I’d hate being forced to evangelize Jesus to someone. I’m not a Christian, so I don’t anticipate having to do so anytime soon, but it’s a difficult kind of public speaking that I would find punishing.
Imagine a Christian preparing to go out to share the Good News in person. The first task is preparation. You’d need to know the arguments for and against Christianity well enough to hold your own in a discussion. Next, you must have at least a bit of debating skill so you can spot fallacies, not get flustered during the debate, remain polite, and so on. Finally, you prepare an organized agenda of the main topics you need to cover.
You think you’re ready, but Christianity is a difficult argument to make. You must anticipate the hard or awkward questions unique to this task like, how does the Trinity work? If the universe needed God as its creator, why doesn’t God need a creator? If the other thousands of religions throughout history were all manmade, why imagine that the one you believe in just happened to be the one correct one? How can you enjoy heaven if you know about the torments in hell?
You need to expect mocking questions—did the talking snake and the talking donkey ever get together to chat? Was it part of God’s perfect plan that Adam and Eve’s children had to make babies with each other? If God regulated lifelong slavery in the Old Testament, is he angry that we made it illegal? Why is God indistinguishable from nonexistent?
A recent podcast (“Why Are We so Afraid to Share the Gospel?”) adds another dimension to the challenge. Jim Wallace of Cold Case Christianity observed, “It’s one thing to bomb in front of a stranger; it’s another to look foolish in front of your friends.” Looking stupid or weird can have lasting consequences within your social group. This is especially true for young adults, the ones most often encouraged to evangelize. This visceral fear of looking foolish is perhaps the biggest obstacle.
Thought experiment #2
Compare that with a different kind of evangelism. Now you’re trying to convince an anti-vaxxer, in person, to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
This is like evangelizing the Jesus story in that you’re trying to avoid a calamity in both cases. In the Christian case, it’s going to hell. In the vaccination case, it’s dying from COVID, suffering from long COVID, or catching it and spreading it to a vulnerable loved one.
There are other similarities. In both cases:
your target has already heard your argument, at least approximately
the arguments could be intellectual or emotional (likely both)
your target has probably already considered and rejected your position
you might fall into a morass of tangents and waste hours. In an online argument, you could easily go at it for months. (I speak from experience.)
But there’s one big difference. When arguing for Christianity, the fear of looking stupid or foolish or gullible is always present or just below the surface. Not so when arguing for vaccination.
The reason? You’re with science when arguing for vaccination but against it when arguing for the virgin birth, and God’s odd fixation on this one planet out of 100 billion in our galaxy, and three gods who are actually one god, and failed guarantees of answered prayer, and a Second Coming that’s been just around the corner for 2000 years.
Replace “science” with “reality” and you see why evangelizing for Jesus feels so awkward. Your gut is trying to tell you something.
I’m continually amused that so many people have stepped forward to explain what God meant, because that clearly tells us how sincerely they understand that the all-knowing, all-wise one wasn’t up to the task himself. — commenter Richard S. Russell
“Faith” has two meanings. It can be permission to believe without a good reason, or it can be belief well grounded in evidence. Changing the definition as necessary is a game that many Christians play.
We find a similar have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach with Greg Koukl, a popular Christian apologist from Stand to Reason who responded in contradictory ways to two similar tragedies.
Case 1: critical injury to a staff member
In a podcast just before Christmas a few years ago, Koukl talked about the health of Melinda, a staff member who was in critical condition after a recent head injury. His appeal for prayer was what you’d expect.
I don’t know what God’s thinking about things, but I know what Christians are doing and I hope you’re doing with us—you’re praying like crazy. And that’s what we want you to keep doing—praying Melinda out of this….
Lots of people have come out of [medical situations like this without supernatural assistance], but with God’s help, of course, that gives us a massive leg up and that’s why your prayers for Melinda and for the Stand to Reason team are the most important thing right now….
God is holding us up. He’s keeping us on our feet, which I attribute to his grace and to your prayers, so keep it up.
Koukl isn’t downplaying expectations with tepid claims for prayer that it’s meditative or therapeutic for the person praying. No, he’s making the familiar Christian claim that prayer is useful. It causes positive, big change. It delivers in the here and now.
