> Why are church donations paying for a building that often remains mostly empty most of the time...
Do you have any numbers for that? All the churches I know have activities and meetings all through the week, though not necessarily in the main sanctuary.
As for tax exemption, churches routinely do other charitable work, including things that would be called social work in other circumstances. In general, doing work the government would otherwise be responsible for qualifies a group for tax exempt status, even if with a different classification.
I suspect that if the religious tax exemption were revoked, the structure of giving would change, but churches themselves would stay more or less the way they are. After all, they predate the United States, its tax code, or the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.
Do you have any numbers for that? All the churches I know have activities and meetings all through the week, though not necessarily in the main sanctuary.
As for tax exemption, churches routinely do other charitable work, including things that would be called social work in other circumstances. In general, doing work the government would otherwise be responsible for qualifies a group for tax exempt status, even if with a different classification.
I suspect that if the religious tax exemption were revoked, the structure of giving would change, but churches themselves would stay more or less the way they are. After all, they predate the United States, its tax code, or the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.