11 ms·

My main issue isn't the fact that the church is hoarding money and keeping, it is with the fact that the US government makes exemptions for them. What is the re

My main issue isn't the fact that the church is hoarding money and keeping, it is with the fact that the US government makes exemptions for them. What is the reasoning behind the tax-exemption and the exemption to reveal all financial information? Level the playing field and let the church be about its own business.

soco 3y ago
You'd be surprised how many countries have tax exemptions for churches of about any denomination. There's still a tradition apparently that the business of god(s) shouldn't be investigated by man, or something.
- qznc 3y ago
  If it were only tax exemptions. Germany pays half a billion every year to the church because of a deal from a hundred years ago. That is in addition to anything with taxes. https://www.ncronline.org/news/germany-continues-payments-churches-century-after-deciding-stop https://www.ncronline.org/news/germany-continues-payments-ch...
  - mcv 3y ago
    Is that different from a church tax? Many countries levy taxes on behalf of officially recognised churches. If you're registered as a church member, you pay an additional tax that goes to your church. You can generally opt out by deregistering as a member. I think Netherland used to have this in the past, but got rid of it at some point. Some European countries still have it. I assume there's still some standards for how those churches can use that money though; churches are not meant to be for-profit ventures. Though some of them (older ones especially) are quite rich. Younger churches tend to be poor.
    - qznc 3y ago
      It is not related to the church tax. It comes on top.
    - usrusr 3y ago
      As qznc started, those are separate things. One is a crazy leftover from Napoleonic days (consider the amount of changes to German statehood that thing has survived!), the other is an opt-out thing (or rather an opt-in actually, unless your parents did the "in" for you) that I actually think is super nice to have. It should be extended to the point where it's basically an API for income-scaled membership fees that's open to every org that wants to have it (and to public broadcasting, to achieve "separate from state" in a way that isn't a flat household tax)
    - josefx 3y ago
      As far as I understand the payments Germany still makes are for the properties it "bought" from the churches when the separation between church and state was declared. There have been plans to repay the remaining sum in one big payment, but those have been around for probably just as long as the agreement itself. The "church tax" is collected independently from that and it is a "paid" service the state offers to any public organization that falls into the same broad legal definition used for churches. As far as I understand the state actually makes a profit from the cut it keeps.
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  We do not have specific tax exemption for churches in France, they are part of the non profit organizations. When you give money to such an organization you can claim tax credit on your general taxes. And since this is France, we of course have upped the game with a special region: Alsace Moselle. Or is on the border with Germany and has been French or German in the last centuries as wars came and went. Church there has a special status (taxes, payment of priests, religion at school, concordate with the Vatican, ...) that is historical and nobody ever got rid of it. There are also other specificities because of that, notably social security.
- wanttocomment 3y ago
  [flagged]
nroets 3y ago
Churches were social security centuries ago: You contribute a tenth of your income and in exchange the church will look after you if you when disaster strikes (illness, crop failure) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe_barns_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe_barns_in_Europe
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Indeed, the disestablishmentarian State has usurped many functions that used to pertain to the Church. It was the Catholic Church who founded the university system as we know it today, and the hospital system we depend on. When colonists made it to the New World, who was there to educate the children? The Catholic missionaries and religious institutes founded schools and created whole districts to educate children (yes, even Native and Indigenous children such as we vilify them for in Canada.) Parents would often have at least one child set aside to dedicate to the Church, as a priest and/or a professed religious. Children would enter the seminary, monastery, or convent. In return, those insitutions would care for the underprivileged and the powerless. Many monasteries provided services to the Church and to the general public: brewing beer, cultivating gardens, baking bread, you name it. But as all these services and more are privatized and nationalized, it sort of makes the Church redundant, an NGO without purpose, if you're on the outside looking in. So why perpetuate non-profit status of these mere charities when the State can provide entitlements far beyond what meager donations can provide? It's definitely a Sophie's choice, when you get right down to it.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Catholic Universities are still thriving. The Catholic Churches globally hoard around $100 billion and could absolutely create a world-class endowment for a huge university if they prioritized that. It’s not the states’ fault they choose not to.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      More like 30 billion dollars, and a large swath of that is tied up in completely illiquid assets like churches or gold in reliquia [1]. [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behind-vatican-city/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behi...