Case 2: Texas church shooting
Six weeks earlier, Koukl responded to another tragedy within the Christian community. A shooter had killed 25 and wounded 20 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas on November 5, 2017.
Presumably, people in a church in fear for their lives were doing a lot of praying. That obviously didn’t stop the injuries and deaths. Koukl illustrated this with a couple of comments from atheists: “The murdered victims were in a church! If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive” and, “It seems your direct line to God is not working.”
Christian response: be careful critiquing worldviews
Koukl responded that it’s a mistake to critique another worldview from inside your own. He illustrated his point with an exchange during a Christopher Hitchens debate with Jay Richards. Hitchens said, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” When Richards assented, Hitchens responded, “I rest my case.”
Here’s an example of mine that I think illustrates Koukl’s point. Suppose Hitchens was making lasagna and Richards was making barbeque pork. Now imagine Hitchens criticizes Richards by saying, “You can’t use barbeque sauce in Italian cuisine.” That may be true, but the rules of Italian cuisine don’t apply to barbeque recipes. Similarly, “Resurrections are ridiculous” is true within atheism but not Christianity.
The first problem with Koukl’s point is that atheism isn’t a worldview. It’s just one answer (“No”) to one question (“Do you have a god belief?”). What he wants to respond to instead is a naturalistic worldview, the belief that only natural, not supernatural, forces operate in the universe.
The second problem is that Richards already does pretty much accept that worldview—that evidence is important, that hypotheses should be tested, and so on. I’m sure he uses evidence to cross a street, learn a language, or select medical treatment. (Of course, Richards would reject any claim that only natural forces are in effect.) When followers of Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba claim that he could be in two places at once or when Uri Geller claimed to be using the supernatural rather than performing stage magic, I’m sure Richards is as skeptical as the typical atheist.
It’s not like there are two worldviews, Christianity and naturalism, and they’re equally plausible. Naturalism is the default. We all accept that science informs us so well because it takes a naturalistic approach. Christians live in a house of naturalism, but they go into their Christian room from time to time.
The value of prayer
Despite what he would soon say about prayer’s value in Melinda’s situation, Koukl said,
People from the outside think for some reason (and maybe Christians have given them reason to think this) but that if God really does exist and we pray to him, then we get what we want from God, which includes physical protection.
Koukl may not think it works this way, but Jesus did:
I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete (John 16:23–4).
The story eliminates any second-guessing about caveats when we read a few verses later,
Then Jesus’s disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech” (John 16:29).
It strikes me as such an absurd thought, why anybody who has even a modest understanding of Christianity and the history of what Christians have endured for thousands of years . . . [would] think that this [shooting] is somehow inconsistent with Christianity.
Uh, because Jesus promised that prayers are answered? Or is this a trick question?
Jesus promised persecution
Koukl next claims that we shouldn’t expect protection from murderers. To underscore this, we get a little persecution porn as Koukl ticks off verses where Jesus promised that Christians will be persecuted.
Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12–13)
[Jesus said:] “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10)
Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. (1 John 3:13)
Koukl tells us that prayer works and that we should pray for Melinda, and the Bible agrees (“Ask and you will receive”). But he laughs at the foolish atheists who think that God would answer prayers for protection against a murder.
Koukl again:
There is … no rationale, no line of thinking that if God does exist that only good things happen to people, particularly people who believe in God, especially Christians.
Nope. The Bible promises exactly that in both the Old Testament and the New:
The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life (Psalm 121:7; see also 34:17).
No harm overtakes the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble (Proverbs 12:21).
We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them (1 John 5:18).
Let’s return to the issue as Koukl himself raised it. The original atheist objection was: “The murdered victims were in a church! If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive.” And those objections were correct.
Koukl juggles two Bible claims, that Christians will have hardships and that Jesus promised that prayers are answered. He takes the typical Christian route of encouraging prayer when it suits him, but when slapped with inconvenient evidence that prayer does nothing, he reminds us that Christians will have hardships.
This does nothing to fill the awkward silence when Christians pray for something and only chance replies.
Prayer is an act of doubt, not faith. If you really thought your god was watching over everything and you genuinely trusted in his “plan,” you wouldn’t be praying in the first place. — seen on the internet
How plausible would a resurrection be? And how hard would it be to make a compelling case for one?
This is the last article in this three-part response to William Lane Craig. Part 1 is here.
