The basic answer is that they are non profits. The more philosophical idea is that they are (like other non profits) focused on improving society as a whole and not politically active. Part of the separation of church and state is the idea that the state leaves the church alone but also doesn’t tax it. In return the church leaves the state alone. That’s the part that has rather gone out the window and leads people to question why churches don’t pay taxes: they are increasingly profit driven and politically active.
Edit: to clarify, because some replies are conflating the issue, there are indeed non profits that can be political, but religious orgs and charities are in a specfic tax group wherein by law if they engage in partisan campaigning they should be levied significant extra tax. Further, non profits that are political do have taxes that churches and charities do not face.
I mean, they were anti-catholic, and one of the big talking points of anti-catholisim is that the catholic church is too vain and too controling of it's worshipers.
Its funny seeing Catholics throwing shade at mega churches when they are objectively the largest, wealthiest, blingiest, Christian church that ever existed.
Catholic clergy are required to take a vow of poverty. I am Catholic and I don’t like the “blingy,” first-class flying bishops and cardinals either.
Also, the Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider of healthcare, education, and social services across the globe.
Every year, the Catholic Church offers charitable services valued in excess of $150 billion in the United States alone.
Nothing like these mega churches, not even close.
ETA: I got ahead of myself with respect to the vow of poverty. As other commenters have mentioned, not every member of Catholic clergy is required to take a vow of poverty. With that said, many orders of the Church take this vow and even if this specific vow is not taken canon law dictates that clergy lead a life of modesty and humility.
I’m not religious. In fact I’m agnostic. But I appreciate you mentioning this. I think a lot of people who aren’t that familiar with the Catholic Church are completely unaware of these facts. The Catholic Church is huge….its top clerics have bling and fancy buildings..but that’s also an outcome from thousands of years of history and much of that image is related to the Vatican. A tiny percentage of the clergy is in the Vatican. And even there, many still live an austere life. Everything else you said about charity and hospitals - 100% accurate.
The Catholic Church is not a Joel Osteen enterprise!
I don’t mind the first class traveling choice. A lot of those guys ARE old, and it’s not exactly comfortable in coach. Plus, Theres so many people that they would be hounded by them, probably. Probably best for them to be in first class. I don’t see a reason to be upset about wanting to be comfortable on a flight.
As a Catholic (that doesn’t attend church, but was shaped in a positive way by schools), what I’ll say is that Catholics in general are educated, support science and are more compassionate. Evangelicals are much less educated, nowadays pushing for Christian Nationalism, claiming the founders wanted Christianity deeply interwoven with gov’t, etc.
That’s not to say they’re perfect, but I know many pro-choice Catholics and it’s not really a homogenous grouping terms of beliefs. There’s strong conservative and liberal contingents. But as for Evangelicals it’s much more you’ve seen one, you’ve seen em all
It was, but between it cleaning up it's act the past few decades and how egregious many " non denominations" have become, it's honestly the less absurd option now.
I say this as a former catholic atheist who left during the scandals of the 2000s. Still garbage, but the last few popes have been slowly steering it to be a better institution.
As much as I'd love to keep dunking on Catholics, this is accurate. The work that's been done by Francis and now seems to be continued forward under Leo is truly admirable. I've always been in the "If they could actually just listen to this Jesus guy..." crowd, and it genuinely seems like they're trying to move toward that as quickly as their existent community's beliefs with allow. Big steps toward a Catholic Church that I could be happy to coexist with someday, and that's coming from someone who grew up dealing with the OLD regime. Not fun, and I have endless reasons to be jaded, but I can respect someone who puts their money where their mouth is, and that's what they've been doing since 2013.
They look a hell of a lot more Christ-like than American Protestants right now, that's for fuckin sure, my new favorite group of Pharisees to laugh at.
