JoeyKnothead wrote:From
Post 48:
Grumpy wrote:
The first and foremost goal of churches is paying the power bill, the mortgage and the salaries of the pastors and his helpers(85%). Many of these churches today spend more on raising funds and building lavish church buildings(and obtaining many other tax free realestate holdings)than they ever spend helping others. If this 85% is discounted then it is obvious that religious people give no more to real charity than the non-religious/secular.
While not commenting on the numbers, I can say I have personally built more than one church that cost over $10 million. Among the features of these churches, one wonders if such a lavish (and garish imo) display of wealth would be better spent on a much cheaper metal building with less features - the savings going to the poor and needy.
Of course there's the issue of drawing adherents (and funds) to a metal building versus a fancy one.
In Gainesville, GA there's a church that has an elevator
for the preacher's car. Instead of being bothered with getting out and riding a normal elevator up, he can just drive the whole car in and go up to his floor. If that's not an example of putting one's needs above the poor, I can't imagine what would be.
Of course we know these examples may not be the norm, but they are so abundant as to inform the issue.
There is more to it. Churches have obtained and vigorously defended tax-exempt status, while accumulating monetary wealth and real estate. While failing to function as charities*, they have effectively been subsidized by the tax payers, who pay more so that the churches might pay none at all.
* Three examples:
1. The vatican holds one of the largest reserves of gold in the world, and is heavily invested in non-gold assets around the world. The total wealth of the RCC is a closely guarded secret, but almost certainly measures in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
2. Only one church to my knowledge, The Salvation Army, is primarily organized as a conduit of resources to the poor.
3. My last church distributed less than $5000 (and occasionally less than $2000) per year to the needy over the past 10 years on a total budget of $700,000. For the members (most of whom don't strictly tithe, according to studies), the church was their main "charity". As a charity, that church's overhead exceeded 99%, an absolutely abysmal record. FWIW, this is not an unusual statistic for churches.
