NY Times Breaks the Tenth Commandment, Wants Churches to Lay up Treasure for Caesar

October 11th, 2006 5:04 PM

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house... nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." -- Exodus 20:17

My colleagues Julia Seymour and Amy Menefee have an excellent piece at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site about the media's latest twist on class warfare.

According to the Times, American houses of worship aren't rendering what is due Caesar.

The New York Times has put an ironic twist on the 8th Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.” It’s accused churches nationwide of fleecing taxpayers and local governments using the First Amendment.

The Times devoted more than 17,000 words and a four-day series indicting religious groups for what it argued was essentially cheating taxpayers across the country. The pro-government, pro-regulation treatise by business reporter Diana B. Henriques was titled “In God's Name.”

Churches “enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes” and the result is “religious organizations of all faiths stand in a position that American businesses – and the thousands of nonprofit groups without that ‘religious’ label – can only envy,” wrote Henriques. But she wasn’t suggesting businesses and nonprofits should enjoy fewer regulations or taxes. On the contrary, the story series lobbied for more government control over religious organizations.

The Times isn't the only MSM outlet to portray government as thrown to the lions for the sake of churches:

Praise the Lord and pass the tax bill.

The October 1 edition of ABC’s “World News Sunday” preached that the 51 houses of worship in Stafford, Texas, are a holy terror to the city’s finances, citing the mayor’s complaints about lack of tax revenue. But reporter Geoff Morrell left out that the city has already enacted more regulation to discourage churches and that at that beginning of the year, the mayor gave a very positive assessment of the city’s finances.

“Just 18,000 people live in Stafford, Texas,” a suburb of Houston, but the town “is saying if you want to build a church, please do it somewhere else,” anchor Dan Harris introduced the story.


“All these churches, which of course are tax-exempt, are gobbling up what little land is left here for commercial development,” Morrell added before warning that the mayor believes the glut of churches could “bust the budget.”