I have long thought that the notion of religion getting a tax-exempt status was just disgusting, but it’s time to spread that word. I have never understood how what is essentially the largest and most powerful corporation on earth has avoided paying it’s share for this long, but all good things must come to an end.

I won’t argue that religious agencies do no good. There are plenty of outreach programs the world over that have saved and strengthened countless lives the world over. And I approve of this wholeheartedly. I’d be quite willing to give tax breaks for the money spent on actual charitable deeds and actions to maintain this incentive, but I’d like for those tax excempt monies to be subject to some sort of audit so we can verify that the money is actually being spent to help people.

Recently, I commented on the Canadian government giving money to a religious organization for the purposes of setting up a Christian Outreach Program in the heart of Winnipeg’s impoverished downtown. I’d be much happier seeing them give tax exemptions to the actual cost of running programs that directly help the people in the neighborhoods they are working with, rather than getting a lump of money to establish a church. And the same opportunity should be afforded to non-religious organizations. When you spend your money to help others, I’m okay with you getting a bit of a break on the taxes.

Let’s face facts, now. A lot of religious organizations that get their free money use it for a lot of negative as well. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists presumably use tax-free church funds to terrorize funerals all over North America. The Scientologists have their Sea Org with it’s billion year work contracts. The Catholics have a long history of all manner of atrocities, including today’s latest Pharyngula post about how Alaska was used as a safe haven for pedophile priests, and as a huge money-making ploy. Again, I’m not painting every member of a given faith with the worst offenders here, there are plenty of perfectly good people of all walks of life, but every faith has a hell of a pile of skeletons too.

And why is it that we are allowing some of the wealthiest organizations on earth this luxury? Look at the wealth of the Vatican and tell me that the Catholic church needs sheltering. Look at the amount of money that muslim extremists have access to and tell me that Islam on the whole requires mollycoddling. What do we get for our looking the other way? Can we honestly compare the amount of good being done by the organization with the amount of band and the sheer quantity of money being generated? At what point do we look at what are massive multinational corporations and tell them that their free ride is over?

I want to see audits. I want to see financial records. I want to see the paper trail of money transfers that show off the sleazy inner workings of the agencies who claim their sole purpose is to provide love, warmth, support, and comfort to the people of the world. If there’s nothing for them to hide then a detailed audit won’t find it, but something tells me they all have something to hide. I want to see on paper that the money the church said was going to pay for outreach programs in Alaska was actually used on bettering the lives of the Alaskan people, and not on buggering their children. And if there was more money raised than used, I want to know where that money went. Wouldn’t you?

Jim