Subject and Expectation:
A discussion on how religion is a business and how it is harmful toxic poison to everything. Much of the world believes that having faith in a superhuman controlling power that dictates our lives, and belonging to a religion is a normal, even positive aspect of life. So if the larger percentage of humans feel this way, and if religion is so good for us, then how could anyone even suggest that it is a bad thing? How can one possibly express the harmfulness of an institution that bases its teachings on love?
The Small Town Humanist will be considering these questions and how they relate to the toxicity of religion in our world. It is our hope that the reader walks away with at least a more realistic view of religion and faith in today’s world.
Introduction
With just the reading of the title of this article, perhaps some of the following thoughts crossed your mind, just as some of them even crossed my mind.
…You’re sitting at work reading this and up pops a memory of a particularly wonderful Sunday morning at home with your family. Everyone got up early to have a big breakfast together. Mom and Dad are in the kitchen making french toast, eggs, and bacon for everyone. The family has a great morning of laughter, conversation, and togetherness at the kitchen table. Life is good. Your family then heads off to church for a beautiful sermon, talk, or presentation on a timely subject. You drive home feeling complete, that your family has gotten some direction from God, and you have that great feeling of belonging to something in the community, a group, a church.
…Summer comes around and the church that your family belongs to organizes a themed Vacation Bible School for the children in the congregation. Your kids have an amazing time hanging out with all of the other church kids, learning in a fun way about God and The Bible. You think to yourself how fortunate your kids are to grow up around other wholesome children. Nothing but the good association and another feeling of connection to the congregation, to the community.
…Perhaps your daughter or son is getting married? Because you have belonged to and donated your money to the big local church for years, your family has the privilege of having the wedding ceremony inside of the huge sacred holy church with its gorgeous stained glass windows stretching seemingly to the heavens. You think to yourself how lucky you are that you get to put on this glorious wedding ceremony with all of your close friends and family in this immaculate building. All thanks to the fact that your family has been worshipping there for years.
At this point, you’re probably feeling all warm and fuzzy inside because of those thoughts, or similar memories that you may have. So, if there are so many good things about religion such as these and more, then why rock the boat? You may feel that religion has worked for humanity for centuries so why question it? Why can’t we all just continue going on as we have, seeing the good in religion, and accepting the fact that nothing is ever going to be perfect?
This is actually the whole point. Religion has NOT served us well since its inception. More people have been killed, shunned, judged, hated, suppressed, segregated, driven to suicide, and anxiously tormented with overwhelming feelings of guilt at the hands of religion than any other entity in our human history. If you are able to live your life ignoring these absolutely proven facts, then it is not my place or anyone else’s to try to change you.
However, I simply cannot turn away ignoring these horrifying historical facts that continue to suppress the evolution of our species more than anything in this world. It is my opinion and the opinion of millions of others that the great Christopher Hitchens expressed it best when he said, “religion poisons everything.” There was a day and age when religion may have satisfied the inquisitiveness of the majority of mankind. However, its tired and unproven doctrines, along with its degrading dogma have now grown old, no longer satisfying the unprecedented intelligence that we have reached over the last few decades. Religion divides us…plain and simple. Let’s see how in our discussion of reason number one why religion is toxic and harmful.
The Business of Religion
There is a popular phrase that you may have heard, “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s an industry.” This could not be a more accurate statement.
A few years ago I posted this meme that had an image of a beautiful grand church. The text in the meme was aimed at how we are losing approximately 71 billion dollars annually because of churches being tax exempt. The gist of the meme was only to emphasize how that money could go to world hunger, the homeless, and educating our children.
With that simple posting, the flood gates opened up with the comments from butthurt sensitive religious family and friends that took severe offense to what I was suggesting with the post. The general consensus was that I was a bad person for even suggesting that the churches of the world should be forced to pay taxes, as if they were a business, because of all the good that they do for mankind.
Churches are a business, no matter how big or small. Just like anything else in the world, there is a business plan behind every one of them with the aim to make money. Am I insinuating that this is wrong and evil? Not at all. In no way is it a bad thing for a group or organization to operate with the intent of making a profit for their hard work.
It was decided in 1913 by the federal government to exempt churches and other religious organizations from federal taxation that held to certain regulations. These regulations are broken down and explained clearly in an article by Nolo.com, one of the internet’s first legal sites. The article can be found here.
The 2013 article explains how the IRS looks at certain factors to determine whether an organization is a church for tax purposes. These include whether it has:
- a distinct legal existence
- a recognized creed and form of worship
- a definite and distinct ecclesiastical government
- a formal code of doctrine and discipline
- a distinct religious history
- a membership not associated with any other church or denomination
- ordained ministers ministering to its congregations
- ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed studies
- a literature of its own
- established places of worship
- regular congregations
- regular religious services
- Sunday schools for religious instruction of the young, and
- schools for the preparation of its ministers
They go on to explain how “No single factor determines the answer, and not all factors must be present. This is something the IRS decides on a case by case basis.”
Small Scale Example
As I read through the list above, I thought to myself that just about anybody could set up an entity based on these defined factors with enough ingenuity. And how attractive is that…working for yourself, creating something that abides by most of the defined factors without ever paying taxes like the rest of the world! What a great setup. Its no wonder so many have taken advantage of it in our world.
In fact, my ex-father-in-law did just this back some years go. He and his wife started a small local church and established it as a legal entity along with many other of the above requirements. Good, right? A man and his wife set out to make a living by creating a place of worship with regular services, instructing the young, producing “helpful” literature, and creating a religious history in the small town in which I live. What could be so harmful or toxic about that?