mcv 3y ago
Tax exemption should be a non-issue. Churches shouldn't be for-profit businesses, they should be associations with members contributing to a common, partly charitable goal (although honestly it's also just a club). That's what they conceptually are, and that's how they should work. They should be treated as charitable organisations at best, and then also held to those standards. Any church run as a business should not be considered a church at all. (Disclaimer: I'm a member of a Dutch church, and I have no idea what our tax situation is.)
- reaperman 3y ago
  Due to separation of church and state, churches aren’t supposed to participate in political speech either but the largest ones pretty unanimously do every major election. Legally that’s supposed to trigger taxation but it’s political suicide for anyone to go after them for this.
  - fauxpause_ 3y ago
    Is that an accurate statement? I have never heard that included in the definition of separation of church and state. Sounds wrong.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrumbut 3y ago
      It's kind of true? It's stated a little awkwardly but there is truth there. If you are funding a political campaign (not just any political speech, but an actual campaign) you have to be set up as a political campaign rather than a church. > 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes charities and churches, from engaging in any political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact strengthened the ban. The most recent change came in 1987 when Congress amended the language to clarify that the prohibition also applies to statements opposing candidates https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/charities-churches-and-politics#:~:text=In%201954%2C%20Congress%20approved%20an,in%20any%20political%20campaign%20activity https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/charities-churches-and-politics.... In practice, churches are given quite a bit of leeway to engage in what any reasonable person would call political campaigning.
technion 3y ago
Happens with software vendors too. A lot of groups really feel like a business but get office 365 for free and azure credits because of their status.
runsWphotons 3y ago
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/972/taxation-of-religious-entities#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%2C%20in%20an,not%20violate%20the%20establishment%20clause https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/972/taxation-of....
santiagobasulto 3y ago
Nobody is answering your question. Churches (cults, religion) all over the world are tax-exempted as a way to avoid "persecution". If a cult is taxed, then a particular government could persecute a particular cult by just raising their taxes. Imagine a government that is very strong on religion A, decides to raise taxes on religion B. I'm not saying this is right or wrong. It even sounds a bit dated to me. But that's the underlying reason.
- sva_ 3y ago
  I'm not sure I follow, how would it be possible to raise taxes on a specific religion? By targeting their assets?!
  - clarionbell 3y ago
    It is extremely simple once you get out of the western secular, tolerant mindset. Just a matter of tailoring the law in the right way. For example, if you want to hurt church X which has a large following among urban population, just increase taxes on noncommercial private buildings with seating capacity over 50 in areas where population density is over some number. And make allowance for exceptions, so you can claim the law doesn't discriminate, and it's their fault that they didn't get exception. The fact that exception is impossible to get if people asking for it adhere to some creed is secondary. Even if they get it, the process can be made costly and painful to the point where they run out of money before. Or you can go explicit in your intentions, and make a law targeting that particular faith by name. It has been done in the past, it is happening now. Look at middle-east for examples. And you can go for categories too. Say you don't want any foreign religions popping up. Just raise taxes on all, and give exceptions or such to faiths that have over some number of citizen adherents. The possibilities are practically limitless once you accept that law is a tool.
    - coliveira 3y ago
      For better or worse, the tax system is here for everyone. Why should religions be the only institutions immune to it? Everything you said happens in America, just change religion for nationality (sanctions) or race. I don't see why religion should be different. Moreover, religions persecution also happens in the USA, but by other means. Catholics have been persecuted in the past, the same happened against jews during a period, and more recently to islam. The idea of tax exemption only happens to benefit the well entrenched religions: evangelical churches, mormonism in Utah, the Catholic church. It also helps up and coming scams such as scientologists, who take advantage of the provisions of the law.
herculity275 3y ago
My understanding is that a lot of the current status quo came to be as a result of the Church of Scientology's long standing dispute with the IRS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_status_of_Scientology_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_status_of_Scientology_in_t...
