Victory for the Unitarians.

Rivka of Respectful of Otters is pleased to announce that the Texas comptroller's office has decided that a Unitarian church deserves tax-exempt status after all (links all required registration). I could have told them that in about fifteen minutes, but nobody called me up to ask.

Rivka (somewhat gingerly) goes on to brush up against a popular third rail of the American activist Left discuss why churches should indeed receive tax-free status:

The original rationale was the separation of church and state, under the theory that the power to tax is the power to control. But churches fall more generally into the category of non-profits - like museums, charities, and schools - which aren't taxed because they provide services generally recognized as beneficial to society. (Yes, I know, many of you don't see any benefit to religion. I have a friend who can't stand art, but that doesn't mean that art museums should have to pay taxes.) They can't simply register as charities, as some people suggested, because charity is just one of their purposes. In the same way that a museum which runs an outreach art education program for inner-city children isn't primarily a charity, a church which runs a soup kitchen doesn't qualify as a charity. But charity isn't the only qualification for tax-exempt status - both the museum and the church are tax-exempt as non-profit cultural institutions.

She also points out the shoestring nature of many church budgets. As someone who grew up going to Mass in an unquestionably poor Latino parish, I can attest to that myself. When you're an illegal immigrant working three jobs at below-minimum to get enough money together to support your family* your local parish is often the only support network you can trust. Yes, I'm aware that this is illegal, but I'm praising it anyway. I don't like modern immigration policy, and haven't in living memory.

Moe

*People much like my great-grandparents, in other words, right down to the social stigma.

Comments

[Nathan S.]

Were they illegal immigrants, or just regular immigrants?

[Moe Lane]

"Were they illegal immigrants, or just regular immigrants?"

Depends on how you define it; one great-grandfather came in under a false name (for reasons never quite explained), one somehow neglected to mention that he had a spare wife back home, one sort of drifted over from Canada one fine day... let's just say that my ancestors were somewhat, ah, creative when it came to immigration procedures. :)