A Modern Dilemma Concerning Separation of Church & State
Here’s the thing:
Starting soon, employees of churches and other faith based, tax exempt organizations who have experienced lay offs and hour reductions as a result of COVID-19 will be eligible to receive unemployment benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program included in the CARES Act (Congress’s $2T bill that included the $1,200 stimulus check and small business paycheck protection loans).
From The U.S. Department of Labor:
Depending on state law, covered individuals may also include clergy and those working for religious organizations who are not covered by regular unemployment compensation.
I’m not going to beat around the bush, this is unfair.
If someone were to theoretically refuse to pay in to social security for their whole life, and then expect the government to fund their retirement when they reach age 65, everyone would agree that’s unfair. People often label social security as a socialist program in the first place with massive solvency issues (technically true statements), but in a scenario such as the one described above, it’s not socialism, it’s a perversion of socialism and an outright slap in the face to free market capitalism. There is no individual scenario nor economic system where it’s fair to refuse to contribute to society and then demand that society gives you or the people who work for you a handout when times get tough, even exceptionally and unforeseeably so, as they have as a result of COVID-19. And make no mistake: this is a perverted socialist handout.
To employees of these organizations, I say this:
A hallmark of free market capitalism is that employers and employees negotiate their own contracts for pay and benefits. If you chose, whether out of ignorance and apathy or via an informed decision, to work for an organization who refuses to pay in to a social safety net program that could help you personally in the event that you come upon hard times, that’s your problem. In our current system (whether you agree with it or not) it’s your prerogative to negotiate for the benefits you may need, whether that’s unemployment insurance, health insurance, retirement packages, or otherwise.
To the employers, I say this:
Separation of church and state is a two way street; if you want to register your faith based organization as a nonprofit so that you can play by a different set of rules and avoid taxes, so be it, but don’t expect to reap the benefits of the tax dollars that every other small business has to contribute. I don’t care if your organization’s income is based on tithing and therefore allegedly unpredictable, nor do I care about any of the other excuses that may be offered. If your organization wants to operate in this economy and not pay taxes, your management had better be good enough to keep the organization afloat when hard times hit, because when you scream about separation of church and state, you cut the safety net out from under yourself.
Looking Forward
At the end of the day, do I think we ought to just leave the people who will benefit from the PUA program to suffer? No, I don’t, because that’s not the right thing to do. Even though, if we didn’t bail them out, they’d blame Nancy Pelosi until the end of time and blabber on incessantly about the “persecution” of Christians.*
Politics is often a tit for tat game these days, and kicking people while they’re down as opposed to offering them a hand will do a lot less to bring our country back together. However, I think people who are going to receive these benefits owe it to the rest of society to accept them with a bit of humility, understand why special rules had to be put in place to accommodate them, and be a little more careful to vet the organizations they go to work for in the future. I’ll be far less sympathetic the next time something like this happens if they do nothing this time to show their appreciation or prevent themselves from ending up in this predicament again.