The Capitalism Is Freedom website reports that Republican Mike Huckabee has a radical idea:

Mike Huckabee has gained prominence as both a faith leader and a politician. And on Monday, he straddled these two worlds as he spoke at a pastors’ conference in Houston, Texas. His comments, which were delivered before the start of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, invoked themes of religious freedom and churches’ interaction with the federal government. Of particular note, Huckabee said that it may be time for faith leaders to separate from the government in order to maintain their freedoms.

The former Arkansas governor and pastor decried the most recent revelation that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted conservative groups and he offered up some contentious cautions for people of faith.

“The recent revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting people of faith — people who are conservative, people who are pro-Israel — and have been picking out the parts of belief and speech and faith that government seems to approve and that which it doesn’t approve has brought up a very important reality that I think, sooner or later, as believers, we need to confront,” he said, according to quotes published by the Associated Baptist Press.

Admitting that the audience might not agree with or appreciate his subsequent comments, Huckabee encouraged Christian leaders to at least hear him out and to prayerfully consider his words.

“I think we need to recognize that it may be time to quit worrying so much about the tax code and start thinking more about the truth of the living God, and if it means that we give up tax-exempt status and tax deductions for charitable contributions, I choose freedom more than I choose a deduction that the government gives me permission to say what God wants me to say,” he continued.

Huckabee seemed to be telling the crowd that it may be time for churches to simply leave behind the coveted 501(c)(3) status to give themselves more freedom (IRS rules restrict political endorsements and other partisan speech from the pulpit). In the former presidential candidate’s view, freedom is more important than “financial benefit.”

“I must be very honest and tell you; I have never given a dime to God that I gave solely because it was a tax decision,” Huckabee continued. “And if you’ve got people in your church who are giving because it’s a tax decision, then they ought to keep their money. They need it more than God does.”

I’m not a Southern Baptist. I know of no one who gives to a church mainly, let alone solely, for the tax deduction. Churches are like any organization (including a business) in that what comes in needs to exceed what’s going out over the long term, or else that organization will cease to exist. Note, of course, that while Jesus Christ told Christians to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s (Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25), the God of the Old Testament asked only 10 percent, not the 30 percent the federal, Wisconsin and local Caesars require of us.

(That’s assuming that those Bible verses haven’t been misinterpreted by those who favor government’s sucking up our tax dollars. Read the counterargument here.)

The problem with Huckabee’s assertion about the non-taxed status of churches specifically or nonprofits generally is that whatever the nonprofit is taxed is money that cannot go to the nonprofit’s mission. If, for instance, United Way donations were taxable, the United Way would have less money for the charities it funds. Churches that have to pay taxes would have fewer resources available to help their areas’ less fortunate.

Of course, the same applies to business. Any dollar of tax a business pays is one less dollar it can use on the business, or pay its employees, or pay its owners. The only people who should pay taxes are actual, living, breathing people. That would solve the next issue, which is that the IRS has no businesses telling ministers what they can or cannot do. For Christians, God’s authority always trumps man’s.