devonkim 3y ago
The founders of the US didn’t want it to become like England. England gave special tax breaks for churches and churches became very, very influential parts of the State due to tax policy alone. As such, the idea was that if churches are tax exempt they would stay out of politics mostly given they don’t pay taxes in the first place. As it stands any persistent form of power (corporate, religious, perhaps even academic) that seeks to further entrench itself will seek out forms of power such as a government or large multinational to ingratiate itself to. Separation of state and anything else at all would probably have been the better doctrine to establish and follow, but oh well we’re screwed now
- coliveira 3y ago
  Founders of the US gave tax exemption to churches because they were part of chuches themselves. It is a system that has been rotten from the core foundation. Separation of church and state is, that is correct, a result of rejection of England, because they didn't want the same English system where one church dominated the others.
brent_noorda 3y ago
No organization should be tax-exempt (not religions, not charities, not foundations), and no donations to such organizations should be tax exempt. Tax exemption takes money from the one democratic charity (our government) that supports vastly more than any other, increases undemocratic amounts of influence among the wealthy, and leads to financial shenanigans such as those we see here withe the LDS hoard. I've been in position to witness all of this via my parent's wealth distribution (almost entirely to charities, starting with 50% to LDS church).
- starkd 3y ago
  The state is not the only means by which a society conducts charity. It needs to encourage charitable giving through various avenues.
  - brent_noorda 3y ago
    Does the state need to encourage charitable giving, though? Would a person stop donating $1000 of their expendable wealth to their favorite cause (e.g., hunger, cancer, cloning hitler, whatever) if that $1000 donation no longer reduced their taxes by $200 (for example)? If so, what kind of person would do that? Probably not the kind of person who ever donates to anything in the first place. Worst case, if there were no more tax-deductible charities: that person would pay the $200 taxes and only donate $800 (instead of $1000) to their favorite cause. Best case: Megawealthy would no longer leave $20 billion to their favorite cause (be that their dog, the LDS church, their love of oil drilling, or whatever), but would pay $5 in estate taxes and only have $15 billion leftover for their love of oil drilling (or whatever be their whim).
slv77 3y ago
There are two main tax exemptions which churches benefit from in the US. The first is that donation are tax deductible for taxpayers that itemize their deductions. The second is that any income from investments is also tax free. This is the case for any 503b non-profit organization in the US, not strictly for churches. For example, if you local youth soccer program was a 503b the interest from their bank account isn’t taxed. If a 503B puts its money into Microsoft stock, the profits that Microsoft makes are taxed. The capital gains the 503B gets wouldn’t get taxed when the stock was sold. The main argument in the article, not fully stated, is that the Mormon Church doesn’t do enough beneficial works to qualify as a 503b. In the US, Churches are granted 503b status without specific reviews of their societal benefit. If you want to pay someone to operate a homeless shelter or ding a bell all day to prevent the end of times, it is all the same. This is part of separation of church and state as laid out in the constitution. If there was a specific review the State could “put its thumb” on the scales and favor some churches over others in granting non-profit status. Churches, just like the local soccer club don’t have the same distribution requirements that a donor controlled 503b would have. For example if you are a billionaire and donate $1B of your appreciated stock to your donor directed fund you need to distribute 5% per year on charitable works to keep the 503b status. The article implies that the same requirement should apply to the Mormon Church that applies to a donor directed fund. This line of reasoning is incorrect. A donor directed fund has substantially no other affiliated activity that has to be considered. This is more like Harvard’s endowment where there is a school controls the fund. In the case of Harvard, if the fund didn’t distribute anything in a year there still would be substantial educational work and research going on. In the case of a donor directed non-profit nothing would be happening. The Mormon Church argues that it operates more like Harvard and that the whistleblower did not have access to the larger organizations finances. All global churches right now are facing a demographic cliff as wealthy nations are increasingly secular while most religions growth is in developing countries. In most cases Churches transfer a large amount of donations from wealthy countries like the US to less wealthy ones like Nigeria. In another 50 years many of those transfers will cease to be significant unless there is a religious revival in wealthier markets or a significant deviation in the number of children religious families have relative to the overall population in these countries. It is likely that many churches will need to wind down financial activities to be more aligned with the demographics.
willdough 3y ago
[dead]

