Washington Post: David Niose is the legal director of the Washington-based American Humanist Association and author of “Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason” and “Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans.” Follow him on Twitter: @ahadave
The arguments for taxing churches have been around for many years, but there is reason to believe that America’s changing religious demographics will soon give them more traction. As more Americans abandon organized religion, many of the newly secular are unsympathetic to subsidizing religion via the tax code.
Recent polling shows that almost one in four Americans, and more than one-third of those aged 18 to 33, now claim no religious affiliation. Back when virtually everyone subscribed to a religious faith (the unaffiliated number polled in the single digits for most of the 20th century) an across-the-board tax break for all religions was arguably fair — or at least inoffensive. But times have changed, and so have attitudes about the extraordinary perks that churches enjoy.
Categories: Americas, CHRISTIANITY, Religion, United States