Eyewitness testimony
Craig said:
I’ve already emphasized that the argument for the historicity of the empty tomb or Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t depend on Matthew’s being an eyewitness. Rather, it depends upon the reliability of the traditions that Matthew hands on.
I agree—the gospel authors don’t have to be eyewitnesses. I never said they did. But didn’t you say they were eyewitnesses? You said, “The dominant view is that the passion narratives are early and based on eyewitness testimony.”
In your quote above, you said, “[The strength of the gospel story] depends upon the reliability of the traditions that Matthew hands on.” That’s right—but that tradition isn’t strong.
We’re talking about someone being raised from the dead. How skeptical would you be if you read about such a claim, from some tradition besides Christianity, happening just last week? I’m guessing very, very skeptical.
Look at the tenuous links in the chain of Christian claims: first, the inherent unlikelihood of a resurrection. Then the decades of oral history until the first gospel records the story. Then the centuries that separate the original documents from our oldest copies. Then the many ecumenical councils that hammered out doctrinal questions that are essential but oddly not made clear in the Bible such as the Trinity.
Or, see it from the other direction. Finish this sentence: “The Resurrection is likely a historical event because ….” Now imagine a different religion that beats your Christian argument on every point. Would you adopt this religion?
Do Christians believe because they were raised as Christians? Or because their religion comforts them? If so, then stop saying that weighing the evidence without bias will make you a Christian.
Alternatively, do Christians believe because the evidence points to the Bible as a reliable historical record? But if historical reliability is your goal, you should become a Mormon, because at a tenth the age of Christianity, Mormonism’s historical record is much more reliable.
With respect to the empty tomb, as I’ve shown, we have in the traditions behind the Gospels (which these authors mediate) multiple independent attestation to the fact of the empty tomb.
“Independent attestation”? Matthew and Luke borrow enormous amounts from Mark. In fact, only three percent of Mark is not borrowed by Matthew, Luke, or both. And what about John—how certain can we be that its author had never read one of the other three gospels?
I see little to support your claim of independent attestation.
The ending of Mark
Craig also pushed back against my observation about Mark’s abrupt ending, where the women are terrified after seeing an angel and run from the tomb. They tell no one. Craig said:
Now, as for Mark’s account, the fact that the Gospel ends as we have it today with verse 8—that they ran from the tomb in fear and trembling and said nothing to anyone—doesn’t mean, I think, obviously that the women never, ever told anybody about what happened when they visited the tomb that Sunday morning.
Craig grants himself a lot of leeway in interpreting the Bible. With everyone interpreting confusing, bothersome, or contradictory passages as they see fit, it’s no wonder there are thousands of denominations. I can’t imagine Craig is this generous with everyone else’s religious works.
Craig continues:
It simply meant that the women didn’t tell anybody as they fled to return to the disciples where they were staying and to tell them what they had experienced just as we read in the other Gospels. So I think that Bob has seriously misunderstood Mark’s intent here.
I’m the one who misunderstands? If there is a single, neat interpretation of Mark 16:8, why were four longer endings invented for Mark?! It sure looks like many people had trouble with that ending, even if Craig didn’t.
Here’s the ending in the most reliable versions of Mark: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (NIV). And that’s where it ends.
Make sense of Mark by letting it speak for itself. Drop the assumption that the entire New Testament must unite into a single, unambiguous jigsaw puzzle. It’s a human book, not a book that fell from heaven.
If historical reliability is your goal, you should become a Mormon.
Homework
Dr. Craig’s cohost is Kevin Harris, and he wrapped up the video response with a little homework for me. Here he’s speaking to Craig:
I would encourage [Bob] to read your work, Gary Habermas’ work, and the work on it. He’s got his work cut out for him and a lot of material to cover to deal with his work. But don’t just go with these little superficial things. If you want to know about it (the criterion of embarrassment and these things), dig into the work.
I assume he’s thinking of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona. I read that ten years ago, and I’ve lost count of the articles I’ve read on the subject. I’ve seen Habermas lecture in person at Christian conferences. I honestly don’t think the problem here is a lack of understanding of the Christian position on my part.
The naturalistic explanation of nature is sufficient, leaving God out of a job.
