5 ms·
How are the church and state coupled? A corporation can bribe politicians with money, but what can a religious institution do? People vote based on their opin
by CivBase 6y ago
How are the church and state coupled? A corporation can bribe politicians with money, but what can a religious institution do?
People vote based on their opinions. Their opinions can be influenced by many things. Sometimes their opinions are influenced by their religious affiliation. Sometimes their opinions are influenced by comments on HN. But HN has no actual leverage over the state and neither does the church.
- djsumdog 6y agoThis is a little tricky. A church cannot voice a political opinion, if they want to keep their 501 tax exemption. They can voice their opinions (1st amendment) but they'd give up those specific tax exemptions and would need to move to a different charity type. (This is why the ACLU has two organizations, one you can donate to with tax exemption and the other you cannot because they lobby the government).
- CivBase 6y agoIs there anything wrong with a church abandoning their 501 tax exemption and voicing a political opinion?
- tssva 6y agoThere isn't but unfortunately what has been happening lately is churches have been voicing political opinion and not losing their 501 tax exemption because the politicians they have been speaking in favor of protect them from losing their tax status.
- triceratops 6y agoNothing wrong. They'd have to pay taxes. That would be a bummer for most organizations.
- hnick 6y agoThe way around this seems to be for politicians to voice religious opinions, which makes some things that churches say de facto political opinions. Seems like it should be banned on their side too, but that's a bit thorny.
- mattkrause 6y agoExactly. A minister (etc) can certainly say "Dancing (or whatever) is a grave sin and so we must avoid it ourselves and work to keep it out of our community." Stuff like this is protected as Free (Religious) Exercise clause and it should be. It may so happen that only one candidate vehemently opposes dancing, and as long as they don't make that connection out loud, it stays on the level.
- jl6 6y agoOne might argue that if a church trains its members to vote a certain way, they can wield significant influence, albeit indirectly. Similarly corporations have a great deal of indirect influence. True, there’s no formal, legal coupling, but perhaps there is merit to challenging concentrations of power, no matter how informal or indirect?
- nxmnxm99 6y agoThat can be said for literally any sort of organization of people
- Craighead 6y agoWhich other organizations are at similar scale and also tax free?
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoChurch has much more members than other organizations.
- mainstreem 6y agoLOL only if you group together every organized religion as "Church" and compare it to other, individual organizations.
- CivBase 6y agoAre you referring to the Catholic church? Most religious organizations are relatively small and independent from one another.
- Shared404 6y agoBut most Evangelical churches vote as a block.
- missedthecue 6y agoIn many countries, trade unions have more members than churches, and they donate, endorse, and directly outright tell their members who do vote for, unlike most churches, who do not donate, do not endorse, and in almost all cases, do not outright tell members who to vote for.
- nathias 6y agoMoney is used to buy propaganda, churches have millennia old propaganda infrastructure financed by murder and pillage, and are mostly extremely wealthy.
- CivBase 6y agoAny interested individual or organization can fund political propaganda, but I certainly wouldn't say the state is coupled with BLM or the NRA.
- nathias 6y agoWhy not? Aren't all BLM donations going to the democrats?
- FireBeyond 6y agoMaybe a notable chunk, but I'd say more accurately "to anyone but the Republicans".
- nerdponx 6y agoIt absolutely is, in the case of the latter. BLM no, or not yet, because they are not yet an entrenched reliable source of campaign funding.
- nerdponx 6y agoCheck out the history of the influence of Evangelical Christianity on American politics starting in the 1980s. Church influencing state is a contemporary phenomenon.