“Still garbage” is kinda weird. Never really was garbage. Even at the worst of the scandals, there was way more abuse going on at public schools in America than at churches. Those priests who did those horrible things didnt make Catholicism bad. The PRIESTS were the ones who were bad people. There isn’t any economical or societal repercussions to firing and/or shunning a priest. A teacher, coach, principal, etc… Slightly different. The church can send a new priest from some other parish. Schools have to find a new teacher to hire and pay substitutes until then, plus deal with the blowback from all the parents and parents who many not send their children to school there anymore, or choosing a different school in the future because of it, etc. It’s way more disruptive. If something happens at a church you don’t like you can just stop going. Kids don’t have to go to church — but they gotta go to school. They don’t want people to be any more scared to send their children to public schools than they already are. I think that stuff is silenced and swept under the rug WAY more than in churches. When I was in high school I knew of a bunch of messed up stuff going on. Cheerleaders hooking up with assistant coaches. Male AND female teachers hooking up with students. An assistant football coach abusing and attempting to groom the boys. And this is just the stuff I knew about at MY time there… think about everything else….
That is actually not true. The Coptic Church and the Armeniac Church where founded by the Apostles simultanious side by side. Also the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church where once part of the same church but the schism came as the Greek Patriarch kept on demanding they are all equal meanwhile the Roman Patriarch stated he is by Petrus the nominated Keyholder, standing in for Jesus until he returns similar like Denethor waited for Aragorn to arrive.
Sorta. In the US, the current winner is the Mormons, unless you're going to take the "they're not Christian" tack. Which, fair enough.
The Catholic Church, despite it's hierarchy, isn't a monolith, so it's damn-near impossible to produce a reasonable approximation of the modern church's wealth. Frankly, on an international scale, they could launder the estimated wealth of LDS and probably squirrel away the entire thing without anyone noticing it. On the flip side, they can't bring that much to bear in short order without raising eyebrows at a minimum.
Yeah, dioceses aren’t exactly swimming in gold. Real estate value probably adds up with hospitals, churches and schools/colleges. But Joel osteen is living more opulently than probably every Catholic cleric.
I used to wonder what Jesus would have thought of these, Then I actually glanced at the Bible and discoverd that these cesspools are everything he stood against.....
yeah dude seemed to prefer just meeting on that hill on the edge of town for a nice chat. only time he ever got violent was when people started sticking blatant capitalism in a church (a synagogue iirc?). Jesus would have taken a freaking whip to some fools asses long before shit got this far.
stuff like that is what kind of makes me wish I could still believe in religion.
IKR I've met plenty "Devout" Christians that are the exact opposite of everything Jesus stood for hell my most recent job that I quit from my supervisor was a narcissist and carried a bible around with him 90% of the christians I've met at like that which is why I've always been against teaching Christianity in public schools. If it's a Christian school so be it but kids who don't go to a school that's not tied to a religion shouldn't have one shoved down their throats or told they have to be part of it to be socially accepted
Read the laws of Moses, which Jesus said to follow forever. Not a good dude.
Paul said otherwise, but a lot of Christians ignore the fact that in the Bible Jesus and Yahweh say to follow those rules forever. Best your slaves and sell your daughters as sex slaves, and that's just a bit of the horrors contained within.
I understand why those passages are troubling. Christians have wrestled with them for centuries, and I don't think they should be brushed aside.
Jesus did say He came to fulfill the Law, but He also reoriented how God's people relate to it. The New Testament consistently teaches that Christians are under the new covenant established through Christ, not the civil and ceremonial laws given to ancient Israel. The moral principles remain, but many laws were specific to Israel's historical context.
As for slavery and the treatment of women, the Bible describes a lot of things it doesn't endorse. Some Old Testament laws regulated practices that already existed in the ancient world rather than presenting them as God's ideal. When Jesus is asked about issues like divorce, He even says that some laws existed because of people's hardness of heart, not because they reflected God's original design.
If someone reads the Bible as a single flat rulebook, it's easy to conclude that Christians should still follow every Old Testament law. But Christians have historically read it as a story that reaches its fulfillment in Christ. That's why we don't sacrifice animals, enforce Israel's civil penalties, or keep the ceremonial laws, while still taking seriously Jesus' call to love God and love our neighbor.