Man must surely be mad! He cannot make a worm, but he makes Gods by the dozen. — Michael Montaigne
Many Christian apologists focus on women finding the empty tomb. But if women were second-class citizens in ancient Jewish culture, why give them this prominent role in the story—unless that’s actually what happened? (Part 1 of this debate with William Lane Craig is here.)
To be an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus, you must see three things: you must see him alive, then see him dead, and then see him alive again. If you didn’t see all three, you might be able to document the event with reports from others, but you wouldn’t be an eyewitness.
Women at the tomb
The earliest gospels report that “all the disciples deserted [Jesus] and fled” (Matthew 26:56b) before the crucifixion.
Dr. Craig responded that the women were there. That’s true, and (according to the story) they were eyewitnesses, but they probably weren’t authors of a gospel.
Then he said that the Romans could be counted on to do an execution properly, so hearing the death sentence was as good as seeing the corpse. Perhaps, but the gospel authors still wouldn’t be eyewitnesses.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I’m simply saying that only an author who saw Jesus alive, then dead, then alive again would be an eyewitness, and the earliest gospels make clear that the disciples weren’t.
In my article, I noted the popular argument that women weren’t reliable witnesses in Jewish society at that time. If the gospel authors wrote through gritted teeth that it was women who were privileged to first see the empty tomb, then it was more likely to be accurate. If they invented the story, they’d probably use men.
Craig is a big fan of this thinking:
I have to say that this argument more than I think any other has caused a reversal of opinion among New Testament scholars with respect to the facticity of the empty tomb. Compared to back in the 1940s when skepticism about the empty tomb was rampant, by far and away the majority of historical Jesus scholars today would affirm the historicity of the empty tomb, and they would do so on the basis of this criterion of embarrassment and the role of the women in discovering the tomb empty.
Craig says that the remarkable role of the women discovering the empty tomb convinced “the majority of historical Jesus scholars today.” But expand the scope to religious professionals worldwide, and this becomes a minority view. Religions worldwide are so hopelessly fragmented that they can agree on little more than that the supernatural exists, and perhaps not even that.
I wonder if the fact that the vast majority of historical Jesus scholars are Christian is why they accept this argument. Let’s explore this with a tangent and consider Muslim scholars. They respect Jesus as a prophet, and they have no problem with the supernatural, but they universally reject the Resurrection. Maybe because they’re biased? Maybe because they were trained to think that? Sure, that’s quite likely—as Muslims they’re pretty much obliged to think that way. But then how is bias not the reason for the Christian scholars’ contradictory opinion?
Where was everyone Easter morning? The women knew where the tomb was, and everyone should’ve been camped out awaiting the joyful reunion.
Does the Criterion of Embarrassment apply?
But are the women embarrassing? Would it have been more plausible to have men visit a tomb to apply spices? I argue that this was women’s work in this culture and that the story only makes sense with women finding the empty tomb.
Craig’s response:
What he just said is false. It is not true that Jewish culture was one where caring for the dead was women’s work particularly for the disposal of criminals’ bodies. Notice that it is a delegate of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish court), Joseph of Arimathea, who takes charge of the disposal of Jesus’ body. This is in common practice with the Jewish treatment of condemned criminals.
What is interesting about the treatment of the body of a criminal? Craig doesn’t say. And anyway, Joseph of Arimathea only appears in the gospel of John.
I’m saying that women typically dealt with the dead, not that they universally did so. Here’s where I get this from:
This claim that it was specifically women who found the empty tomb makes the best sense of the realities of history. Preparing bodies for burial was commonly the work of women, not men. (Bart Ehrman)
It was the women’s task to prepare a dead body for burial. (Women in the Bible)
In the ancient world it was common for women, usually family members, to wash a corpse and lay the body out for burial. (Women in the Bible)
(The “Women in the Bible” site contains the contents of the book Women in the Bible (Harper Collins, 1997).)
Could men have prepared a body for burial? Sure. All I’m saying is that women going to the tomb was not only unsurprising but expected, and a story that has them visiting the tomb shortly after the burial to wash the body and apply spices isn’t embarrassing. And if women finding the body makes you anxious, you can rest easy because Luke and John have male disciples run back to see for themselves.
Why was anyone surprised by the Resurrection?
