Church Leaders and Tax Collectors
by Mark Tooley
April 12, 2001

In the New Testament, tax collectors were portrayed as unsavory exploiters of the people.  When the Jericho tax collector Zacchaeus repented, he promised to reimburse fourfold all whom he had cheated.  In the Old Testament, the prophet Samuel warned Israelites against self-aggrandizing kings who would over-tax them.  

But today’s mainline church leaders identify with the tax man, and not with his victims.  They favor tax rates far higher than the ten percent levy against which Samuel warned.  And under no circumstances would they allow a rebate to tax payers.

The Religious Community for Responsible Tax Policy unveiled its complete opposition to President Bush’s tax cut plan at a Washington press conference in early April.   This coalition includes the National Council of Churches and leaders of the United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, and Presbyterian denominations, among others.  A liberal Roman Catholic caucus group has endorsed it, as have several Jewish organizations.

The Bush tax plan calls for returning $1.6 trillion to the tax payer out of an expected $5 or $6 trillion surplus over the text ten years.  But seemingly, no amount of excess federal funds would ever justify a tax cut to these church leaders.   “There’s no budget surplus if there are still people living in poverty,” insisted Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Church.”  

“The poor ye shall have with you always,” the Founder of Christianity observed.   So according to Edgar and his church allies, there should never be a tax cut.  Ever.  

Instead, these liberal religious officials want the federal government to spend more money on programs to help “parents and children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and the working poor.”   Indeed, the church leaders are “appalled” that Congress is even discussing tax cuts, instead of voting to expand social welfare programs.  

Unmentioned by the church officials is that the Bush Administration has not proposed any significant cuts in programs directed at needy people.  And there are some considerable increases.  That a general tax cut might assist “parents and children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and the working poor” does not seem to have crossed the minds of these church officials.  

That federal programs, no matter how amply funded, have not always been helpful in alleviating poverty is also not considered.  Most of these same church officials vociferously opposed welfare reform five years ago.  Welfare reform’s success has largely evaded their notice.  

They call Bush’s tax plan “too inequitable,” “too large,” and a threat to the nation’s future.  They have not adopted a position regarding Democratic-proposed smaller tax cuts.  But Edgar, when asked, said they hope that any tax cut, if one must be ratified, will be as “modest” as politically possible.           

Edgar, himself a former Democratic congressman, was comparatively restrained in his criticism of the Bush plan.  The Rev. George Regas, a California pastor who shared the platform with him, accused President Bush of “hijacking” his rhetoric about caring for children from the liberal, and therefore more compassionate, Children’s Defense Fund.  “Has Bush closed his eyes to the kind of society we have for children in America?” Regas asked rhetorically.

John Buehrens, head of the left-wing Unitarian Universalist Association, called the Bush tax plan an example of “cruelty” that is neither “spiritually nor morally sound.”  The tax cut will merely feed America’s “consumption” of “too much of the world’s resources.”  Apparently, in his mind, the federal government would consume the world’s resources in a more admirable fashion, if it retained the surplus.

Sister Anne Curtis of NETWORK, an unofficial leftist Catholic “social justice” lobby, warned that the Bush tax plan is “reckless, “irresponsible,” “unwise,” and “unfair.”  She insisted that “people and not tax cuts should be at the center of our moral priorities.”  In her mind, the tax cuts would go to sinister abstract forces, instead of the “people” whom she claims to champion.   

The rhetoric from these spokespersons for the Religious Left is somewhat reminiscent of their hyperbolic overreaction to President Reagan’s election in 1980 and the Republican take-over of Congress in 1994.  Reagan and the Republican Congress were portrayed as King Herods ready to slaughter the innocents once again.  Tax cuts and reluctance to expand the welfare state were reflexively interpreted as wicked schemes to fill with streets with starving people.

President Bush is slightly harder for the Religious Left to smear as a ruthless Republican carnivore.  He persuasively employs the rhetoric of compassion.  He belongs to the liberal-controlled United Methodist Church, the flagship of mainline denominations.  And his proposals for increased support of faith-based ministries would channel additional federal funds into the very mainline church groups who are denouncing his tax plan.

It also does not help these church officials that their mainline Protestant constituency was among George W. Bush’s strongest supporters in the election.  For example, a George Barna poll shows that in last year’s presidential election mainline Protestants preferred Bush by 58 to 40 percent.  According to the University of Akron Survey Research Center, 65 percent of observant mainline Protestants voted for Bush, while 57 percent of less observant mainliners voted for him.

But mainline church officials are accustomed to ignoring their own church members while claiming to speak “prophetically” on their behalf.  These same Religious Left leaders are quite confused when trying to figure out whether they believe in the creeds of their own churches.  But they are very certain when determining what tax and budget policies the Lord prefers.    

Jesus persuaded tax collectors like Zachaeus and Matthew to abandon their wicked ways and follow Him.  Today’s mainline church leaders prefer to render everything unto Caesar, so long as they and their preferred programs get part of Caesar’s take.