>> From the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:17 >> John Haskell: Welcome everybody, to the Kluge Center, or right next to the Kluge Center here at the Library of Congress. My names John Haskell and I'm the director of the Kluge Center. The center, just to give you a little background, was founded in 2000, based on a very generous gift from philanthropist John W Kluge. And I'm going to read a couple of lines from our charter so you get a feel for what purpose of the Kluge center is. Its mission is to quote, reinvigorate the interconnection between thought and action, bridging the gap button scholarship and policy making. So to that end, the Kluge Center brings some of the world's great thinkers to the library to make use of the collections and engage in conversations like this one, addressing the challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. We also administer an award, the Kluge Prize for Achievement in the study of humanity. Which was recently awarded, just last month, to renowned historian and outgoing Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust. I encourage you to visit our website to get a boarder sense of the different things we're doing at Kluge, with the residential scholars and others, other things. As well as the fact that, if you've visited the website in the past, it's been, also been reinvigorated and it's readable and navigable in ways that is really quite exciting. And we also have a blog on there called, Insights. And we regularly have new blogs going. Either just boring ones that I write to update what Kluge is doing, as well as more dynamic ones written by our scholars and our staff. Today's speaker, Sally Gordon, was in residence in the Kluge center last fall as the, Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History. This position was created to enable a distinguished thinker to spend a period of residence at the Library, using the collections and exploring the history of America with special attention to ethical dimensions of economic and social policy. Although Mr. Maguire couldn't be with us, we're very appreciative of course of the endowment of the Chair and his generous donation. Which has attracted, really some of the best scholars in the field and it's been a treasure for the Library. And in fact, two of the librarians, Dr. Carla's Hayden's scholarly advisors, it's called the, Scholar's Council, which advises her and me. Two of them were drawn from the ranks of Maguire chairs. So we're excited about that. Today's lecture by Sally is, When Congress Taxed Churches, Religion and Politics in District of Columbia after the Civil War. A little bit about Sally, she's the Arlin M. Adams professor of constitutional law and also professor of history, at the University of Pennsylvania. She's well know for her work on religion and American life and the law of church and state. Especially for the ways that religious liberty developed over the course of our history. She's a frequent commentator in news media on the constitutional law of religion and debates about religious freedom. Her current book project is quote, Freedoms Holy Light, Disestablishment in America, 1776 to 1876, end quote. Which is about the historical relationship between religion, politics and law. Her first book, the Mormon Question, polygamy and constitutional conflict in nineteen century America, 2002 from the University of North Carolina Press, won the Mormon History Associations in the Utah Historical Associations best book awards in 2003. Her second book from Harvard University Press in 2010, The Spirit of the Law, Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America, explores the world of church and state in the last, just the last century. We will have a question period as Dr. Gordon has concluded her presentation. Please joining me in welcoming her. Thank you Sally. ^M00:04:16 ^M00:04:21 >> That was such a lovely introduction, thank you so much. And I'm so thrilled to be back here at the Kluge Center, where I was in residence last fall as John said. And I'm particularly glad to see friends from PAN, from other schools and the district and of course from the Center. When I was here I not only enjoyed exploring this library, but also the city itself. And visiting many of the locations that I'll be talking about today, including this one, the National Cathedral. My lecture as you have heard, is about taxes. And I'll be honest, taxes can be really boring. But, this story is about slavery, religion, the civil war, the constitution and of course, money. Lots of money. Just to give one example, in 2016 tax exempt religious property in New York City alone, was valued at 12 billion dollars. Traditionally, local governments assess the value of tax exempt property very conservatively. So, it's undervalued significantly. But even then, even at it's low rate, it's clear that New York City lost about a billion dollars in taxes in 2016 and values have only sky rocketed since then. So what I like to say is, you know, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money. And what's more, nationwide at least, nobody knows for certain, but at least 10% of all private property belongs to religious organizations. That is as much as the states, all the states own