This is a tangent but a fun one. The three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), each have Jesus repeatedly explaining how things will end. Here is the first instance, halfway through Mark:
[Jesus] then began to teach [the disciples] that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this. (Mark 8:31–32a)
Jesus knows how things will play out, and he’s open about it. Combining these ten instances, we learn about his upcoming betrayal, his rejection by the Jewish establishment, his suffering, death by crucifixion, and the resurrection after three days. Several of these say that the disciples didn’t understand, but none of the instances in Matthew say this, so Matthew at least should have the inner circle preparing for the miraculous reunion.
Why then is everyone morose about the crucifixion? It’s part of the plan, and Jesus wouldn’t be gone long. Where was everyone Easter morning? The women knew where the tomb was, and everyone should’ve been camped out awaiting the joyful reunion.
In the U.S. food industry in the late 1800s, dairy producers sometimes cut costs by diluting milk with water mixed with chalk or plaster. Pepper was sometimes cut with charred rope or dirt. Formaldehyde and borax were food preservatives. Some food dyes contained lead or arsenic. The food industry was constrained by few laws, and they encouraged politicians to keep it that way.
With the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, there was a new sheriff in town. Adulterating or mislabeling food and drugs had become a crime. The food industry and politicians, who would theoretically be responsible for identifying and solving the problem, were the problem. The industry couldn’t be trusted to police itself. The problem was addressed only after citizens woke up to the problem and demanded change.
History repeats
We find a rough parallel with an ongoing problem today, church scandals like the recent financial and sexual scandal at Hillsong church. Before that, there were scandals involving Harvest Bible Chapel, Ravi Zacharias, and Mars Hill Church. Before that, Ted Haggard, Kent Hovind, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker. It’s a long list.
Many of these scandals are financial—embezzlement, payment of hush money, and so on—and there is a simple and effective way to give the public a glimpse into church finances to spot small problems before they become large scandals. It’s the IRS 990 form.
Churches granted nonprofit status should be more financially transparent than the Mafia.
Nonprofit organizations in the U.S. make a contract: society allows donations to be tax-deductible, and in return those organizations make a summary of their financial records public to show that they used that income wisely. Every nonprofit submits an annual IRS 990 to make its cash flow public—every nonprofit, that is, except churches.
In the same way that the food industry was in bed with politicians in the late 1800s, church leaders are in bed with politicians today. The disclosures in 990s might be embarrassing for churches, so politicians make sure that the exemption stays in place for their friends.
Today, a researcher can use sites like Foundation Center, Charity Navigator, or the IRS itself to bring up financial data on any nonprofit in seconds. For example, we can look up the latest 990 for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. Income, expenses, assets, and the salaries of the key employees—it’s all there. In 2019, it had $290 million in total revenue and $147 million in total assets, and Pat Robertson’s salary was $578,464.
It’s ridiculous to imagine that all church financial scandals are behind us. Fortunately, we have a simple solution: the IRS 990 form has been around for 75 years, it’s tuned for large and small nonprofits, and filing one annually should be mandatory for all of them.
Not only is this exemption unfair, it makes churches look like they have something to hide. Given past financial scandals, some do, but this secrecy makes most churches look undeservedly bad. Christians should demand that this exemption be removed. This change would improve the reputation of American churches at a time when a little reputation polishing would be welcome.
11 reasons to remove the church exemption for filing the IRS 990
1. The status quo is embarrassing. Keeping church financial records closed is a PR black eye. It looks like churches have something to hide. And while some churches do hide behind this secrecy, opening the books will benefit the majority who are good financial stewards.
2. If God sees the finances, why not all of us? An omnipotent God can see the finances. Given the many scandals that still plague churches, some people apparently need more than just God looking over their shoulder. If the ultimate judge sees how they spend their money, why not open up to the citizens who are providing churches’ tax-exempt status?
3. The Bible insists on financial openness. Being fair should be instinctive for churches, but if extra encouragement is needed, the Bible agrees. Paul said: “We want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift [of money]. For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the eyes of man” (2 Corinthians 8:20–21).
4. Transparency discourages impropriety. A 990 doesn’t provide all financial information—it’s not the same as the balance sheet—but it’s much more than most churches provide now. It lets any parishioner double-check the big financial picture. Anyone with access to a church’s money needs to feel that they can justify any expense.
