No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. -Matthew 6:24
This is very disturbing that clergy and churches agree to turn from preaching the Gospel to a more “social gospel” and now under the Government thumb leaning on the “sermon scale”, agreeing to sermonize about GAIA worship – simply to avoid taxes. A modern tale of selfishness and self-justification? Is this the nose of Government pushing its way under the Church’s tent side? And especially in today’s political climate (in which the political infuses into almost every nook and cranny, thanks to Progressives – reformatted, emphasis mine; more background after the jump):
Churches in a Maryland county are being offered tax breaks for incorporating environmentalism into their sermons.
In Prince George’s County, 30 pastors have started preaching ‘green’ ministries to avoid extra taxes, the Washington Post reports. The taxes depend on the acreage for all property owners, including churches, as part of Maryland’s “storm water remediation fee.” Reverend Nathaniel B. Thomas of Forestville New Redeemer Baptist Church said he attempted to challenge the fee and said: “Once Uncle Sam finds a way to take your money, he doesn’t stop.”
Mostly because those behind that “way” believe it was always theirs to begin with – even that belonging to God.
Thomas acknowledged the people of his congregation have higher priorities than the environment, such as employment and family-related issues: “I know I’m not going to get a lot of ‘amens’ today,” adding, “The question is, are we taking care of what God has blessed us with?” Thomas also voiced his support for environmental consciousness: “What God made was good, but it’s us that made it bad.”
Right – but it needed that Government to threaten you before you “evolved”? That you had to look the “opportunity” square in the eyes (of the Tax Collector) and your hand on your collection plate to realize that you had “strayed from your First Calling”?
Church leaders were able to negotiate a deal with the county’s environmental director Adam Ortiz. The deal reduces fees on the condition that churches introduce programs to:
- lessen their environmental impact such as planting trees and constructing gardens as well as attempts to prop-up environmentalism.
- Ortiz told WBAL Radio that churches “don’t have to preach, per se,” and they could avoid the fees entirely if they: “(P)rovide educational programs to teach [parishioners] about how to be more sustainable. And to help them engage in grant programs and other ways that they can control the runoff from their property.”
OK, I’m OK with the first item in mitigating “pollution” (e.g., rain from the sky – just like CO2 that we breath out; /sarcasm). I do believe that houses of worship should not be subject to this but this is the lesser of the egregious terms. It is the second that is far reaching – I was wrong in that this is not the nose under the tent but the beginning of the choke chain around the neck. The precedence is set – Government can now tell a church what it will preach under threat of a bad outcome. It is forcing a speech that a Pastor would not otherwise say.
The Pastors have agreed – Yes, Mr. Government Tax Collector, you will help write my sermon and help write our Sunday School lessons, our youth programs, our outreach, and play a role in our adult programs. We shall comply. We shall serve two masters. From a country founded on religious freedom, we see another example of the secularists attack on traditional Christan teaching (albeit in a flanking manover in injecting “other than the gospel” into what would be sacred teachings (at least in the churches I have been a member of)). We have seen the attacks grow on Christian morality on multiple fronts – right vs wrong, sexual immorality, a selfish “me first” or “I am most important”, the denigration of the idea of a Higher Power, and more importantly, the lessening of self-responsibility for one’s own actions and a lack of accountability except to themselves. Those of traditional faith are lambasted as racists, bigots, homophobes, rigid, dogmatic, out of touch, and “unevolved” (what ever that means). Bitter clingers to their Bibles, I think someone that used to be important once said.
These Pastors – how affirming to God’s first calling of the importance to preach the gospel to save souls were they to accede to diminish their status as God’s representative and enlarge their “responsibility to Government”?
…Regardless of how one feels about environmentalism, it is stunningly hypocritical if the same people who argue stridently for a “separation of church and state” have no qualms whatsoever with the state meddling in the churches to push government propaganda. This is symptomatic of a broader issue: why the government has control over church messages through its determination of tax-exempt status to begin with.
The political is the personal; the personal is the political. Certainly we religion affecting our public lives – I vote my beliefs and I am not apologetic for it and it is most true that others completely opposite mine do as well. However, this is a first for me, in that beliefs are being co-opted directly to serve a government purpose.
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More of the background of this tax – starting with the Federal Government’s EPA leaning down on the States and now the State leaning on the Church:
The “storm management fee,” passed by the state legislature in 2012, will go into effect following a decree from Democrat Gov. Martin O’Malley.
But first, a little background [via the The Gazette]: In 2010 the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency ordered Maryland to reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay so that nitrogen levels fall 22 percent and phosphorus falls 15 percent from current amounts. The price tag: $14.8 billion. And where do we get the $14.8 billion? By taxing so-called “impervious surfaces,” anything that prevents rain water from seeping into the earth (roofs, driveways, patios, sidewalks, etc.) thereby causing stormwater run off. In other words, a rain tax.
The EPA ordered Maryland to raise the money (an unfunded mandate), Maryland ordered its 10 largest counties to raise the money (another unfunded mandate) and, now, each of those counties is putting a local rain tax in place by July 1. The 10 areas affected by the “rain tax” include Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard, Anne Arundel, Carroll, Hartford, Charles, Frederick, Baltimore counties, and Baltimore city.
“Fees will be calculated on the surface area of properties as the theory is that roofs, driveways and carparks create more potential for drainage problems and water contamination,” Metro explains. “Councils are supposed to determine how much to charge per square foot, but the fee depends on the size of the building and surrounding paved surfaces.” But how will tax collectors know how to tax “impervious surfaces”? How will they know how much to charge per square foot? Again, we turn to The Gazette: “Thanks to satellite imagery and geographic information systems, Big Brother can measure your roof and driveway (and you thought drones were only used for killing terrorists).”
Yes, according to this report, Maryland will use satellite imagery to calculate “storm management” fees.
And how does the state plan to spend these new tax dollars? It’s unclear:
The state law is kind of squishy. It can be spent to build and maintain stream and wetland restoration projects. And, of course, a lot of it will go to “monitoring, inspection, enforcement, review of stormwater management plans and permit applications and mapping of impervious surfaces.” In other words, hiring more bureaucrats to administer the rain tax program.
It can also be spent on “public education and outreach” (whatever that means) and on “grants to nonprofit organizations” (i.e. to the greenies who pushed the tax through the various levels of government).
Also: “[S]tate lawmakers exempted government-owned property from the rain tax but imposed it on religions and nonprofits (which own big roofs and parking lots).”
