Taxing the churches won’t stop Christian nationalism

TikToker Nikalie Monroe has gone viral in recent weeks for a series of videos she billed as a “social experiment.” The study, such as it was, involved calling churches — and at least one mosque — and asking for help. Monroe pretended to have lost her Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits due to the government shutdown, and was struggling to feed her baby. (While she has said she is the mother of an eight-year-old, Monroe doesn’t have an infant.) “I have a two-month-old baby,” she said in one call. “And I ran out of formula last night. I was wanting to see if y’all could help with formula.”

According to her tally, approximately a quarter of the churches she contacted offered her direct aid, the only response Monroe was willing to count as having volunteered assistance. Churches that referred her to food banks or resource centers, including some with which they had partnerships, were considered to have refused help.

Reactions to her experiment varied. Some condemned Monroe for her ploy, saying her use of deception was problematic and offensive. Others criticized the churches who refused to help. One pastor’s response — to immediately offer assistance without question — received widespread praise and resulted in $95,000 donations to his small independent church in Somerset, Kentucky.

Monroe’s stunt also reignited a familiar rallying cry among progressives: Tax the churches. If churches are not even engaging in meaningful public service, as her experiment implied — if they aren’t helping people — then why should they enjoy special tax privileges? From that perspective, ending these exemptions looks like both moral retribution and practical reform: A means of defending the separation of church and state while forcing religious institutions to bear the same civic burdens as everyone else.

For decades, at least since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, many on the left have argued that removing churches’ tax-exempt status would strike a fatal blow to the Christian right and punish those who are currently abetting the Christian nationalist takeover of American democracy. In recent years, that demand has taken on new gravity as conservatives have sought to dismantle the Johnson Amendment, the 1954 law barring tax-exempt organizations from engaging in political advocacy. 

Under President Donald Trump, the Republican Party has overtly aligned with Christian nationalism in both doctrine and tangible policy shifts. Progressives point to the successful, decades-long campaign that culminated in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as well as a new wave of state-level legislation on issues like LGBTQ+ rights and education, as direct results of the ideology’s growing influence. In June, the IRS said that churches were allowed to endorse political candidates while speaking to their own members, reversing a decades-long ban on political activity. Political figures and media personalities on the right have moved from simply courting religious conservatives to openly embracing Christian nationalist rhetoric, framing policy debates as a form of spiritual warfare. A growing number of Americans seem to be embracing a Christian nationalist worldview. From this perspective, the fight over the Johnson Amendment is no longer about hypothetical infractions but about whether tax-exempt status for churches and religious organizations is, in effect, subsidizing a specific political movement. Taxing the churches, for many on the left, seems like a way to fight back.

This stems from the mistaken belief of many secular Americans that the negative influence of religion can be somehow pressured out of the public square through slash-and-burn policies. The separation of church and state, they hope, can somehow be made to guarantee that religion plays no role in the decision-making processes of private citizens as they undertake their public duty as voters. In this paradigm, taxing the churches is a way to mitigate the influence that religion plays in the minds of citizens.

While the anger that produces both this thinking is understandable, the argument itself fundamentally misunderstands not only the nature of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, but also how religion, and religious organizations, function in public life. The fact is, ending the tax-exemption of religious organizations, or “taxing the churches,” would actually increase the influence of the most reactionary religious institutions in America, while simultaneously endangering the survival of religious organizations that not only serve vital community functions, particularly in marginalized communities, but also serve as an important counterbalance to conservative religion. 

From the earliest days of the republic, federal and state laws have exempted religious organizations from taxation for fear that it was a form of government entanglement prohibited by the Constitution’s strict separation of church and state. In practical terms for us today, this means it is unconstitutional for the IRS to exercise audit power over religious groups, which would make taxing them all but impossible. 

The logic of viewing the taxation of religious organizations as an unconstitutional intrusion of the government does have merit. By creating a tax burden for churches and religious groups, the government would be entering into a financial arrangement of sorts in the American religious marketplace, placing its finger on the scales squarely in favor of those religious organizations that can succeed financially — or, in other words, that are best equipped to meet the financial demands of taxation or tax avoidance. To put it simply: Taxing religious organizations would ensure that only the wealthier among them would survive. 

Among those who argue for taxing churches, there is a fantasy that it will somehow raise significant revenue for the federal government. But it won’t. We explicitly tax for-profit corporations — and the likes of Amazon, Nike, and FedEx still manage to avoid paying all federal taxes, resulting in billions of dollars in lost revenue. There is no reason to believe that those taxation patterns would be any different among churches. 

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We all know how it works: In corporate taxation, large companies are able to get around federal taxes while small businesses pay. If the government were to start taxing religious organizations, the losers would not be the conservative megachurches and culture war-minded ministries that have led progressives to create a thousand “Tax the Churches” memes. They would likely get out of paying taxes altogether, which would defeat the entire purpose of the initiative.

America’s religious landscape would be thinned in favor of large, financially prosperous churches and ministries, almost all of which are reactionary, and largely white. Far from reducing the power of white American evangelicals — the architects of the current attacks on personal liberty — the taxation of religious organizations would increase it by helping to eliminate their competition.

The tax burden would be disproportionately felt by progressive mainline Protestant churches, Black evangelical churches and immigrant-majority Catholic and Protestant congregations, not to mention immigrant-majority mosques and temples. These religious organizations are far less likely to have millions of dollars in assets; they are far more likely to be living on the financial edge. They don’t have the funds to hire high-caliber lawyers and accountants to work their way around America’s notoriously complicated tax code. The added financial burden could simply be enough to cause these houses of worship to close their doors for good.

That would have disastrous consequences, most immediately for the congregations and people themselves. In marginalized communities, houses of worship have always played a vital role, providing not only those charitable programs so many seem to think are the reason for churches’ tax-exemption, but also a place of belonging and solace for people who often desperately need it. Black churches were the organizing centers of the Civil Rights Movement. In immigrant communities, houses of worship are often de facto legal aid centers and English language schools. Mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Episcopal Church, often welcome LGBTQ+ Christians looking for a place to worship and of acceptance. All of this could vanish with taxation.

With Christian nationalism on the rise, America needs the theological counterpoint that progressive congregations provide. Taxing churches would all but eliminate any hope of that moral contrast. Think of it this way: Religion is a lot like drinking. Some people are going to do it; most of them will practice moderation, but others will not. Taxing the churches would make reactionary religion the only bar in town. That would be dangerous.

It’s easy to see why “Tax the churches” has become a popular rallying cry. We’re angry at what we see happening to our country, often in the name of God. But like many expressions of anger, this policy push is cathartic without being practical. It’s also dangerous. Those of us who don’t want a Christian nationalist takeover of the country we love are going to have to suck it up.