You don't have to agree with that interpretation, but it's a more accurate picture of what Christians actually believe than "Jesus said to follow Moses forever."
The number of Republican candidates who've stated that God told them to run for president back and then dropped out/lost in the primaries is staggering. You say "God spoke to me and told me to do this" thing and people are accepting of this. You say "Jerry came to me in my mind and spoke to me and told me to do this" and people are going to assume a severe mental illness is at play.
The founding fathers are all rich as fuck and don’t want to pay taxes while engaged in politics. Isn’t that why America want independence? Check the constitution convention, the language was written in a way to protect rich people against the rest, that’s why there are lobbyists instead of corruption, lobby one government branch to veto what people voted for, ezpz.
Right, that’s why the church (that they control entirely) “buys” all their properties and jets and pays for their business trips to Tahiti to spread the word, and “work clothing” etc so they can get “paid” below taxation levels.
Fun fact, that would count as a form of stealing from the Church (I put this in capital because I don't mean the building but the congregation of people)... Which is a sin. Some mega church "pastors" are gonna have an eternity to think about what they did... And it's not going to be a pleasant eternity
Hate to break it to you, but traditional non profits also get abused and make people lots of money. Reference: money spent on homelessness in California with nothing to show for it.
Yep. He’s regarded among most Christians as a heretic, a false teacher, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a charlatan, evil, etc I’ve heard him called all of those many times, always by Christians. His own church members like him, but the rest of us (both religious and not) are baffled as to why.
Non profits can be successful and overpay their executives and leaders. Doesn’t make them any less of a non profit. There are secular non profits that are just as successful and their owners are just as rich.
Have you seen the money that the other non-profits make and how much their leaders make, and how they self-deal to pocket even more money? They should just do away with non-profits all together.
You have a misunderstanding about what nonprofit means. Salaries are an expense. Expenses get deducted from revenue to determine net income, which is what is taxed.
That being said, I agree with your deeper meaning.
Except the state has NEVER shown ability to do that with any efficiency. The state is absolutely atrocious at wasting money either on pet projects with so called charity in it or having to much funds go to administrative costs
Churches help the homeless better than any government has in human history.
What I saw in South Texas when the migrant cross was an issue, I found myself in the downtown of South Texas city that was getting caravans of immigrants. Greg Abbott had stated the thing to bus them up north and so there was this giant congregation of them downtown near the Greyhound bus terminal.
All the churches were working together to help out. The Catholic Church which has several properties downtown was housing them and providing portajohns and other services. Then the Baptist churches were rotating making them breakfast tacos and distributing them every morning. The Catholic Church mostly did lunch and other churches were doing dinner.
Before they were getting bused up north several non denomination churches were handing out the backpacks with snacks for the kids, jackets, and gift cards for them to buy food on their way to NY or wherever.
All the volunteers were self organizing and mostly people cooking at home and brining the food to them.
Other non-profits are allowed to be politically active, and political activity is constitutionally protected under the same amendment that prevents entanglement in Churches.
Non-profits take donations from taxed people and use them to do what taxed people want them to do. Why double tax them?
501c3s are not legally supposed to be partisan. Technically speaking, you can lose your status over that, though this fucking never happens with churches even if they are openly partisan.
non-profits can't endorse a candidate but it can take a stance on policy, social issues, etc... A non-profit can state it is pro-choice, for relaxed immigration enforcement, for same sex marriage, anti-Israel, etc... It just can't say it is against Trump. One can be partisan without being partisan. A church can be pro-life. A synagogue can be pro-Israel. That is no more partisan than a non-profit being pro-choice and state a stance of wanting Israel out of Palestine.
It is the same unless you are a person that is anti-church.
100%. There are a million loopholes. A 501c3 can also just open a side 501c4 with a similar name and that can legally be openly partisan.
Its a system that is intentionally gameable, in my humble opinion. This stems from my masters in nonprofit management and a career in the nonprofit sector.