combined. And the interest of religious organizations are evident. In particular, the wealthiest churches, can you say National Cathedral. Have been the biggest winners from tax exemption. And when churches have been taxed, the poorest have suffered most. There doesn't seem to be a just system available here. In the 19th century, for example, when there were relatively robust tax regimes for religious property, many tax assessors tended to go after minority churches. In California, especially African American and Chinese churches suffered. And in some border states, especially assessors went after southern supporting churches after the Civil War when republicans were in control and they could get away with punishing them. So there's plenty of finality, honestly, as well as big questions as constitutional law of religious freedom in local government that I'm focusing on today. From where I stand, your humble neighborhood legal historian of religion, this is like ground zero. This is command central this is what I care about. And the truth of the matter is, that religion and taxes have been at the center of many disputes in our own era as well. Think about funding for public and religious schools, commercial uses of property owned by religious organizations. You know, they have Starbucks in they, and gyms and so on. And whether churches and other religious structures can be excluded by zoning boards and city planners. So this history has a contemporary relevance, a subject I'll return to in my conclusion. But for the lecture today, I want to focus on how Americans navigated politics and religion. Especially what separation of church and state, or what we formally call disestablishment, what that meant. By the early 1830's, every jurisdiction had disestablished, which meant that no government collected taxes for religious organizations any long. That's about all it meant. Beyond that, nothing much was clear. Which was clear though, was that the states, not the federal government, were the important actors in the story. Congress only got involved in the 1870's. And then, only as the local government for the District of Columbia. Our story is about local power and how it was deployed. And taxes are always important to those who pay them, especially if it comes from where they live. This city, Washington, became important as an epicenter of debate over taxation of religious property because of the Civil War and its consequences. Congress imposed taxes on religious property here in 1874. In became one of several places to do so. ^M00:10:01 California did in 1868. Missouri taxed religious property between 1865 and 75. My own home state of Pennsylvania, debated the issue and decided narrowly against taxation in the 1870's. In Massachusetts, a bill hastily drawn up and hardly debated at all failed but got more than a third of all votes cast. Iowa and Wisconsin were embroiled in debates in the 1870's. And in New York state, a special committee appointed by the Episcopal Diocese reported on rumblings about taxation around the country. The report complained that, intemperate men, by which they meant republicans, were at the root of the problem and right-thinking men of conservative habits supported exemption. So clearly this was a hard-fought topic in the 1870s. And the truth is, that it was related to all the major issues of the day. The relationship of church and state was big news. In part because the opponents of slavery had argued for so long and so effectively, that churches were as much a main stay of the slave system as governments were. Many people remember, if you don't I have it here, that abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the constitution of July 4th, 1854, to cheers from on lookers. He called the document, a covenant with death, because the constitution protected slavery. Only after the Civil War was the constitution amended in the late 1860's to ban involuntary servitude, protect against discriminatory laws and official treatment and guarantee the right to vote. But, religious groups were just as fiercely attacked by anti-slavery activists. Many of them deeply religious individuals themselves. And so here I just need to take a quick detour to setup the background for what unfolded in Washington after the war ended in 1865. What happened then was deeply influenced by events starting in the late 1830's, when dedicated abolitionists began to argue that American churches were what they called, The Bulwarks of American Slavery. There you see this, the toga is particularly attractive on this guy I think. Another said, the only escape for the slave from his bondage is over the ruins of the American church and the American state. In other words, they condemned both church and state. And they condemned what they saw at the union of the two, the union of church and state, in a conspiracy to promote and protect slavery in law. And to hold congregants to what they called, spiritual servitude in church, when the denominations would not broke any questions about slavery. These activists had a point. They understood that American denominations had pioneered the theory that silence on slavery was key to national influence. Political parties had learned from the example of churches. For some abolitionist