I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add to this, other than to express my utter dismay.
Unitarian Universalists have for decades presided over births, marriages and memorials. The church operates in every state, with more than 5,000 members in Texas alone.
But according to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Denison Unitarian church isn’t really a religious organization — at least for tax purposes. Its reasoning: the organization “does not have one system of belief.”
Never before — not in this state or any other — has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group’s religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn’s ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller’s office.
Like Mark Kleiman, I’ve heard all the Unitarian jokes. Did you hear the one about how a Unitarian starts a prayer? “To whom it may concern…” But this lunacy in Texas really isn’t funny.
Unitarian Universalists have a faith tradition that spans centuries in this country and no state has ever taken such a radical, offensive, and unnecessary step as this.
Shockingly, the state sounds prepared to pursue its official bigotry as far as it can.
Strayhorn vows to continue the legal fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. “Otherwise, any wannabe cult who dresses up and parades down Sixth Street on Halloween will be applying for an exemption,” she said in an April 23 news release.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t a new problem. It’s been ongoing in Texas for several years now. As my friends at Americans United noted yesterday, the controversy stems from a 1997 decision of Strayhorn’s predecessor.
This bout of denials follows the 1997 decision of then-Comptroller John Sharp to deny tax-exempt status to the Ethical Culture Fellowship of Austin. Asserting that Sharp overstepped his authority, the Ethical Culture Fellowship sued, along with allied groups including Baptists, Lutherans and Mennonites. Both the lower court and the Texas Supreme Court ruled against Sharp, but Strayhorn vows to continue the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And, just as importantly, the Texas standard that wants to exclude “wannabe cults” could have a sweeping ripple effect.
While this recent spate of decisions has only applied to a single UU church, a Freethought group and a Humanist group, others have cause for concern. There are 40 UU congregations in Texas, and the comptroller’s definition of religion also threatens to disqualify Buddhist groups because they also do not mandate belief in a supreme being.
I’d love to hear Strayhorn explain the exact legal standard for what qualifies as a “wannabe cult” under Texas law. Which government official will decide — and how will he or she decide — when a faith tradition qualifies as a “real” religion? And doesn’t this have “excessive entanglement” written all over it?