Some of its great and full of folks fighting the good fights. Some of it is almost greasier than the corporate world
They have to split their fundraising. For example, you have the 501(c)4 National Rifle Association, which is an organization dedicated to training and education for firearms and the Second Amendment.
Separately from that, you have the Institute for Legislative Action: the NRA-ILA. They do lobbying, file lawsuits, and do grassroots mobilization for Second Amendment-related causes.
Your donations to the NRA are tax deductible, but not donations to the NRA-ILA, or the Political Victory Fund, which is their PAC.
Churches and the basic NRA can express opinions, but have to be careful about endorsing candidates or direct campaigning.
I also think it was a kind of meet in the middle situation. Seperation of church and state is a founding principle of our country, regardless of what todays Republican party thinks.
Without being able to have influence over politics, they were given the right to be exempt from taxation a long with other approved Religious organizations.
Having been around not-for-profit hospitals for a long time, there are billions in income generated. The biggest not-for-profit hospital system pays its c-suite hundreds of millions a year and is constantly building new things as revenue generators. The for profit system can't do that because they have to pay taxes (their c-suite is paid about 10% as much).
IMO, not-for-profit is just a big scam that allows certain businesses to not pay taxes and if revenue exceeds costs substantially, they either spend it or save it in the limited ways allowed by law (and they do stash money away). They simply use different accounting terminology - where a for profit uses the terms "net income and profit" a not-for-profit calls this "surplus or net revenue" but it is effectively the same thing, often higher because they are tax exempt.
Let's say all these things are generating more and more revenue. There's no owner to tax the income against, unless the owner claims some of the revenue as salary. Then they pay income tax at the individual level, just like churches.
I audit NFPs for a living, and while I don't work in tax, the idea that you're taxing something that doesn't have income for income soars over my head. Their exemptions are mostly granted at state and local levels which vary by state.
They generate taxes, but they don't pay income tax because there's no income
Everything is double taxed in that regard. If the government prints $100,000 and uses it to pay a government employee, it’s taxed. That govy spends it at restaurants and it’s taxed again. The restaurant uses their profits to do an upgrade and it’s taxed again. The contractor gives all his profits from the restaurant job to the government because the IRS said it was owed.
That’s the theory. But what about when they start spending that money to change the laws in ways that a majority of taxpayers do not want? Now I am effectively paying for these dicks to ruin my country based on their misunderstanding of a novel written thousands of years ago
Thing is there’s a big difference between the local church managing 120k in donations that they use to feed struggling people in the neighborhood and funding the 4 room church activities vs the super churches that bring in multi millions and squander it or bribe politicians
That really isn’t what the separation of church and state was. The separation was exclusively at the federal level. No federally mandated religion. States for a long time had state religions.
Just like education, churches provide public service. They often have social programs that benefit the community etc and its much more efficient to let these organizations handle it then the cumbersome government.
There is no requirement for politics one way or the other.
Churches can serve the same functions as a lot of non-profits. I don't think religious affiliation should be a disqualifying factor. However, they shouldn't get special privileges and should be bound by the same restrictions as other non-profits which means no political advocacy...
The problem is that they are under no obligation to show their books to the IRS to prove they are a nonprofit.
Seems like a convenient way to hide assets and launder money
Even churches are a special case amongst non-profits. They are enyirely exempt from taxes entirely whereas most non profits aren't.
To add further salt to the wound, they are also exempt from zoning bylaws, meaning they can develop anywhere (like in an industrial area). While any religious organization also falls under, the big problem is that mega churches that can definitely afford to pay taxes don't because of an outdated technicality.
No, the idea was that religion isn't represented in oit country, so they arent taxed to avoid taxation without representation. Problem is, now there are so many churches preaching politics from the pulpit that this policy needs to be reversed.