who opposed the growth of slavery and increased legal protections for it, to push back meant making, you know, jumping up in the middle of a pro-slavery lecture and screaming about how you -- please don't jump up. Screaming about how much you opposed it. Or interrupting the preacher in the middle of a sermon or holding protests at party conventions. But for many of them, voting with their feet meant actually leaving the institutions that they thought were so corrupted. To purify themselves, abolitionist left behind organizations such as Baptist associations, that were known to do what they called, exclude the infant sprinkler. Baptist believe in adult baptism, not sprinkling of infants. Exclude that person and welcome the infant stealer. Welcome the slave catcher, the slave dealer. They even accused southern preachers of supplying themselves with sexual partners, by using slave women to satisfy their lust. I mean, this got really personal. Many of those who shared this deeply religious abhorrence for slavery, participated in their own exodus out of organized religion. In the book of Revelation in the New Testament, a voice from Heaven called to the Jews of Babylon, "Come out of her, my people. That ye be not partakers of her sins." Those abolitionists who took this injunction literally became known, I kid you not, as come outers. They were come outers. Because they left their churches and they often abandoned political parties as well. They condemned their former denominations as sinful for their hand in glove relationship with governments. Major Christian denominations including Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics, officially remained neutral on slavery because they argued that enslaved status was as civil, rather than a religious question. Even the Congregationalists, my own New England Congregationalists, could not be trusted to hold a strong stance. As their shabby treatment of this very distinguished person, Alexander Crummell at Yale, in 1840 demonstrated. He founded St. Luke's Church here, which some of you may know. And I had fun going to that too. And after 1830's, even the Quakers abandoned direct engagement on slavery. In the process, these church bodies abdicated any responsibility for the peculiar institution. In the eyes of abolitionist, they washed their hands just as Pontius Pilate had, turning their backs on sin and violence. And in their turn, added the abolitionist, political institutions and judges worked assiduously to protect slavery through inhumane laws and claim that their hands were tied by the national constitution. This was the union of church and state that produced such outrage and shielded sinners. In this perspective, disestablishment was a cruel joke. An excuse for violating the most basic principles of justice. Those who came out of their houses of worship, therefore were critical of government and organized religion. There were a lot of come outers. It's difficult to recover numbers for a movement that was local and ephemeral and anti-authoritarian. But the best estimates are that about 250,000 people across the upper north and Midwest, left their churches, because they would not compromise with slavery. And they extended the radical religious critique to other forms of coercion too. In their eyes, enslavement could and did come in many forms. To some, membership in churches that failed to speak out against, man stealing, as they called it, was itself a form involuntary servitude. The great anti-slavery activist, Frederick Douglas, a come outer I should say. Explained that he remained a fugitive, even after escaping from the south. Because American religious institutions condemned him and their own members, to continued bondage. Spiritual bondage. He -- Douglas said, he had been given authorization to understand what sin was by Jesus and his message. Something that clearly these denominations had not been engaged with. Another observer, the acid tongued English woman, Frances Trollope, I don't know if anyone's ever read her, she's so much fun. Wrote of her four years in Cincinnati in the early 1840s'. She said that she had learned that religious tyranny survived disestablishment and had become much more oppressive than the paying of a religious tax has ever been. "Church and state", she said, ^M00:20:00 "hobble along side by side, notwithstanding their boasted independence." These activates that I'm talking about this afternoon, worked to eradicate that Ecclesiastical tyranny and other form of servitude. Eventually even including, the authority exercised by husbands over wives. A cause that Frederick Douglas embraced at the first Women's Rights Convention Seneca Falls in 1848. And it made sense, that the first Women's Rights meetings were held in a small church in a small town, in upstate New York. Because that's where the action was. Think of it like, upstate New York was then what California is now. It was the place where experimentation and exciting ideas came to life. The people who came out of churches in the late 1830's and early 1840's, had also witnessed a great recession, which cemented what they attacked as the true union of church and state. So now I'm going to shift back to taxes and the issues raises by tax exemptions for religious