or to weigh religious considerations against others. Is a secular court to decide, for example, whether confining Catholic priests or Orthodox rabbis to males is a correct interpretation of scripture, or merely a vestige of outmoded and stereotypical bias?

That should be true but there is a problem. The church wants it both ways. We want to say to the government that it cannot dictate who is or is not a "minister" but the church also demands favorable tax treatment on donations and on compensation for those same ministers. We like the government when it suits us but get bent out of shape when it interferes in the very same employment relationship where we demand that they give our church employees special treatment.

Here is the solution. First, stop treating some Christians as employees of other Christians. When that happens we won't need to worry about favorable tax treatment from the government and there will be no reason for the government to interfere. As long as we stick one hand out for goodies from the government and then slap the hand of the government when it tries to interfere we are going to have problems.

Why are people cynical about the church in America

Maybe in part because our tax code allows “pastors” to claim special tax privelages on their second homes…

Tax Break for Clergy Questioned

Congress scrutinizes every nook and cranny of the budget for possible revenue, a surprising court decision is allowing clergy members to buy or live in multiple homes tax-free.

The U.S. Tax Court ruled that Phil Driscoll, an ordained minister and Grammy Award-winning trumpeter who went to prison for tax evasion, didn't owe federal income taxes on $408,638 provided to him by his ministry to buy a second home on a lake near Cleveland, Tenn.

Under a provision of the tax code known as the parsonage allowance, first passed in 1921, an ordained clergy member may live tax-free in a home owned by his or her religious organization or receive a tax-free annual payment to buy or rent a home if the congregation approves.

The Tax Court ruling, made final in March, extends the parsonage allowance to an unlimited number of homes, which may be owned either by the religious organization or the clergy member.

The article goes on and gets more seedy…

There is no restriction on the value of the home that can be claimed under the exemption. The chief limit is that the annual payment to buy or rent the home may not exceed its rental value, Ms. Aprill says.

In January, the Senate committee released the results of an investigation into several high-profile ministries that raise money through radio, television and the Internet. It cited evidence of large parsonage allowances at several groups, although the groups declined to answer questions submitted by the committee, citing constitutional protections.

According to the report, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, who lead Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas, live in an 18,280 square-foot lakefront parsonage on 25 acres. The report said county officials valued the church-owned property at $6.2 million in 2008.

David Middlebrook, a lawyer for Mr. Copeland, says the house is "a wholly owned and appreciating asset of Kenneth Copeland Ministries.…The ownership and operation of the parsonage is completely in accordance with IRS rules and regulations."

Mr. Driscoll, who won the Tax Court ruling, leads Mighty Horn Ministries of Greensboro, Ga., which had income of more than $6 million from 2005 to 2009, according to tax filings.

I am not sure how you call an 18,000 square foot home worth millions of dollars a “parsonage”.

I have long been of the opinion that, while I am in favor of people paying as little as possible in taxes, the clergy tax break is a bad idea. It puts the state in the position of being at least partially in the role of influencing decisions in the church. Clerical pay, which I am against in the first place, is a complex beast. The less the state has to do with the church, the better. Get rid of special tax treatment for parsonages and clergy pay. Get rid of the tax deductibility of contributions to churches. Let Christians give sacrificially without getting a benefit from the state.

What do you think? Should the church in America accept special tax treatments, even if that means that contributions are potentially made with ulterior motives? Or should the church reject any favorable tax treatment from the state?

Indiana moving forward on school vouchers

The Indiana House is moving closer to a system of private school vouchers for lower income families in Indiana:

A House committee is expected to vote this morning on a controversial plan to let lower-income parents use tax dollars to pay for private school tuition for their children.

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The proposal, which is among the education reforms backed by Gov. Mitch Daniels, would allow families whose incomes are low enough that their children qualify for free or reduced-price lunches to get a voucher equivalent to 90 percent of the money that would have gone to their local school district. That's capped at $4,500 for elementary school students, although there is no cap for Grades 9-12.

Families whose incomes are a bit higher -- up to 200 percent of the level at which free and reduced-price lunches are available -- would get half of the money that otherwise would have gone to their local school district.

The Indiana Department of Education said that means a family of four could earn up to about $42,000 a year and receive the voucher worth 90 percent of their public school tuition, and it could make more than $42,000 to about $84,000 a year to qualify for the 50 percent voucher.

I am all for this. It should be self-evident that we are past the point of simply funding public schools just because we are supposed to. In an era of belt tightening, even public schools must be accountable to the tax payers and must be exposed to competition. It doesn’t go as far as I might like, I would be all in favor of parents being given a full voucher for tuition at either a public or private school of their choice and let them decide where every nickel goes but I recognize that there is a overall social benefit for providing universal schooling. So I am a big supporter of this idea because it puts more choice in the hands of parents, it takes more power away from teachers unions and it helps enhance a culture of competition among schools, public and private, to ensure that the best schools get the most students.

