The Liberal's greatest fear is...

...that someone, somewhere might be praying in an untaxed building.

[Note - "liberalism" meaning the intellectual tradition forming the political philosophy of modernity, which therefore encompasses Republicans as well as Democrats.]

Signature collection begins for initiative that would eliminate tax examption for religious property.

If a Jo Shaffer, who apparently lives in the hamlet of Cobb near Clear Lake, can find at least 807,615 like-minded California souls, her proposal to eliminate the property tax exemption for religious organizations could get on the ballot.

She was given the go-ahead Thursday to begin gathering the 807,615 signatures that will be needed. Under state law, those signatures have to be submitted to the Secretary of State’s office by Nov. 2.

The proposal eliminates property tax exemptions based on a property’s use for religious worship or other religious purposes, starting Jan. 1, 2013.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst and the governor’s Director of Finance say that if approved, the constitutional change could mean a windfall for state and local government. They estimate that if religious groups had to pay property taxes, local government revenue would jump by roughly $225 million a year. The state General Fund savings in most years would be about $100 million from increased local property tax revenues for school and community college districts, they say.

This is an example of liberal mindset in action. According to Steven D. Smith, traditionally the relationship of Church and State was a matter of jurisdiction; the state had no jurisdiction over the church. This meant that the state could not tax core church property, such as houses of worship. It also meant that the state could not dictate that the church act in ways that would violate its core beliefs.

Over time, as in, in recent years, the liberal impulse to treat all aspects of society as falling within the competence and scope of the liberal state has meant that the state no longer recognizes the jurisdictional claims of the church. The church is simply another constituency within society that the state has to consider in allocating rights and claim as against rights and claims of other constituencies.

Thus, rather than being a matter of jurisdiction, "justice" - specifically, the liberal conception of justice - becomes the rule for the relationship between church and state.

One problem with this change is that "liberalism" is not value-neutral. As pointed out by D.C. Schindler, liberalism comes with a pre-commitment to particular values and goals, not the least of which is the proposition that religious rights are entitled to be accorded to any special status vis a vis any other right:

16In the liberal understanding, there exists no such thing as the idea of the human person as homo religiosus, that is, as a naturally religious being in the sense affirmed by thinkers in the patristic and scholastic periods, and indeed in a significant sense by all great religious thinkers (see, for example, St. Augustine’s claim that God is
more interior to me than I am to myself). To be sure, this idea of man as homo religiosus does not attenuate the need and intrinsic importance of free acts for religion rightly conceived! I merely wish to point out that the idea—fundamental for Locke, for example—that religion is an essentially voluntary society stands at the root of the tendency no longer to grant special status to the right to religious freedom, that is, as distinct from the right to freedom in other contexts and senses. Given liberalism’s formal freedom, in other words, relation to God becomes eo ipso a matter of choice: something that is so far first enacted by me, as distinct from being originally given to me as integral to my nature and reaching to the core of my being as a creature. But a God relation to whom is first elected by me, as distinct from being naturally-originally given to me, becomes by definition an arbitrary (because voluntaristic) addition to my natural secular reality. Even if I wish to make God the center of my life, doing so can now be properly only a fabrication (from fabricor, to make, forge); logically, God remains one among many of my equally-metaphysically arbitrary choices. In short, the special status accorded the right to religious freedom finds a reasonable basis finally only in a God who
reaches to the inner meaning and depths of my secular nature as such, and thus makes a difference to everything I am and do; and this reasonable basis requires a relation to God that is first naturally-given as distinct from chosen. Given liberalism’s idea of religion as essentially a voluntary matter, therefore, the Obama administration is so far not inconsistent in denying the special status of the right to religious freedom.

If that's too deep, consider the fact that the taxes raised by the state will be used for abortion, contraception, war, blood transfusions, pork production, cattle production, or any of a myriad of other activities that particular religious traditions view as being contrary to their belief systems.

As things now exist, these religious traditions can maintain a jurisdictional modus vivendi with the state that advances what they see as anathemas.

Liberal rhetoric often involves a claim that some religious group is trying to force their views on non-believers. When religions are forced to subsidize the state, then that argument loses whatever force it has; religious traditions will have no choice but to play the game of politics as any other political group, endorsing particular candidates, putting up a slate of politicians to protect its interests, as occurred with the Catholic Center Party in pre-Nazi Germany.

If liberals think that religion has too much involvement in politics now, imagine what the future will hold.