property. In 1837, a major financial crisis revealed the shaky nature of many financial institutions in the United States. Bad loans, failure to investigate expensive and ridiculous projects, careless state governments and so on, were the center piece of widespread bankruptcies and bank failures. Kind of sound familiar? Right? [laughs] Did some of us live through something like this recently? The president at the time, Martin Van Buren a democrat, was so opposed to any relief for state and local governments, that he counseled those left penniless from the recession not to look to the national government for help, right? Presidents have learned since then. He earned the nickname, Martin Van Ruin, and lost his bid for re-election in 1840. But state governments changed. They changed drastically, especially across the north and Midwest. For the first time, they established more regular regimes of taxation, leaving property taxes to be collected and used by local governments and reserving income taxes for themselves. This rough divide still describes much of our state system of taxation. But there's a problem here. And I want to explore it. The states set the policy for property as well as income taxes but left the assessment and collection and most of the spending of property tax revenue to local governments. Anyone here think that their taxes are too high because local spending on schools is out of control? Right? That's a familiar. Or maybe, they come from the other side of the spectrum saying that, those people who gripe about taxes should stop whining because education is the most important local responsibility. Well, property taxes as the mainstay for local governments, has been in place for about 180 years. But the problem that I mentioned just now, is that state legislatures have control over what property is taxed, even though local governments are in charge of just about everything else associated with property taxes. And this sets up a perverse relationship. Put roughly, state governments don't lose any funding when they exempt a given class of tax payer from property taxes. So for example, a retirement community called, Holy Cross Village, was constructed by the Catholic church in South Bend Indiana. And, my favorite, theme park, Holy Land Experience, was built by a Baptist minister in Orlando, Florida. Both were denied claimed tax exemptions by their local county tax assessors and both tax assessors were overruled as the state legislature granted exemptions at the state level. Often, local tax collectors argue that these are profitable businesses. But, state legislatures are always much more accommodating. The role of states versus local government in granting such exemptions, has been the key problem from the very beginning. Massachusetts was the first state to exempt religious property in response to the new system of taxation in the late 1830's. This is literally the first tax exemption for religious property in American history. This is notable, it did not start with the revolution or the constitution. Then New Hampshire, New York, Iowa, Maryland, Connecticut and Wisconsin followed all before 1845. By own home state of Pennsylvania amended its constitution in 1838, providing for exemptions for the first time. I've read the constitutional debates and the controversy was hot. Eventually, the amendment passed but some delegates who opposed the exemptions said that they were so exhausted by the fights over the issue, that they finally voted for it so that the entire convention would not fail. In other words, a constitutional convention was about to fail over this. Everyone was assured that the exemption only extended to buildings used exclusively for worship. And they promised never to exempt parsonages, giving in on this one benefit they said, would not be the prequel for others. And ahem, I'm sorry to report that Pennsylvania exempted parsonages in 1873. [laughs] One study in the 1850's brought by the Philadelphia county tax assessors, argued based on a review of all property in the county, that the exemption for religious property raised taxes for other residence by at least 10%. And if religious property were fairly assessed so that the privilege was accurately valued, the number would be closer to 20%. And this is where our abolitionist come in. They opposed tax exemptions. They opposed anything that would treat religion specially, all should live according to the same rules, they argued. Add to this, and this is where it gets really complicated, the fact that the same legislatures that protected religious property also protected slave holders from taxation, at exactly the same time. In other words, legislatures delivered special tax status to slave holders and religious institutions just as the religious critique of them both gathered steam. More powerful and wide ranging state governments were drawn ever more tightly into the defense of slavery and of privileges for religious institutions. In light of this pattern, abolitionists had some good reason to complain about the relationship between religious denominations, state governments and slavery. The strings connecting them had only gotten stronger in the late 1830's and early 1840's. Our dissenters however, argued for much more