Should We Be Asked to Pay for Rebuilding Houses of Worship?
For more than 200 years, congregants have been responsible for the construction and repair of houses of worship. Now there’s a move afoot to shift some of that responsibility to taxpayers. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Congress is trying to rewrite federal rules to allow houses of worship to receive direct Federal Emergency Management Agency grants to pay for storm-related repairs.
The hurricane was devastating, but we mustn’t let that become an excuse to ignore basic constitutional principles. Church-state separation protects the right of taxpayers to support only the religious institutions of their choice, and it ensures the independence and integrity of faith communities. Houses of worship exist primarily to teach the tenets of their religion. They should be supported by donations, not government subsidies. Houses of worship should rely on private insurance and low-interest loans to meet their needs - not money taken from the taxpayer.
H.R. 592, the so-called Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act of 2013, has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives.
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