Clergy Eye Wealth as a Weapon

An increasing number of influential churchmen seem determined to put the denominational investment dollar to work in the social arena.

For years now, liberal clergy have set their sights on political power as the dynamism whereby the Church influences society. Now they apparently are convinced that money talks the loudest. This is not to say that the main leadership of the big denominations is sold yet on the use of wealth as a weapon. Many doubt the propriety and wisdom of it—and the criticism comes from both left and right.

But here and there church agencies are experimenting with the impact they can achieve by throwing around their collective financial weight. And there’s plenty of it to throw around: church-owned real estate in the United States alone has been estimated as worth more than $80 billion. That’s ten times the value of all iron and steel plants in America.

The American Association of Fund Raising Counsel estimates that religious institutions in this country are now taking in about $6.5 billion by voluntary offerings. That figure puts the Church into the category of the nation’s leading “industries” (see chart).

Despite churchmen’s vociferous expression of concern for people everywhere, it is doubtful that much more than 1 per cent of total church income finds its way into foreign economies. All available figures indicate that the vast portion of the money is pumped back into affluent American society.

Of growing significance is the amount of money being spent on bureaucracy, entertainment, meetings, and travel. Most church meetings are held in fancy and expensive big-city and resort hotels—the National Council of Churches’ General Assembly last December and this year’s Southern Baptist Convention were both held in high-rate Miami Beach hotels.

Wealth as a weapon has traditionally been an internal fact of life for the churches. Entrenched ecclesiastical machines commonly manipulate the course of supposedly democratic policy-making with administrative monies, pension and other securities plans, and so on.

Recently, however, there have been signs of the use of church investment as an external force. The Vatican shadow over the fish industry has been obvious for centuries, though relaxation of meatless Friday rules has not had as serious an effect as first expected. More recently some churches have threatened to withdraw multi-million-dollar deposits in banks that do business with South Africa in an effort to get those banks to exert pressure against that country’s apartheid policies. Church stockholders have applied leverage upon Kodak management in behalf of equal-opportunity employment practices. The Roman Catholic archdiocese in St. Louis has rated firms with which it does business for its parishes according to the firms’ Negro hiring practices. A small church in New York got wide attention when it got rid of its holdings in a napalm-producing company in protest of military use of that killer chemical in Viet Nam.

More such adventures can be expected, though resistance within the churches is building up. From the left one hears the avant-garde complaining that much more money ought to be going to the poor and downtrodden, that standing investment in stocks and real estate such as big new churches is a waste of opportunity and forfeits mission.* From the right one hears that the churches have no mandate to exert financial pressure for specific social goals over which the constituencies themselves disagree, particularly since the funds often were given for spiritual objectives. There is also the argument that in the United States the church that takes on a company in a financial battle is in a sense fighting itself—since the leaders of industry today are largely members of mainline denominations.

A big question revolves around how much money the churches have to fight with. Annual-income figures are fairly firm, but the value of stock holdings is elusive. Robert J. Regan, reporting for United Press International, said recently that some stockbrokers tried two years ago to survey church securities holdings and gave up. The Wall Street Journal in May calculated the market value of stock investments of the United Church of Christ at $175 million. The London Economist has estimated the Vatican securities portfolio as being worth about $5.6 billion, and in Regan’s report it was estimated that the holdings of U. S. dioceses and orders totaled about half that.

Regan quoted a source as guessing on the overall wealth of U. S. religious institutions this way:

“If you insist on a ballpark figure, counting real property, securities, and other investments of all U. S. religious bodies—I’d plump for $100 billion.”

Churches Facing Property Tax?

Churches, hospitals, private schools, and charitable agencies would be required to pay property taxes under a revolutionary plan drawn up by a government-appointed committee in Ontario.

“We find little to justify burdening all property owners with the cost of relief given to places of worship in recognition of the indirect benefits” they give society generally, the committee said.