diffuse government and much more diffuse religious life. They believed in true localism. The village level, they said, was the only reliable place where freedom and democracy could be protected. In state capitals by contrast, priests and tyrant's lived cheek by jowl, they use this kind of language all the time. It's so much fun. Each feeding the other and trading away the rights of persons to serve their own lust for power and wealth. Institutional bodies, like church corporations, state legislatures, were recognized as legal persons to be sure. But they were not human beings, said abolitionists. They exercised power, not on the basis of individual conscience, but on the search for a political identity and religious authority, as opposed to the individual who ^M00:30:00 whose conscience and access to understanding of what human rights truly mean, was uninterrupted by this corporate identity. So any elected or anointed men of power, they said, were prone to tyranny. Slavery was the most aggression oppression, but others traveled alongside. And in truth, it was a lot harder to do away with slavery than northern officials had expected. The violence, and this is where I get to Drew Faust, John. The violence and length of the Civil War that started in 1861, exceeded anything seen in prior human history. And during the war, minister sermons on both sides, stoked the bloodlust, turning the war into a religious event of apocalyptic proportions. Historians of religions have shown how crucial this religious interpretation was to the willingness to persevere in the face of unheard of death and suffering. Historians of the war itself, have begun to piece together how the dead were dealt with. [laughs] This is a gloomy topic. How the dead were dealt with, not children laughing. The great explosion of [laughs] of death in war, meant that everyone was affected by the carnage. And Drew Faust for example, has written that we have no accurate account of deaths to rely on, even of soldiers. By an enormous margin this was the bloodiest war Americans have ever endured. Faust and others have begun to explore the industries of death and medical treatment that emerged in the war. But nobody has really explored the ways that that war increased religious authority, influence and wealth. Here is where the city of Washington provides insight into the institutional aspects of religious life after the Civil War. And helps put into context the debate over tax exemption. Because the relationship between religion and government that had been the target of radical abolitionists, that relationship had only deepened across the war. The numbers tell the story and president Ulysses Grant, was horrified by what he saw. He was a veteran of the war and one of Lincoln's most trusted generals. A man who oversaw many battles and many, many thousands of deaths. But he did not expect to learn how much wealth was shifted to religious control. His final state of the union message to congress dealt extensively with this issue. In the lead up to the Civil War, 1850 to 1860, church property doubled. Valued at about 83 million dollars to about 165 million dollars. Just between 1860 and 1874. So after the first doubling, it grew five times over, to about a billion dollars. What's more, the economy was mired in another deep recession when Grant spoke, which began in the early 1870's and did not truly lift until the early -- until the late 1890's. But, church building was a phenomenal growth industry. New stone churches, commemorative stained-glass windows and plaques, enormous steeples and many naves and crypts dedicated to fallen soldiers appeared everywhere. This boom featured church architecture that favored ornate and imposing buildings in desirable locations. Even for say, like Baptist or Methodist, who traditionally had built very modest churches. And in turn, these new buildings catered to far more well-heeled congregants, who gathered much more often in cities than in those villages we talked about in upstate New York. In the process, many churches drifted away from plausible identification as charities. The respectability exposed them to critiques of another sort. They had become, established. With all the vaguely threatening implications of at term in American religious life and law. Historians speak of a moral establishment, or a second establishment, that characterized post-Civil War American culture. What I want to stress, is an aspect that nobody has studied. This establishment, if that's the right term, was grounded in material fact, built on wealth that reflected and in turn nurtured political power. Grants claims about the value of church property and it's relation to tax exemption hit raw nerves. Ostentation had long been a favorite theme of those who posed tax exemptions. They didn't like gold plated domes, or ornate silver alter services, or flying buttress and so on. These struck many observers a entirely inappropriate to the American landscape. Yet the construction of magnificent churches continued apace. Especially, but not only, by Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics and they're wealthier congregations. Equally important, an editorial in the new magazine, The Nation, now a very old magazine, charged that these