Well, it may interest you to know that a scandalous controversy happened in this small town church back about 10 years ago. My ex-father-in-law was caught having sex in the church with one of the members. After being caught, it then became public knowledge that he and the woman had been having premeditated sexual, adulterous relations inside the said church for some time. My sweet ex-mother-in-law was absolutely devastated and the entire family was completely humiliated in the community.
How wonderfully upbuilding all of this was for the community! What about all of the money that this man-made off of the voluntary donations from the congregation members over the years because he was a recognized “religious entity” in the community that was “benefiting” people? The church, and inevitably he, received this money on a tax-free basis for years and years because they were supposed to be benefitting the community.
The whole scandalous scenario disgusted me because so many people looked to this man and this church for guidance. I am not judging his sexual actions at all; we all make mistakes and this is not the point that is being expressed. It is the fact that he took advantage of the tax-exempt status to create a business. Not just a church. The moment that he created the legal entity, he took on a huge amount of responsibility and accountability. His future decisions and actions would directly affect other human beings. He had other people’s faith and emotions in his hands, and being paid to do it tax-free.
He ended up leaving the church with his tail between his legs…only to start another small town church a few years later with the woman that he was “taking on the altar” inside of his first church. Toxic and harmful!
This was a small scale example of how the business of religion can be toxic and harmful to mankind. How does the business of religion affect the world on a much grander scale?
Grand Scale Example
Last summer I had something very interesting show up in the mailbox. This is the envelope…
Considering the nature of what I do and what I stand for, I was extremely eager to open the envelope. Nothing could’ve prepared me for what was inside. This was without a doubt the most ridiculous plea for money by a religious organization I had ever witnessed. Behold the wonderfully insane contents …
After looking at everything I almost didn’t even know what to say. I was having feelings of awe and extreme anger for the level to which they were going to take people’s money. All I could think about was some poor old lady receiving this letter. The lonely woman being elderly and possibly even a little senile. She receives this mailing and as she’s going through it and suffering from sensory overload from all of the imposed guilt if the reader failed to respond.
Would this woman be so elderly and sweet that she would find herself falling for the disgusting tricks plastered all over the material? Then I imagined how many people fitting this description in the world would receive this letter and actually send back the prayer cloth along with their hard-earned money that they probably couldn’t afford in the first place, to this so-called entity of God’s Holy Spirit.
I decided to do a little digging into this group Saint Matthew’s Churchs in Tulsa Oklahoma that sent this letter to my home. Here is what I found out.
I stumbled across a multitude of YouTubers who produced videos containing the same letters I received and decided to produce a video to expose the scam-by-mail campaign. I found countless articles and information devoted to how this supposed “old church” was actually a big religious scam. There are many accusations that the church building actually doesn’t even exist; that it’s just a PO Box in Tulsa (PO Box 21210 Tulsa, OK 74121). It is a legal entity that goes by the name Church By Mail, Inc. The entity has gone by a few different names over time, including St. Matthew’s Churches, and formerly St. Matthew Publishing Inc. The founder of the business is a man that goes by the name James Eugene Ewing; a man who previously had a career writing fundraising letters for Oral Roberts.
Some of the documentation of the legal proceedings and other court documents can be found here. Included in these documents are surprising profits reported by the business over the years. In 1999 St. Matthew Publishing Inc. reported $26.8 million in revenue. In 2007, it reportedly earned $6 million a month
The entity has applied for a tax-exemption status more than a couple of times over the years, but I could not find any concrete evidence as to whether it has achieved the exempt status or not as of today.
In conclusion
Religion is a business and that doesn’t always have to translate into a bad thing. For reiteration purposes, I’ll say it again. The fact that religion operates as a business is not toxic and harmful. The harm occurs when people pretend that religion isn’t a business with the goal of making money, and look to religion as only existing as a direct line to God or the promise of heaven.
When a person belongs to a particular religion, there then exists a level of trust that the person places in that religion…a trust that they belong to God’s organization. Their entire reason for going to the building of worship is to be close to their God, to invest valuable time in their faith. It hardly gets more personal than that, being trusted with a human being’s faith.
The problem is that the majority of churches in history have been exposed for extreme wrongdoing, either on a global scale or only affecting a small town community. Churchgoers seem to ignore these absolute facts. We are talking about your own personal faith. A person’s faith plays a major part in defining who they are; for some people, it is entirely who they are.
Do your faith a favor and examine your religion relentlessly. Where does your money go? Are there publicly read announcements of where every single dollar of the congregation’s money has gone? It is being given on a tax-free basis and that creates a very tempting situation to the imperfect spirit of a religious leader to take advantage of, to make a pretty great life for themselves.
Are there horrible things going on behind the scenes that you are turning a blind eye to because you don’t want to admit that you belong to something bad? If so, are you able to sleep at night with the thought that you gave your hard-earned money, practically condoning the wrongdoing? Admitting to yourself that your religion is also a business with a business plan to make money, is it doing good and helping your family? For you and your family’s sake, I hope that the answer is yes.
We need to stop pretending that religion is not a business and begin to treat it no differently than any other business in the world, regardless of whether or not they’re helping people. But, are they really helping people?
Click here for Reason Number Two Why Religion is Toxic and Harmful – Breeds Traumatic Levels of Fear-based Guilt and Shame.