The proposal, five years in the making, is the most serious attempt anywhere to tax church real estate, though spokesmen for organized labor reportedly have advocated a similar plan in Pennsylvania. Church tax exemption has been traditional even in countries where church-state separation is maintained and where governments are hostile to religion. Throughout religious history the trend has been the other way: churches have generally been recipients of government funds. In many countries where there is a state church, the citizenry is still taxed to pay for church upkeep and clergy salaries.

Religious leaders in Ontario have, understandably, been generally critical of the five-man committee’s tax plan. At present, all churches and religious-education centers, but not manses and rectories, are tax-exempt.

The co-called Smith report, named after committee chairman Lancelot Smith, suggested a procedure to soften the shock to churches. It recommended assessing church properties at 5 per cent of actual value in the first year of taxation and rising 5 per cent a year for seven years to 35 per cent. The report advocated a review of church taxes at that point and said that eventually they should perhaps be leveled off at “one-half the normal rate” because the indirect benefits that flow to society from such places of worship “justify some measure of relief from local taxation.”

Ontario Premier John Robarts has already said that he can’t see why churches and other places of worship should be exempt from property taxation. He declared last April that because any removal of such restrictions would be an unpopular move, the provincial government (rather than the municipalities) would have to handle it.

A nationwide Royal Commission on Taxation recommended earlier this year that religious organizations should retain their tax-exempt status but should be taxed on their business income and some of their investment income.

Many churchmen have voiced concern for the future prosperity of the churches, particularly those heavily in debt, if a property tax is initiated. The argument against taxation of churches has also been based heavily on the thesis that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Those who counter such a line of reasoning say that if things get so bad that the government wants to destroy churches it can do so in many ways apart from taxes.

In Washington, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been urging the Internal Revenue Service to impose income taxes on churches to the extent that they are engaged in unrelated business.

The Rev. C. Stanley Lowell, associate director, told an IRS hearing this past summer that “a church which engages in the manufacture of liquor or in the operation of gambling games should have its income from such enterprises taxed.”

In New York, the church-state scene lies under the pall of a proposed new constitution that allows public aid to churches. But it’s not yet law. Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz ruled unconstitutional a grant of $100,000 in state funds to Fordham University, a Jesuit institution, to support a professorship for communications theorist Marshall McLuhan. The grant was part of a state program to attract noted scholars. McLuhan, a Roman Catholic, had already moved his family from Toronto to New York, and Fordham officials had assured him that they would pay if the state reneged.

‘Fairness Doctrine’ Test

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked—for the first time—to decide whether a broadcaster may be compelled to grant free time to persons attacked over his station. The test case was brought by the Red Lion, Pennsylvania, Broadcasting Company in connection with a “Christian Crusade” broadcast in which the Rev. Billy James Hargis of Tulsa, Oklahoma, criticized Fred Cook of New Jersey, a writer for the Nation magazine. The Federal Communications Commission, in accordance with its “fairness doctrine,” ordered the station to give Cook time to reply.

Ford Grants

The Ford Foundation is giving more than one million dollars to organizations that are either religiously sponsored or religiously initiated. The largest grant, $578,000, goes to the Southern Consumers’ Education Foundation to help develop cooperatives among low-income groups. A $160,000 award goes to the National Council of Churches for its training and self-help housing program for dispossessed farm workers.

Trial Marriage

Local congregations of two merging denominations apparently will be given a year to see whether they like the union.

A joint merger committee of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. and the Reformed Church in America suggests that all congregations of both be brought into the new church for one year. During the second year a congregation would be allowed to withdraw, with its property. Thereafter, none would be permitted to withdraw. The committee also backed previous proposals for a new confession “without delay” once the Presbyterian Reformed Church in America is organized.

Rhodesia Bars Missionary

The Rhodesian Methodist Conference says the white minority regime of Ian Smith has barred another American missionary from readmittance. He is the Rev. Hunter B. Griffin, currently on furlough.

The Methodist mission board said eighty-one Methodist missionaries are assigned to Southern Rhodesia. No reason was given for the action against Griffin.