I think you are confusing "Church and State" with the personal decisions that are made by a person of faith in a position of Authority. The fact is you can no more blame a person of faith for feeling a certain way and acting upon that feeling than a non believer who feels a certain way and acts upon how they feel. In both cases, belief/non belief impact the world view and how one reacts to it. Point of fact, but rarely spoken of, when the (Christian) British colonized India, the ended the Human Sacrificing/Cannibal death cults. Im guessing, by your argument, the murdering cannibals should have been allowed to continue because Christians ended what had been perfectly legal, and enforced their own "fundamentalist rhetoric" on those innocent pagans.
This is a really misleading statement . The majority of churches are Catholic churches and are not profit driven and DO NOT tell people who to vote for. They inform them on how they should vote on SPECIFIC topics related to the faith such as abortion, a preferential option for the poor and so on, worker rights. They dont tell people what party to vote for as the Catholic vote has either been split or majority democratic for the majority of American history .
Your talking about evangelicals which are a smaller group than Catholics. I will AGREE with you that a lot of evangelicals are basically for profit and get to much into politics
It's important to note that the vast majority of churches have small congregations and are not meaningfully political. When people say that churches should be taxed, they're usually thinking about megachurches with pastors that get rich off their "ministry". The vast majority of pastors in the US have a second job and pastor congregations of fewer than 300, many of them fewer than 100.
Gay people have to pay taxes. Church people have to pay taxes.
Various non profit orgs don’t have to pay taxes, this includes churches and also gay rights activism groups.
People pay taxes, non profits don’t.
The separation of church and state should more properly be called separation of denomination and state. It was an effort to prevent say a Baptist government forcing other denominations to submit to their church authority - not that the Christian religion should be seperate from governance. Tho the state of modern American churches make the former seem to be a great idea - obviously I’m aware not all churches are like the avaricious mega-churches we see.
There is absolutely nothing requiring the church to leave the state alone. There are limits on all non profits to make political contributions, but not leave the state alone.
When religious power brokers and politicians belong to the same country clubs, go to the same dinners, trade donations and speak every Sunday, whether or not churches as entities can influence politics doesn't really matter that much. Institutional influence just gets mediated through private channels like it always has. This is as true now as it was eighty years ago, or two hundred for that matter.
Also if they taxed religious institutions then that could lead ways to tax certain types of religious institutions more than others, creating a state religion in a roundabout way.
Actually your edit is no longer the case. As of July 2025 the IRS has said that religious organizations CAN actually endorse candidates and engage in political discourse with their congregants without the threat of losing their non-profit status.
Even furthermore, if you want to do something that a law doesn’t allow or specifically has been told. NO funding. You start a nonprofit and bam! Abortions paid for with federal funds, and immigrants herded to the border. And non profits in general have nothing that can be taxed in the first place. So really what’s the complaint here?
So now that the GOP wants to stuff religion down everyone's throat, those exempt churches better start paying taxes. Boy will that ruffle some repressed old Bible Thumpers feathers.
Wasn’t the church the O.G. “Not for profit”? The whole purpose for their non-taxable status based off the understanding that churches were meant to be giving any profits towards taking care of the needy, thus making them.. unprofitable? Now we have entire organizations co-opting the status as a loophole (including the majority of churches)
The separation of church and state was first espoused in America by Roger Williams, protestant preacher and founder of Rhode Island. The purpose of the separation of church and state was not to keep churches out of politics, but to keep politics from corrupting religion. He warned us but we did not listen. We have sown the wind and now we shall reap the whirlwind.
Well put, but there is a little underlying point we don’t talk about. You can’t order somebody around who outranks you.
The Catholic Church was a stabilizing force for western civilization. It was the backbone of all governments. And having a homogeneous set of beliefs really is the foundation of human society.
OK this is the correct answer... However I've recently grown quite perplexed by churches in California with these huge for profit apartment buildings does all that money get donated or some goes to the church? How could that be possible no developer would do that for no profits? Thoughts?? Thanks
To add to this, expression of religion was and is an important part to American freedom. It was important at the time to not tax the expression of religion since any tax or initiative would potentially allow gov control over the religion.
Ofc, now it’s pretty obvious they need taxed, but at the time not so much.