soco 3y ago

You'd be surprised how many countries have tax exemptions for churches of about any denomination. There's still a tradition apparently that the business of god(s) shouldn't be investigated by man, or something.

qznc 3y ago
If it were only tax exemptions. Germany pays half a billion every year to the church because of a deal from a hundred years ago. That is in addition to anything with taxes. https://www.ncronline.org/news/germany-continues-payments-churches-century-after-deciding-stop https://www.ncronline.org/news/germany-continues-payments-ch...
- mcv 3y ago
  Is that different from a church tax? Many countries levy taxes on behalf of officially recognised churches. If you're registered as a church member, you pay an additional tax that goes to your church. You can generally opt out by deregistering as a member. I think Netherland used to have this in the past, but got rid of it at some point. Some European countries still have it. I assume there's still some standards for how those churches can use that money though; churches are not meant to be for-profit ventures. Though some of them (older ones especially) are quite rich. Younger churches tend to be poor.
  - qznc 3y ago
    It is not related to the church tax. It comes on top.
  - usrusr 3y ago
    As qznc started, those are separate things. One is a crazy leftover from Napoleonic days (consider the amount of changes to German statehood that thing has survived!), the other is an opt-out thing (or rather an opt-in actually, unless your parents did the "in" for you) that I actually think is super nice to have. It should be extended to the point where it's basically an API for income-scaled membership fees that's open to every org that wants to have it (and to public broadcasting, to achieve "separate from state" in a way that isn't a flat household tax)
  - josefx 3y ago
    As far as I understand the payments Germany still makes are for the properties it "bought" from the churches when the separation between church and state was declared. There have been plans to repay the remaining sum in one big payment, but those have been around for probably just as long as the agreement itself. The "church tax" is collected independently from that and it is a "paid" service the state offers to any public organization that falls into the same broad legal definition used for churches. As far as I understand the state actually makes a profit from the cut it keeps.
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
We do not have specific tax exemption for churches in France, they are part of the non profit organizations. When you give money to such an organization you can claim tax credit on your general taxes. And since this is France, we of course have upped the game with a special region: Alsace Moselle. Or is on the border with Germany and has been French or German in the last centuries as wars came and went. Church there has a special status (taxes, payment of priests, religion at school, concordate with the Vatican, ...) that is historical and nobody ever got rid of it. There are also other specificities because of that, notably social security.
wanttocomment 3y ago
[flagged]

nroets 3y ago

Churches were social security centuries ago: You contribute a tenth of your income and in exchange the church will look after you if you when disaster strikes (illness, crop failure) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe_barns_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe_barns_in_Europe

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Indeed, the disestablishmentarian State has usurped many functions that used to pertain to the Church. It was the Catholic Church who founded the university system as we know it today, and the hospital system we depend on. When colonists made it to the New World, who was there to educate the children? The Catholic missionaries and religious institutes founded schools and created whole districts to educate children (yes, even Native and Indigenous children such as we vilify them for in Canada.) Parents would often have at least one child set aside to dedicate to the Church, as a priest and/or a professed religious. Children would enter the seminary, monastery, or convent. In return, those insitutions would care for the underprivileged and the powerless. Many monasteries provided services to the Church and to the general public: brewing beer, cultivating gardens, baking bread, you name it. But as all these services and more are privatized and nationalized, it sort of makes the Church redundant, an NGO without purpose, if you're on the outside looking in. So why perpetuate non-profit status of these mere charities when the State can provide entitlements far beyond what meager donations can provide? It's definitely a Sophie's choice, when you get right down to it.
- reaperman 3y ago
  Catholic Universities are still thriving. The Catholic Churches globally hoard around $100 billion and could absolutely create a world-class endowment for a huge university if they prioritized that. It’s not the states’ fault they choose not to.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    More like 30 billion dollars, and a large swath of that is tied up in completely illiquid assets like churches or gold in reliquia [1]. [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behind-vatican-city/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behi...