Rhodesia’s Methodists are officially opposed to the government’s racial policies.

Sudan Thaw

The Sudan has ended its eleven-year campain against Roman Catholic priests and missionaries, Religious News Service reports. Catholics have been critical of the “Moslem-dominated” Sudan regime for its confiscation of religious schools, expulsion of missionaries, and strict supervision of Christian activities.

The government last year expelled a large group of missionaries from the largely pagan South on charges that they supported a terrorist movement there. But more recently new Prime Minister Sayed Sadiq al-Mahdi wrote Pope Paul VI that Christians and Muslims have a “common interest” in attacking paganism.

Milwaukee

A limping, blister-ridden Roman Catholic priest in the forefront of a militant open-housing marchathon in racially tense Milwaukee vowed: “There’ll be no cooling whatsoever.” Abusive “white power” countermarchers, continued barrages of bricks and bottles, volleys of tear gas, and the specter of a major race riot lent substance to the statement.

The militant, civil-rights firebrand is the Rev. James Groppi, assistant pastor of St. Boniface Church, an integrated parish of 800 in the inner core of the Negro ghetto. Father Groppi, 36, a Milwaukee native of Italian extraction, was arrested four times in one week but continued to lead the protests.

The priest was joined by Negro comedian Dick Gregory in an effort to wring an open-housing ordinance from the city’s common council. Mayor Henry Maier—frequent target of the protesters—called Groppi a “white Uncle Tom” and said that open housing would only accelerate the flight of the middle class to the suburbs, leaving Negroes and impoverished whites in the city itself.

Although some of the daily marches and sit-ins were peaceful, with horseplay and congeniality between crowds in the largely Polish south side and Groppi’s marchers—sometimes numbering in the thousands—the dominant mood was hatred, cunning, and anger. After a “mothers’ march,” 100 militants converged on City Hall and wreaked damage estimated at $3,000 on the mayor’s office. The destructive rampage, allegedly directed by Father Groppi, came on the heels of an impassioned plea by his superior, Milwaukee Archbishop William Cousins, to end future violence “at all costs.” The prelate resisted pressure from screaming white mobs to dismiss Father Groppi, but appeased them by referring the demand to his senate of priests.

Father Groppi, who began slum work while at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, is adviser to the city’s Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Another member of the council admitted that Father Groppi has been criticized by the archbishop for “imprudent tactics” but staunchly maintained that the priest has the complete support of the Negro community.

Both the Catholic Interracial Council of Milwaukee and the National Council of Churches have supported the group’s fight for open housing. The Catholic Herald Citizen condemned the “hate-in” enacted on the south side by white mobs. The paper sadly observed that many presumably were Catholics—“human and Christian dropouts … who behaved as if they had fled their humanity.”

Buoyed by promises of national NAACP support, Father Groppi invited black youth to join demonstrations as part of their education instead of attending school. “We’re marching to City Hall and that’s more important than going to third-rate school,” he declared in a rally. School officials noted first-day attendance dipped 2,350 from the previous year.

Gregory, who calls the priest “Ajax, the White Knight,” took over for the minister when he temporarily was sidelined with blisters and a touch of the flu. Having reportedly canceled three months of engagements, the comedian asserted he would stay “as long as they need me.… We’re not just walking for Milwaukee. We’re trying to change the hunkie’s way of life he’s been getting used to for 400 years.”

Prayer meetings, chanting, and singing fortified the marchers’ courage as they sallied into “enemy” territory. Groppi’s group resounded with “Nobody’s Gonna Turn Me Around,” and “I’m Gonna Testify to What the White Man’s Done to Me,” while 500 south-side Polish youths taunted in sing-song polka rhythm: “Ee yi, ee yi, ee yi oh/Father Groppi’s gotta go!”

The peripatetic priest contends that the church’s stake in the movement is nothing less than its own survival. An aide said in an interview: “If the church does not act and act now, it will forfeit its divine mission … to correct social abuses.”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.