5. Transparency is fair to taxpayers. How much does tax-exempt status benefit the church? Parishioners deduct church donations. Churches don’t pay real estate tax. In the U.S., it all adds up to $82.5 billion per year. Revealing how that money was spent would at least say thank you. It would also (finally) be fair to the other nonprofits who have been transparent for decades.
Christians can defer to church leadership on spiritual matters, but ordinary citizens shouldn’t have to defer to church leadership on financial matters.
6. Nonprofit status should be as transparent as other contracts. When someone receives a patent, they have a short-term monopoly for the idea in return for making the details of the invention public. And when a church is granted tax-exempt status, that should be in return for making their basic financials public.
7. Transparency is honest to parishioners. While all American taxpayers subsidize religion, it’s the church members themselves who directly fund churches ($124 billion annually). Pushed in part by the expensive child abuse settlements in Catholic parishes, many members want more transparency.
To take another church example, Daystar is a Christian television network with more than $200 million in assets. About their expenditures, one experienced nonprofit analyst said, “Daystar needs to tell people that only about 5 percent of their contributions are going toward hospitals, churches, needy individuals.”
Whether five percent is a lot or a little is for the donors to decide, but they can’t decide if that information is secret.
8. What are other churches hiding? The IRS exemption for churches conceals more than just bad Christian churches. Wouldn’t it be interesting to get a look at Scientology’s cash flow? Or groups like the Unification Church (“Moonies”)? Could this have given law-enforcement leverage against cults like NXIVM?
The Freedom From Religion Foundation argued that financial secretiveness allowed Jim Jones to hide the early signs of the meltdown that led to the 1978 massacre of almost a thousand church members in Jonestown.
9. Try to make an argument for secrecy. Fill in the blank: “In our church/denomination, we want to maintain financial secrecy because ___.” Do you want to stand before the congregation and justify the explanation? Churches granted nonprofit status should be more financially transparent than the Mafia.
10. Church governance becomes easier with 990 access. Imagine a dysfunctional church where a bullying pastor shuts down criticism—like Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill in Seattle. A board member might want to see the books but be afraid of the pushback. Maybe they knew they’d get no support from other board members. Perhaps they feared for their reputation within the church, afraid of being labeled “unsubmissive” or “disloyal.” But with 990s publicly available, anyone—board members, parishioners, or local citizens—can see the financial basics.
11. Could more transparency mean more revenue? Peeking behind the curtain at a mismanaged church might mean loss of parishioners or smaller donations. But if parishioners donate in proportion to their confidence that the money will be wisely spent, donations might divert to those churches on the good side of the scale.
Transparency can also shield a church from a scandal in another church. Rather than get tarred with the same brush, a church with good stewardship can point to the data showing that they’re more wisely managed.
Seeing the other side of the issue
Now consider arguments for the opposite side of the issue. I don’t think these criticisms hold.
1. Churches are trustworthy. This was the logic behind the church exemption when it was put in place in 1943, but the steady flow of church scandals shows that that assumption was overly optimistic. We’re no longer surprised to read that Ken and Gloria Copeland live tax-free in a $6.3 million “parsonage,” and that Mark Driscoll spent $210,000 of tax-exempt church income to buy his way onto the New York Times bestseller list.
2. Let the churches decide if they want to disclose. In one list of America’s biggest evangelists, seven are religious nonprofits, and they all file 990s as required. The remaining 23 are churches, and none file 990s. 250,000 churches are registered with the IRS, and only two percent file 990s. Churches have been allowed to decide, and they decided to keep their records secret.
3. Mandatory disclosure violates the First Amendment. The First Amendment violation is actually in the other direction. The IRS’s 501(c)(3) category was created to encourage organizations, including churches, to do good within society. Giving churches an exemption from the reporting requirement is the violation. Churches aren’t a law unto themselves, and they must obey laws just like any other organization—laws about building codes, public safety, employee rights, and so on.
4. Filing a 990 is burdensome. Over a million nonprofits already fill out the 990 without complaint.
The 990 has been around for almost eighty years, and it’s evolved. The four-page 990-EZ is for nonprofits with less than $200,000 in revenue and the 990-N, basically a postcard, is for nonprofits with less than $50,000 in revenue.
5. The 990 is unnecessary, because our church provides information to our members. This doesn’t help the ordinary taxpayers filling in for lost tax revenue. In many congregations, access is provided only by request, but anonymous access to public records would be much easier.