mcv 3y ago

Tax exemption should be a non-issue. Churches shouldn't be for-profit businesses, they should be associations with members contributing to a common, partly charitable goal (although honestly it's also just a club). That's what they conceptually are, and that's how they should work. They should be treated as charitable organisations at best, and then also held to those standards. Any church run as a business should not be considered a church at all. (Disclaimer: I'm a member of a Dutch church, and I have no idea what our tax situation is.)

reaperman 3y ago
Due to separation of church and state, churches aren’t supposed to participate in political speech either but the largest ones pretty unanimously do every major election. Legally that’s supposed to trigger taxation but it’s political suicide for anyone to go after them for this.
- fauxpause_ 3y ago
  Is that an accurate statement? I have never heard that included in the definition of separation of church and state. Sounds wrong.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrumbut 3y ago
    It's kind of true? It's stated a little awkwardly but there is truth there. If you are funding a political campaign (not just any political speech, but an actual campaign) you have to be set up as a political campaign rather than a church. > 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes charities and churches, from engaging in any political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact strengthened the ban. The most recent change came in 1987 when Congress amended the language to clarify that the prohibition also applies to statements opposing candidates https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/charities-churches-and-politics#:~:text=In%201954%2C%20Congress%20approved%20an,in%20any%20political%20campaign%20activity https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/charities-churches-and-politics.... In practice, churches are given quite a bit of leeway to engage in what any reasonable person would call political campaigning.

technion 3y ago

Happens with software vendors too. A lot of groups really feel like a business but get office 365 for free and azure credits because of their status.

runsWphotons 3y ago

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/972/taxation-of-religious-entities#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%2C%20in%20an,not%20violate%20the%20establishment%20clause https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/972/taxation-of....

santiagobasulto 3y ago

Nobody is answering your question. Churches (cults, religion) all over the world are tax-exempted as a way to avoid "persecution". If a cult is taxed, then a particular government could persecute a particular cult by just raising their taxes. Imagine a government that is very strong on religion A, decides to raise taxes on religion B. I'm not saying this is right or wrong. It even sounds a bit dated to me. But that's the underlying reason.

sva_ 3y ago
I'm not sure I follow, how would it be possible to raise taxes on a specific religion? By targeting their assets?!
- clarionbell 3y ago
  It is extremely simple once you get out of the western secular, tolerant mindset. Just a matter of tailoring the law in the right way. For example, if you want to hurt church X which has a large following among urban population, just increase taxes on noncommercial private buildings with seating capacity over 50 in areas where population density is over some number. And make allowance for exceptions, so you can claim the law doesn't discriminate, and it's their fault that they didn't get exception. The fact that exception is impossible to get if people asking for it adhere to some creed is secondary. Even if they get it, the process can be made costly and painful to the point where they run out of money before. Or you can go explicit in your intentions, and make a law targeting that particular faith by name. It has been done in the past, it is happening now. Look at middle-east for examples. And you can go for categories too. Say you don't want any foreign religions popping up. Just raise taxes on all, and give exceptions or such to faiths that have over some number of citizen adherents. The possibilities are practically limitless once you accept that law is a tool.
  - coliveira 3y ago
    For better or worse, the tax system is here for everyone. Why should religions be the only institutions immune to it? Everything you said happens in America, just change religion for nationality (sanctions) or race. I don't see why religion should be different. Moreover, religions persecution also happens in the USA, but by other means. Catholics have been persecuted in the past, the same happened against jews during a period, and more recently to islam. The idea of tax exemption only happens to benefit the well entrenched religions: evangelical churches, mormonism in Utah, the Catholic church. It also helps up and coming scams such as scientologists, who take advantage of the provisions of the law.

herculity275 3y ago

My understanding is that a lot of the current status quo came to be as a result of the Church of Scientology's long standing dispute with the IRS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_status_of_Scientology_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_status_of_Scientology_in_t...

