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You guys are killing me with your willingness to have the Church pay taxes. If Media Matters and the ACLU aren’t paying taxes, why should the Church?

Because The Church can only serve one master. LBJ as a senator pushed through a bill to silence the churches political dissent in exchange for no taxes. Most churches saw it as a good deal. Yes even Christ paid the required taxes for both Temple and Rome. The NPO status of churches has for too long been used by our government as a means to regulate the church, it's mission, and messages.

Because The Church can only serve one master. LBJ as a senator pushed through a bill to silence the churches political dissent in exchange for no taxes

You are wrong. The churches already had a tax exempt status. What LBJ did was slip in an amendment to the tax bill when very few were paying attention that made it illegal for entities receiving tax exempt statuses could not engage in politics.

He did so because he was facing re-election to the Senate and was being aggressively opposed by two non-profit anti-Communist groups that were attacking Johnson’s liberal agenda. In retaliation, Johnson inserted language into the IRS code that prohibited non-profits, including churches, from endorsing or opposing candidates for political office. In effect, Senator Johnson used the power of the go-along Congress and the IRS to silence his opposition

Unfortunately, religious organizations were clueless of what he had done until a few years later when the IRS began enforcing the little unknown rule he had slipped in.

However, religious organizations had been enjoying tax exempt status for well over 100 years already. read for yourself.

The History of The Johnson Amendment of 1954

I’m not sure churches are obligated to even apply for non-profit status. I believe the tax code provides churches an automatic immunity to taxation. Filing as a 501c3 is optional as a matter of convenience. Non-profit status under 5013c isn’t even necessary to establish donation deductibility. As I understand it, that derives from simply being a qualified organization, which churches already are, automatically.

And incorporation of the churches is problematic. There are many churches that have refused to do so for generations. Their view, and I share it, is that subjection of the church to the state via incorporation is in violation of the principle that Christ and none but Christ is the head of the church. But incorporation is in effect an admission, for legal purposes, that the state is the creator and sovereign over the entity so created, and thus has power to create it, control it, or destroy it, according to the whims of said state. No one with a serious understanding of who Christ really is can afford to cede that much authority to the state.

So I propose something like this: We need an “ecumenical” council to bring together the conservative churches in America to set forth a uniform and well-researched position on churches and tax policy. If nothing else, this would provide many, many churches who have no tax expertise the opportunity to learn what the real options are. I think it would be liberating for many, and give new freedom to those in the pulpit to speak the whole counsel of God.