cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15908405
Training materials produced by the Florida Department of Education direct middle and high school teachers to indoctrinate students in the tenets of Christian nationalism, a right-wing effort to merge Christian and American identities. Thousands of Florida teachers, lured by cash stipends, have attended trainings featuring these materials.
A three-day training course on civic education, conducted throughout Florida in the summer of 2023, included a presentation on the “Influences of the Judeo-Christian Tradition” on the founding of the United States. According to speaker notes accompanying one slide, teachers were told that “Christianity challenged the notion that religion should be subservient to the goals of the state,” and the same hierarchy is reflected in America’s founding documents. That slide quotes the Bible to assert that “[c]ivil government must be respected, but the state is not God.” Teachers were told the same principle is embedded in the Declaration of Independence.
It’s all about money/power, not about morals/ethics or helping people as they say it is. The easiest way to put a big dent in the money is simple and would be supported by many of them because it is money they care about. Churches should be taxed just like everything else. Property taxes would hit many of the churches right in the expansionism and bring them into how do we shrink our property ownership.
I don’t know if any line in the Constitution that said religious institutions shouldn’t pay their fair share. It just says that people have the freedom to choose their religion.
I’m not against taxing churches. That’s really not the same thing as burning them down and banning organized religion.
Yeah, I figured I’d add to the discussion something more reasonable that I figured we may be could agree upon and actually hope to change in our lifetimes. Would be a huge uphill battle, but I can’t see how you couldn’t convince most people that companies buying land pay taxes, so why aren’t they.