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Full-Text Articles in Religion Law
A More Capacious Concept Of Church, Philip Hackney, Samuel D. Brunson
A More Capacious Concept Of Church, Philip Hackney, Samuel D. Brunson
Articles
United States tax law provides churches with extra benefits and robust protection from IRS enforcement actions. Churches and religious organizations are automatically exempt from the income tax without needing to apply to be so recognized and without needing to file a tax return. Beyond that, churches are protected from audit by stringent procedures. There are good reasons to consider providing a distance between church and state, including the state tax authority. In many instances, Congress granted churches preferential tax treatment to try to avoid excess entanglement between church and state, though that preferential treatment often just shifts the locus of …
A Comment On Religious Convictions And Lawmaking, John H. Garvey
A Comment On Religious Convictions And Lawmaking, John H. Garvey
Michigan Law Review
Professor Kent Greenawalt's Cooley Lectures on Religious Convictions and Lawmaking are fresh, honest, and thoughtful. They offer some troubling questions for liberal democratic theorists (Greenawalt names Bruce Ackerman and John Rawls as representatives of the class) who argue that good citizens and officials should set their religious co~victions aside when they deal with political questions. Greenawalt contends that religious liberal democrats are not committed to such a program of self-denial - that sometimes (though not always) political judgments can rest on religious convictions. I think he is right but too modest about the implications of his thesis.