The heads of major Christian denominations in Israel say that local governments across the country are demanding they pay property tax, violating a longstanding arrangement in a manner they say reflects growing intolerance for Christians in the Holy Land.
Obviously, there’s a more disturbing background at play here, but churches shouldn’t be untaxed in the first instance. The dude literally said to render unto Caesar, etc. etc.
Tax all churches. They can apply for their government’s equivalent of a 503 © status if they qualify.
Yeah i don’t know how we as society agreed to support pedophile ops sites.
The dude never existed but had he existed he wouldn’t have said that and has he said that he wouldn’t have meant it the way you think he did.
The Roman state religion worshipped the emperor. His face was on the currency. Monotheistic people are obviously going to take issue with this. About 2/3rds of the population there thought it was fine, just using money not worshipping a human, 1/3rd thought it was totally not fine and you couldn’t use the currency. However, everyone agreed that in the temple you had to change the coins.
Ok so Paul’s followers were running his fund raising stuff and this controversy was still lingering when the author of Mark came on the scene, despite the temple being burned down. Mark needed the fundraising to continue and needed people to think Paul was the best shit ever. So he made Jesus weight in on the issue and weight in in such a way that would apply to the modern times with no temple around.
No analogy is perfect but imagine if Ted Cruz claimed to have found a secret document that George Washington wrote saying that the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to abortion. That was roughly what was going on.
Even if there were a historical Jesus and he historically took this side on this issue that doesn’t mean he was taking a side on a related issue that hadnt happened yet.
churches in the middle east aren’t like churches in the US. They do not make a lot of money most of the time.