devonkim 3y ago

The founders of the US didn’t want it to become like England. England gave special tax breaks for churches and churches became very, very influential parts of the State due to tax policy alone. As such, the idea was that if churches are tax exempt they would stay out of politics mostly given they don’t pay taxes in the first place. As it stands any persistent form of power (corporate, religious, perhaps even academic) that seeks to further entrench itself will seek out forms of power such as a government or large multinational to ingratiate itself to. Separation of state and anything else at all would probably have been the better doctrine to establish and follow, but oh well we’re screwed now

coliveira 3y ago
Founders of the US gave tax exemption to churches because they were part of chuches themselves. It is a system that has been rotten from the core foundation. Separation of church and state is, that is correct, a result of rejection of England, because they didn't want the same English system where one church dominated the others.

brent_noorda 3y ago

No organization should be tax-exempt (not religions, not charities, not foundations), and no donations to such organizations should be tax exempt. Tax exemption takes money from the one democratic charity (our government) that supports vastly more than any other, increases undemocratic amounts of influence among the wealthy, and leads to financial shenanigans such as those we see here withe the LDS hoard. I've been in position to witness all of this via my parent's wealth distribution (almost entirely to charities, starting with 50% to LDS church).

starkd 3y ago
The state is not the only means by which a society conducts charity. It needs to encourage charitable giving through various avenues.
- brent_noorda 3y ago
  Does the state need to encourage charitable giving, though? Would a person stop donating $1000 of their expendable wealth to their favorite cause (e.g., hunger, cancer, cloning hitler, whatever) if that $1000 donation no longer reduced their taxes by $200 (for example)? If so, what kind of person would do that? Probably not the kind of person who ever donates to anything in the first place. Worst case, if there were no more tax-deductible charities: that person would pay the $200 taxes and only donate $800 (instead of $1000) to their favorite cause. Best case: Megawealthy would no longer leave $20 billion to their favorite cause (be that their dog, the LDS church, their love of oil drilling, or whatever), but would pay $5 in estate taxes and only have $15 billion leftover for their love of oil drilling (or whatever be their whim).

slv77 3y ago

There are two main tax exemptions which churches benefit from in the US. The first is that donation are tax deductible for taxpayers that itemize their deductions. The second is that any income from investments is also tax free. This is the case for any 503b non-profit organization in the US, not strictly for churches. For example, if you local youth soccer program was a 503b the interest from their bank account isn’t taxed. If a 503B puts its money into Microsoft stock, the profits that Microsoft makes are taxed. The capital gains the 503B gets wouldn’t get taxed when the stock was sold. The main argument in the article, not fully stated, is that the Mormon Church doesn’t do enough beneficial works to qualify as a 503b. In the US, Churches are granted 503b status without specific reviews of their societal benefit. If you want to pay someone to operate a homeless shelter or ding a bell all day to prevent the end of times, it is all the same. This is part of separation of church and state as laid out in the constitution. If there was a specific review the State could “put its thumb” on the scales and favor some churches over others in granting non-profit status. Churches, just like the local soccer club don’t have the same distribution requirements that a donor controlled 503b would have. For example if you are a billionaire and donate $1B of your appreciated stock to your donor directed fund you need to distribute 5% per year on charitable works to keep the 503b status. The article implies that the same requirement should apply to the Mormon Church that applies to a donor directed fund. This line of reasoning is incorrect. A donor directed fund has substantially no other affiliated activity that has to be considered. This is more like Harvard’s endowment where there is a school controls the fund. In the case of Harvard, if the fund didn’t distribute anything in a year there still would be substantial educational work and research going on. In the case of a donor directed non-profit nothing would be happening. The Mormon Church argues that it operates more like Harvard and that the whistleblower did not have access to the larger organizations finances. All global churches right now are facing a demographic cliff as wealthy nations are increasingly secular while most religions growth is in developing countries. In most cases Churches transfer a large amount of donations from wealthy countries like the US to less wealthy ones like Nigeria. In another 50 years many of those transfers will cease to be significant unless there is a religious revival in wealthier markets or a significant deviation in the number of children religious families have relative to the overall population in these countries. It is likely that many churches will need to wind down financial activities to be more aligned with the demographics.

willdough 3y ago

[dead]