ornate piles were more like social clubs than sober houses of God. The benefits of these palaces, the argument went, flowed to those who were already well clothed and shod and attended churches according to their prosperity, while ignoring the poor that should have been their primary concern. In Manhattan in particular, a charge like this had a real basis in reality. Between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century, lower Manhattan mushroomed in population and poverty. But churches, even Catholic ones, moved up town. See St. Patrick's Cathedral here on the screen. A massive, decorated, neogothic structure, which opened in 1878, much to the outrage of opponents of exemption. And the preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, rector of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, was criticized for the fact that he didn't notice people striving around him. He condemned striking railroad workers, telling them to go down bravely into poverty. And last but not least, banging on New York, Trinity Church of Wallstreet, they didn't move, but they attracted worshipers by investing heavily in talent. They had a beautiful organ, a highly accomplished organist, a choir of well trained men and boys, to sing. An orchestra of string and wind instruments. A beautiful chime of bells. And several clergymen trained to chant the service in harmony with the music. The rector of Trinity, I can't believe he said this, he acknowledged his success in attracting congregants as quote, "The blessing of God upon good music". [laughs] Honestly, honestly. Even Andrew Carnegie argued in a piece he titled, The Gospel of Wealth, that the true cure for inequality was redistribution through philanthropy by industrial and financial tycoons just like him, not so much by churches. But instead by these great industrialists. And as that long recession that I just spoke about, unfolded and began to really take bite, opponents of exemption, reunited and called on their anti-slavery roots to once again, attack denominations. The Liberty League was headed by this guy you see there, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, who founded a magazine called, The Index, in 1870 to promote liberal religious causes. First among them, the revocation of tax exemptions. ^M00:39:57 In 1872, he published a nine point platform and I'll only read you the first one. Demand number one, churches and other Ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempt from taxation. They wanted to ban every kind of privilege for religion and a religious freedom amendment to the constitution, including what they called indirect taxation, in any state for support of any sect or religious body. And one thing I should say, is that remember that photograph of Elizabeth Cady Stanton? She added her voice to the mix, by now a much older woman, saying that gender should be added to the list of injustices worked by tax exemption for religious property. Every poor widow, she said, who struggled to feed and cloth her children, was taxed on the narrow lot and humble home. While the magnificent cathedrals with their valuable lands in Boston. Philadelphia and New York, pay not a cent. So one thing to recognize here, is that these were not anti-Christian arguments. They we are deeply based religious arguments. And they resonated not only with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglas, but after the Civil War, rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise and many reformed Jews, also supported the liberal league. As did liberal wings of either some of those hated denominations, including Baptist, Quakers, many Unitarians and some Episcopalians. In the 1870's the campaign brought the Washington to revoke tax exemptions, was actually well received here. Especially, because the economy had tanked and because Abbot showed up and gave to senator Charles Sumner, a thousand foot long petition with 35,000 signatures on it. Congress responded in 1874 when it directed Washington city officials to tax religious property. Under the new law, the commissioners of the district created an assessment board, which assessed taxes on church property, totaling 46,500 dollars. All but three of the district churches refused to pay it. In response, the district foreclosed on all but three of the churches in the district. By uncomfortable moment. At an impasse of potentially disastrous proportions, the churches collectively appointed a two-men committee chaired by the reverend A.W. Pitzer, a Presbyterian minister and lobbyist and as far as I can tell, the poor second person never said a word back Pitzer talked all the time. He was to review the situation and present the subject to congress and procure if possible, a bill to relieve the churches from what he called this illegal tax. Even then, Pitzer met with determined opposition, especially from the chairman from the senate judiciary committee, always a powerful individual. This was republican George Edmunds of Vermont, a strong proponent of publication. Excuse me, of public education. He pointed out that the district schools were about to be closed for want of funds. And that the approximately 50,000 dollars long overdue in tax payments by the churches, would just about keep the