501(c) That?
One of our responsibilities in these troubled times is to look at the cultural chess board while taking care to think three moves ahead. We need to look at our current conflicts in the light of the year of our Lord 2022.
Those who do not anticipate the future are doomed to go through it, as Santayana didn’t quite say.
I have already written that Christians need to make the current battle a battle over our right and responsibility to speak the truth. If we start to trim our discourse to make their hypocritical commitments to free speech less obviously hypocritical, we will quickly find ourselves in the next phase of battle, which will be over taxes, tax exempt status, 501(c)3 organizations, and so on. The next battle will be about defunding the Church. And I would rather fight over defending the truth than I would over defunding it.
Of course, if we get there I will be happy to fight there, but all things considered, I prefer my goal line stands on the seven-yard line instead of the one-yard line.
In an abrupt metaphor shift, I say this because of the position of the chess pieces on the board. This is not simple speculation on my part. During the oral arguments of Obergefell before the Supreme Court, this issue was brought up by one of the justices, and he was told plainly that this “would be an issue.” And here is why it has to be an issue.
In 1983, Bob Jones University lost a case before the Supreme Court (8 to 1), in which it was decided that it was acceptable to revoke the tax exempt status of a religious institution if the practices of said institution were contrary to a compelling government public policy. The public policy in that case was eradicating racial discrimination.
Bob Jones had a university policy that prohibited interracial dating. The merits of their policy are neither here nor there when it comes to the constitutional issue, but it should be said — once again — that bigots are among the best friend that the statists ever had. They are the gift that never quits giving. Moses couldn’t have been a student BJU, even if he had agreed to live off campus with that Cushite woman (Num. 12:1).
Now everybody ought to know that if you take the king’s coin you become the king’s man. Government money always comes with strings. Christian organizations (philanthropic, educational, etc.) that receive actual federal largesse are just asking for federal meddling. You accepted that $100,000 gladly enough. Why are you now bucking when they cluster around with some mandatory suggestions?
So many Christians, wise to their tricks, refused to take any federal grants, subsidies, and so on. Good on them.
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