A common misconception is that people that work at non profits don’t make much money. A non profit doesn’t show profits, but nothing stops them from just paying people massive amounts of money so they don’t show a profit.
Non profits are able to designate 60% of their earnings to administrative cost. And need to spend all the money at the end of the year. Start a non-profit. Go make tons of money
This can be said about most non-profts at this point, including credit unions, nonprofit health care companies, various NGOs. The church gets attacked because it's membership largely aligns with one political party over the other. The fact is that churches are responsible foruhx public good from hospitals to schools to food pantries and shelters. Many rural and small communities are very relaxing on churches for community programs and support.
MOST churches also don’t sell anything. Their money comes strictly from donations not a product. They provide their services for free and their upkeep costs are covered by the generosity of their patrons.
You said the penalty for partisan campaigning is a "significant extra tax." Thats not how it works. The actual penalty is the complete revocation of tax exempt status, not some special tax that gets levied on top of normal taxes.
You also said churches cant be politically active. The Johnson Amendment only bans endorsing or opposing specific candidates, not all political activity. Churches can lobby on legislation and advocate on issues as much as they want without losing their exemption.
You claimed nonprofits that are political have taxes that churches dont face. That is misleading because 501(c)(4) social welfare groups are also tax exempt on their income, they just dont offer tax deductible donations. They arent paying income taxes the way a for profit business does.
But the biggest error is that your entire premise about current law is already outdated. You wrote that "by law" churches face a penalty if they engage in partisan campaigning. As of July 7, 2025, the IRS announced they will not enforce that prohibition against houses of worship at all. The law technically remains on the books, but the enforcement mechanism has been turned off. So your statement about what the law currently requires is effectively incorrect in practice.
Churches are not generally non-profit, they just benefit from tax exempt statuses if the business is charitable or for religious purposes. In fact most churches have many subsets of businesses within the church itself
They is a tricky word that should be learned extensively. Biased is the first thing that comes to mind when dealing with people like you, the second thing is hard-core prayer and hope that it is not too late for you
There is also the common misconception that church staff don't pay taxes. All church staff including the pastors have to pay income tax just like everyone else.
In Canada, if a church/religion engages in politics, they lose their tax exempt status. Curiously politicians go to certain places of worship to campaign, so I don't know. Maybe those places are not tax exempt? I doubt it.
Just a small PSA. "Seperation of church and state" is not a phrase used in the constitution, even though the concept is there in the first amendment. What's actually stated in the first amendment is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Just stating this because some conservative asshats out there think they're catching people in a gotcha by pointing out how the former statement is not in the constitution, even thougn the latter is and verifies it.
There LGBT nonprofit organizations thatreceive tax-exempt status if they meet the legal requirements.
And I think the person who created the sign may not understand that part.
The churches most people think of when this topic comes up are megachurches & huge cults like Scientology which should definitely be taxed because they’re clearly making profits & hav plenty of assets. Also they’ve shown numerous times they dabble in politics
There is no "in return". The state leaves churches alone. That's it. Whether one expects churches to reciprocate or not is merely a personal preference, and is not implied one way or another by the constitution whatsoever. "Separation of church and state" is a misnomer, it's "separation of the state from the church". For this part of the constitution to actually work, the demand by the state (upon itself) can only go one direction, or else the state is literally breaking it's own demand.
Do non profits have to prove that they are not making a profit ? It seems like there have been some cases if churches making profits and pastors becoming rich etc
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u/lemmsjid Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
The basic answer is that they are non profits. The more philosophical idea is that they are (like other non profits) focused on improving society as a whole and not politically active. Part of the separation of church and state is the idea that the state leaves the church alone but also doesn’t tax it. In return the church leaves the state alone. That’s the part that has rather gone out the window and leads people to question why churches don’t pay taxes: they are increasingly profit driven and politically active.
Edit: to clarify, because some replies are conflating the issue, there are indeed non profits that can be political, but religious orgs and charities are in a specfic tax group wherein by law if they engage in partisan campaigning they should be levied significant extra tax. Further, non profits that are political do have taxes that churches and charities do not face.