churches going and fulfill the duty of Christians to instruct the young. Pitzer fought back, claiming that churches were by their very organization, charitable and educational. And the reporter, you can hear the report laughing [laughs] when he says that. He says that he said it apparently without any self reflection. But, Pitzer wisely conceded that some groups may have indulged in a degree of ostentation that was unbecoming in a city full of impoverished children and powerful politicians. The churches now agreed that only buildings used actively for worship would be exempt and that any new buildings would be more modest. And any income from rental and any other form of religious property, can you say parsonages? Would remain taxable. Evidently relieved, both houses passed legislation to that effect unanimously and without debate. That was a disappointing moment in the archive, no debate. And also returned the 2,500 pitons [phonetic] that had been collected. So in 1879, congress officially abandoned it's experiment in taxation. And the reverend Pitzer, noted with satisfaction in an article on the topic, that the political situation had become untenable for them. And it is true, especially with reconstruction collapsing. A pace, republicans were in retreat. And Pitzer changed to suit the circumstances. As I mentioned he promised that he would reduce the ornateness of churches. And I am sorry to say, he spoke with forked tongue. Congress granted a charter, where are we? There we are, in 1893, to the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation for the erection of National Cathedral, the sixth largest church in the world. The project was enthusiastically supported by our friend, the reverend Pitzer, despite his earlier promises to d nothing of the kind. So, as I wind up, let me just ask, "What should we think about this history?" What lessons should we take? First, nobody knows this stuff. It's amazing. It's just been papered over. Most Americans and many experts in the law of religion, believe that exemptions have always been granted. And honestly, the supreme court has been part of the problem. In the late 1860's, a sustained campaign by New York based religious groups made a strong attack on the widespread exemptions available there. In the 1970 case, Walz against Tax Commission, the plaintiff argued that his taxes were higher because even though he was a man who had no religious affiliation, he had to support by paying higher taxes, New York's tax-exempt religious property. This, in other words, was a tax imposed to support religion. The United States Supreme Court upheld the exemption, on the basis of a historical argument. Chief Justice Warren Burger, emphasized that two centuries of uninterrupted freedom taxation, I mean right next door, right? They got it wrong. Had not produced the remotest sign of favoritism to religion, but rather protected all forms of religious belief. This history, he said, supported the idea that tax exemptions were entirely consistent with disestablishment. And of course, all of us in this room know that just isn't the case, that there have been sustained critiques and important exceptions to tax exemption. And that, just there, they taxed churches. So that's one lesson, with should wake up and smell the humus and start doing some historical research. Second, it is always the case in each of these episodes, that economic down turns produce impatience with exemptions. And increase into the wealthier of religious institutions. And our almost great recession, produced several such inquiries. The state of Colorado conducted an investigation into the exponential growth in tax exempt property there. And found that exemptions had grown increasingly generous over the past generation, and often in way unbeknown to legislatures. In 2008, calls to revoke tax exemption spread as the financial crisis deepened and the most -- and they lasted pretty steadily through about 2015, so until quite recently. Finally, and I want to return to that point that there's big money at stake and a great history full of politics and broken promises and racial prejudice and oppression. And to point out, the Supreme Court upheld tax exemptions in Walz, against a challenge based on the establishment clause. ^M00:50:03 But it has never held that religious freedom requires exemption. So there's still plenty to feet about. And I hate to predict the future, because I'm much better at predicting the past. But this will come up, I promise you. The next big recession this will come up. So I just want to say, stay tuned. Thank you. >> Thank you Sarah. ^M00:50:28 [ Applause ] ^M00:50:33 >> John Haskell: And we have a couple minutes to take a few questions, and we might just take a few rat a tat and see what Sally has to say about them, because we have, I hope you all will stay and enjoy the reception that the Maguire Endowment is paying for today and that is for all of you. And so, raise your hand if you have a question for Sally. Do not be shy. Andrew, right here. >> Hello. >> John Haskell: So we'll have these two gentlemen right here, just a quick question and then we'll hand the microphone over to the gentleman next to you and then we'll see what Sally has to say. >> Thank you very much for a