The televangelist thieves of the modern era are no different from the John Tetzels of the past — though Indulgence peddlers like Tetzel (Tetzel!) only promised salvation in the afterlife, not prosperity in this.
That said, I can understand the IRS' reluctance to challenge churches per se. One man's faith is another man's belly laugh (or outrage), and trying to impose some sort of orthodoxy on the breadth of religious belief would be far too easy to be used as a weapon (as history teaches us, bloodily, over and over).
Prosperity Gospel "Send Us Your Seed Money" yahoos will, I trust, face the music (thinking "Night on Bald Mountain" here) once they shake off this mortal coil, but, in the meantime, they are a too real justification for stripping churches of tax exemption as a general policy. Which would, sadly, impact a lot of churches who actually do a lot of good in society, but this sort of thing is just sickening.
Like I told +Mary Oswell while we watched the show, I wonder how long until people start declaring themselves as their own religion to gain all of the rights and privileges of churches.
+Stan Pedzick It does sound like a great way to save some money. That parsonage tax exemption sounds pretty sweet.
The IRS is far too reluctant to challenge churches. The tax exemption is conditional on churches not engaging in political activity, but church leaders regularly tell their congregations how to vote and are never called on it.
I think there would be a way to make churches start paying taxes while still allowing exemptions for their specific charitable work.
While there are organizations that have both for-profit and not-for-profit branches, that level of organization may be beyond what the ordinary denomination can easily do. The real abusers of the system (as described so eloquently by Oliver) already have teams of tax lawyers advising them on how to make it all work; the average church down the block runs on (very) part-time volunteers for dealing with finances, and that level of complication may not be easy to address.
We'll see. I expect a change in all of this, though not maybe for another decade or so.