If God sees the finances, why not all of us?
6. The 990 is unnecessary because of the ECFA. The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability was created in 1979. Member organizations make a limited financial disclosure to the ECFA (not to the public), and ECFA membership provides a public seal of approval.
Problem 1: Fewer than one church in a thousand belongs to the ECFA. Problem 2: We already have the 990, so why invent something new? The unsurprising answer is that the ECFA reveals less information. The ECFA is transparency with training wheels, not a preventative to scandals.
7. It’s not the government’s job to snoop into churches’ conduct. One defender of the status quo said, “Government should not be determining if a minister is living too lavishly. It’s not for the government to determine if someone really needs an airplane for their ministry. That’s just not something government should be getting into.”
But that’s never been the point of the 990. The 990 could allow the public to decide if a minister is living too lavishly (or if a church is otherwise spending its money foolishly).
Oversight of nonprofits is already crowdsourced to the public with mandatory 990 filings, a nice application of the “sunlight is the best disinfectant” principle. Extending this to include churches adds no bureaucracy. Just take IRS document “Instructions for Form 990” and remove the section titled “Certain religious organizations” from the list of exemptions. Easy.
8. Disclosure would embarrass some churches. Few megachurch leaders would admit this, but this is likely the real reason.
Conventional nonprofits file 990s, and publicly traded corporations file disclosures mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. These disclosures may invite uncomfortable questions, but openness is for the best. If a few churches need to scramble to clean up their acts before their finances become public, that’s a good thing.
Conclusion
Trusting churches to police themselves hasn’t worked, and change hasn’t come through church leadership, who have let politicians know that touching the exemption is a political third rail.
Change will come after citizens become frustrated with the problem and demand change. Better: Christians, we need you to see the problem and demand change. Ordinary Christians would be the biggest winners from removing this suspicious-looking exemption, and they have the political power to make it happen.
My Christian friends, raise this topic with others in your congregation. Forward them this article. Write a letter to the editor. Complain to your congressperson. Do something. Don’t look to church leadership to do it for you. This is your opportunity to change things for the better.
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. — Winston Churchill, on his 75th birthday
It’s almost Easter, and here are some Easter topics from previous blog posts.
Jesus: Just One More Dying and Rising Savior: Mythology has many precedents to the story of the resurrection of Jesus. Let’s look at some of these gods and see if they’re any less compelling than Jesus.
Scholarly Consensus for the Resurrection? Not Really. Gary Habermas is well known for his “minimal facts” case for the resurrection of Jesus. He says that most critical scholars agree with him, but his argument collapses with investigation.
Women at the Tomb Are Weak Evidence for the Resurrection: Apologists love to bring up the women at the tomb. Women weren’t reliable witnesses in Jewish culture at the time, so why would the gospel authors place them there … unless the story were true? But the claim unravels with a little scrutiny.
500 Eyewitnesses to the Risen Christ? 9 Reasons Why It’s Not Likely: The apostle Paul claims that 500 people saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion. This claim is popular among apologists who imagine this as convincing evidence that the crucifixion is historical. This argument crumbles under scrutiny.
The Bible Defeats Its Own Resurrection Story: A popular Christian apologetic argument backfires, and the Bible doesn’t help. This makes the Bible’s resurrection argument even weaker.
Dr. Craig replies: William Lane Craig gave a Christian response to the previous article.
And lots of contradictions associated with the crucifixion and resurrection:
Contradictions in the Resurrection Account: How many days did Jesus teach after his resurrection? Was it 40 days as Acts says or less than one as Luke says? Matthew writes about an earthquake that opened graves and sent reanimated corpses walking around Jerusalem. Why didn’t the other gospels write about this remarkable event? These and many more contradictions make us wonder if the gospel account is history or merely legend.
Jesus finds a new home for Mary. But why? Jesus makes sure that after his death, his mother will be taken care of by “the disciple he loved.” But this makes no sense.
Jesus and the zombies: Remember the dead who leave their graves and walk around Jerusalem after the resurrection? Think about what that does to the Doubting Thomas story.
Peter’s denials: Each of the gospels has Peter denying Jesus three times. But put these stories together, and they contradict.
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. — Stephen Hawking