most interesting talk. Given that you mentioned there is some movement in the states, particularly in the western period also, and there is interest in the federal government in toying with Washington D.C. as they frequently do, were there any in congress in the 1870's who were interested in pursuing some of these exemptions policies in the territories? >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: That's a great. >> John Haskell: Okay, hold onto that, we're going to let this guy ask the questions. And then, you can handle them both. Whether they link or not. >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: Yeah. >> So you annihilated the idea that this was always out there. But you know, under the idea that, you know, sometimes taxes are done to discourage things, I'm thinking for example syntax's, I always thought it was sort of, you know, a difficult topic to think of taxing religious institutions because you didn't want to discourage religion, even though there is a separation. And then what about other western governments, other western countries. >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: Mmm-hmm. Should I answer now? >> John Haskell: Yeah. I haven't got anybody else indicating. >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: Okay, good. So the question about the territories is really interesting. There was, congress officially disapproved in the late 1850's, the incorporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, because it had no limits on the amount of property it could hold. So one of the things that you can see happening, is that there was this commitment through the onset of the Civil War, to keeping religious property pretty tightly contained. In other words, not allowing them to become extraordinarily wealthy. That is gone, by 1875. So what's interesting is to see that. In terms of other western states, California is really interesting because it's constitution of 1850 promised equal taxation for everybody, which was a standard, protect slavery clause, that was included in many southern state constitutions. In other words, you couldn't tax slavery higher than you taxed anything else. >> I was thinking about other countries, though. Other country, European countries. Other countries with democracies. >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: Okay. So, in the U/.K. for example, which has an established religion, even churches have to prove that they're charitable to receive government. Even the church of England has to prove every year that it engages in significant charitable activity. You don't just get it because you're religious. >> Germany, France, that kind of place? >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: As far as I know, Germany, you can -- there's a box you can check on your taxes that will allow a certain proportion of them to go to religious organizations. And I think you can specify a little bit, you know, you can't just say, "Send it to the Jehovah's Witnesses down the street and definitely not those creeps across the way, because they're not really Jehovah's Witness." You know what I mean. In terms of tax exemption, being the, really the only country with a stable disestablished column, at least, the United States was kind of on it's own, which is really, really remarkable. >> John Haskell: Any other quick questions? Luke has one over here. Last question. >> Okay. Sally, I was interested in the fact that you mentioned Massachusetts was the first to pass tax exemption, and they're the last to disestablish the church, right? So they're the state where there's still tax dollars, you know. They're actually supporting, I guess the congressional church up until 1833. Is there a link between Massachusetts, I mean is that sort of the backlash to disestablishment that they get tax exemptions at least. >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: There are a couple of backlashes, I think that's a great question. The other thing, so in 1837, they passed tax exemption. In 1835, they prosecuted a man for blasphemy and sent him too jail, right? So mean, there's this remarkable -- one of the things see for example, when a government takes a really big step, they often walk it back, you know. Say, "It's not going to be that radical of change people, don't worry too much." And so yes, I think that Massachusetts only reluctantly disestablished and they did so truly because, I mean, they were so duplicities, you know, before the revolution they kept saying to the church of England, we have a beautiful established church here, it's according to the congregational form of the Church of England, but it's beautiful. And then right after the revolution they said, "Establishment? We have no establishment. We just have a policy of supporting a teacher of religion in each town." Right. So I mean it really, they caught themselves, they were hoist on their own petard. >> John Haskell: Thank you again Sally. >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: Thank you! >> John Haskell: This was fantastic. And please, enjoy a drink and passed hors d'oeuvres. >> Dr. Sarah Barringer Gordon: Thank you so much. ^M00:56:50 [ Applause ] ^M00:56:54 ^M00:56:58 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E00:57:05