As I watch the debate about vouchers, I have a question. What about homeschooling?

Except in the most extreme wings of the education establishment, homeschooling is recognized as a legitimate method of educating children. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states and colleges are generally recognizing the value of home education and enrolling homeschooled students on a regular basis. Once a fringe movement, homeschooling has become more or less mainstream. When I tell people we homeschool our kids, they are generally pretty accepting of it. But when it comes to the voucher system, homeschoolers are left out in the cold. That really causes a problem with the notion of real school choice when one of the three main methods of educating children is left out of the funding debate.

Just as parents who choose to send their kids to private schools should be able to divert at least a portion of their tax revenue to offset the cost of private school tuition, parents who homeschool their children should also be able to get a “refund” of some of their taxes that go to support public schools. I understand that a sizeable portion of the property taxes we pay on our home go to fund public schools that my children get no direct benefit from. I may not be happy about that but that is part of the cost of choosing to educate our kids at home. If the goal is to make educational choice more affordable for Indiana families, it certainly seems reasonable that we should get a tax credit to offset the cost of educating our kids at home. Homeschooling requires more than glue and macaroni. There are books, videos, curriculum, computer programs, basic school materials that cost money, lots of money. If I have to pay for computers for public schools, why shouldn’t I get to retain a portion of my tax dollars to pay for computers that my own children will use? The most important thing to remember is that every penny that goes to a public school originates in the pocket of an Indiana family. This is first and foremost our money and we, and not the public school establishment, should have final say over how those funds are spent.

If Indiana is serious about excellence in education, we must pursue every possible educational method and seek healthy competition among the competing options. A monopolistic public school system has been failing children for a long time and it is high time that the public school system be required to justify the money it receives and when it doesn’t, those funds that come from the pockets of Indiana families should be reallocated by the people who know our children the best, their parents.

Our children, our money, our choice.

The two pronged attack by liberalism

First, we had a panic induced piece of legislation pushed through that dramatically increased the size of the government. Labeled a “stimulus” bill, the reality is that what the bill contained was mostly pork, social welfare spending and income redistribution policies. Very little in the bill will create jobs and even less of it will lead to long term economic growth. That is the first wave.

Now we are seeing the other hand, a panic about the size of the deficit that is being created in large part by the giant spending bill that Obama just signed! That is the insidious genius of Obama, that he gets people in a panic to fix the mess he just made worse! What is the solution of the Obama White House to reduce the deficit? Cutting spending? Of course not!

Mr. Geithner said that the proposed budget will reduce deficits in part by "restoring fairness to the tax code." That will be accomplished by taxing the gains of Wall Street fund managers at ordinary income rates, instead of lower capital gains rates.

In Washington speak, “restoring fairness to the tax code” means big tax increases, but as pointed out before even taxing every taxable penny of “the rich” who already pay the lion’s share of taxes will not do the trick. It goes without saying that between the giant deficit spending bills Obama has pushed through in the first two months of his administration and the looming unfunded mandates of Medicare and Social Security, the only way to pull it off is going to be deeper and wide tax increases, some directly on your income and others indirectly or more subtly in gas taxes and the carbon emission “cap and trade” scheme that will pass enormous costs on to business and eventually consumers. Nothing like crippling a seriously damaged economy by punishing success, investment, innovation and risk taking,

Rest assured that we will keep hearing the refrain of this mess being Bush’s fault, but it is instructive to note that since Obama has taken office and especially since he announced this ludicrous $4,000,000,000,000 budget, the stock markets have plummeted to lows we haven’t seen since 1997. At some point, even an apathetic public is going to have to see beyond the media spin and realize that Obama is bent on driving this country into economic ruin and a mirror image of the failed Western European social welfare state.

Grab Your Wallets!

President Obama is convening a summit to discuss reducing the Federal deficit today, which seems odd since he just crammed through an almost $800,000,000,000 pork spending bill and wants to socialize medicine, along with calls from some influential liberal senators to nationalize the banks. The measures to combat the deficit mentioned on NPR over the weekend were woefully short of what is needed, a few expiring tax cuts on capital gains, recharacterizing some hedge fund gains as income (forgetting that most accounts have lost so much that they have no capital gains!). The only ways to decrease the deficit are to increase tax revenues or decrease spending. No chance that the most liberal regime in recent decades is going to decrease spending, in fact they likely would love to increase spending. So that leaves one place, increased tax revenues and you know that means tax increases. If you think that means just taxes on “the rich”, watch out! You will be amazed how quickly you become “rich” in the Obama administration…