Once again, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (an atheist group that prides itself in wasting the energy and resources of religious organizations) is suing the IRS. Following last week’s Tax Day, FFRF hopes it will end the parsonage allowance, a 64-year-old federal tax provision used by churches, mosques, and synagogues to help faith leaders live in the communities they serve. Last week, Pastor Chris Butler, a South Side Chicago pastor, asked a federal appeals court to end this discriminatory lawsuit that would devastate his community and subject churches across the country to almost $1 billion in new taxes.
The fact that FFRF is even taking aim at the IRS over this tax provision at all shows just how misguided they are, given the language of our First Amendment. For several decades, this federal tax code has allowed pastors, rabbis, imams, and other faith leaders to receive tax-free housing allowances under the same tax principle that allows teachers, business leaders, military service members, and hundreds of thousands of other workers to receive tax-free housing for their jobs.
What FFRF may not realize (or heck, maybe they do) is that ending this provision hurts not just churches but the communities these churches are trying to help. For example, Butler is the leader of a predominantly African-American congregation — their ministries include mentoring at-risk youth, decreasing neighborhood crime, and caring for the homeless in Chicago’s neediest neighborhoods. “For the majority of churches, the pastors are like me and experience at some level the same problems that we’re trying to face in the community. If you take away even a little bit, it can become a lot of trouble quickly,” Butler said in a statement. Becket, a nonprofit organization that defends religious liberty, intervened in this case in January.
FFRF certainly has the freedom to do what they want, but that doesn’t mean their choices are wise. While this country’s First Amendment allows for freedom not to practice religion, it also allows the freedom to do so as well. How much the government can or should intervene is the sweet spot where organizations like FFRF like to camp out and attempt to suffocate the First Amendment’s free exercise clause until they think there’s nothing left. Fortunately for them, it will take more than an absurd lawsuit like this, which would levy $1 billion in new taxes on churches, to snuff out the fact that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
