For-Profit Religious Organizations

Two pastors in Utah who were faced with jail time and/or imprisonment for not agreeing to marry a same-sex couple finessed the question by re-organizing their “Hitching Post” wedding chapel as a not-for-profit religious organization. The law was written to exempt religious non-profits, but not any for-profit.

This raises the question, can a for-profit corporation have a religious purpose? Asked differently, could there be any such thing as a religiously-motivated entrepreneur? If he started a business, could it have a religious purpose? Would it have to be a non-profit for that to be the case?

The Volokh Conspiracy blog looks at it this way:

An individual sole proprietor — of, say, a kosher deli, to use Will’s example — would clearly be able to press a religious liberty claim, whether or not she hopes the deli will make her rich (and whether or not she commits to donate her earnings to a religious charity). Does this individual lose such rights if she incorporated? Does that somehow make her religious motivations any less sincere? Any less judicially cognizable? I can’t see how. What, then, if the deli owner formed a partnership with her equally devout brother? Would that matter? And, again, if an informal partnership would be okay, why would the adoption of a corporate form and limited liability matter?

This question stands at the intersection of religion and law, where definitions are crucial but boundaries are fuzzy. Religious freedom for persons and institutions cannot be guaranteed without a legal definition of what is or is not religious.

In the United States of today (and other Western countries I’m aware of, too–though I won’t speak of what I do not know), most religious organizations have taken advantage of tax advantages afforded by non-profit status. The practice is so common that “non-profit” and “religious organization” seem inextricably joined at the hip.

Non-non-profit religious organizations
It was not always that way. It couldn’t have been. Organizations of this form are impossible where religions are unrecognized, such as Christianity in the Roman Empire before Constantine, and house-church Christianity today in China. The non-profit designation is an artifact of a particular form of tax law, which obviously hasn’t been around forever (though it might feel as if it has). That gets us to the most trivially easy answer: yes, it’s possible for a religious organization not to be a non-profit.

This has little to do with the current situation and the current question: can a religious organization be for-profit? It’s hard to see why not. First, there’s nothing in Christian doctrine to deny it, and much to illustrate its reality. The mission agency I used to work with, Cru, a non-profit religious organization, has a number of for-profit subsidiaries,* operating to sell Christian products and services. Their purpose is entirely religious; they are for-profit religious corporations.

It’s not necessary to be a subsidiary organization for this to hold; there are dozens of for-profit religious publishers, whose mission is defined as educating persons in the faith they represent. So it seems undeniable that religious organizations can be either for-profit or not-for-profit.

Tying This Discussion to the Hitching Post
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, has offered religious freedom with respect to same-sex marriage to non-profit religious organizations. Practically speaking this makes some sense. When an organization applies for tax-exemption, it must prove its religious purpose. That makes for a clean line of definition. A for-profit religious business is just a for-profit business, as far as the law knows (or at least as far as I know about the law). Arguably that makes it difficult or impossible to allow or enforce differences in legal treatment.

Still in the case of the Hitching Post, a for-profit business run by a pair of ordained Foursquare Church ministers, it’s clear that the proprietors have a religious orientation, a religious purpose to their activities (even if not all marriages they conduct are “Christian”), and most importantly, a religiously-informed conscience.

In other words, while demonstrating an organization’s right to religious freedom might be hard in some cases, this is not one of those hard cases.

What Do We Do About It?
Governments cannot accurately assume that all for-profit corporations are non-religious, yet that is the effect of the law that could have been enforced upon the pastors in Utah, which allowed religious freedom exemptions only to not-for-profit religious organizations.

I don’t know what to do about this, other than to raise the question. I don’t have the legal background to suggest a general solution to the problem. I just want to identify the problem for what it is, and to remind readers that “religious” does not necessarily imply “not-for-profit;” nor should it be assumed in law that it does.

*The legal terminology is not technically correct but the ordinary understanding of the term is close enough.

Tom Gilson

Vice President for Strategic Services, Ratio Christi Lead Blogger at Thinking Christian Editor, True Reason BreakPoint Columnist

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16 Responses

  1. Ray Ingles says:

    As I noted in the previous thread, here’s a clear precedent that Hitching Post could cite, though they haven’t yet. Perhaps because the comparison isn’t entirely flattering? Still, it does seem promising for them.

  2. Hal Friederichs says:

    Tom,
    You raise some very interesting and reasonable questions in this post. Am going to want to take some time thinking them over before jumping in here with my opinion. But I do want to thank you for taking the approach you have in this post.

  3. Skepticism First says:

    Here is a link to the city’s ordinance 9.56: http://www.sterlingcodifiers.com/codebook/getBookData.php?section_id=894070

    Note that section 9.56.040.B.1 says that religious corporations are exempt from the public accomodation law. The Hitching Post, being a Limited Liability Corporation, is covered under this exemption. And section 9.56.040.A says that the ordinance must be applied “in a manner consistent with first amendment jurisprudence regarding the freedom of speech and exercise of religion”. Furthermore, as Gavin mentioned in a comment on the previous post, the Hitching Post has *not* been threatened with any legal consequences.

    This “controversy” is being entirely manufactured by the ADF, and you’ve fallen for it. Religious liberty is not in any way in danger or under attack here. This is all just fear-mongering to rile up the religious right.

  4. Skepticism First says:

    and here’s a direct quote from the city’s attorney, Mike Gridley: “After we’ve looked at this some more, we have come to the conclusion they would be exempt from our ordinance because they are a religious corporation,”

    (source: http://boisestatepublicradio.org/post/coeur-dalene-says-hitching-post-exempt-gay-rights-law)

  5. Tom Gilson says:

    Posted by that source after I wrote this article…

    As to the ADF’s “manufacturing” this controversy, I’ll be back in a while. My next airplane is at the gate and about to board.

  6. Tom Gilson says:

    As for Ray’s impertinent disanalogy, just give it up, okay? You’re not going to convince anyone with any sense on this.

  7. Skepticism First says:

    Skimming through the case Ray Ingles cited, it does in fact seem at least somewhat analogous. In both cases, the question is whether a person acting in a religious capacity (pastor, priest, etc.) should be forced to comply with civil laws regarding who is allowed to marry. Tom, you might not *like* the minister’s views on interracial marriage, and you probably even think he was horribly misreading scripture. But as far as the law is concerned, that’s not relevant. As the ruling says: “It is not the function of the courts to determine what is or is not the correct interpretation of the biblical passages relied upon for such beliefs.” All that matters is whether his beliefs were sincerely held (as has been pointed out in other cases, such as Hobby Lobby).

  8. Tom Gilson says:

    Sure, there are significant similarities there. I was just reacting, maybe overreacting, to his overeagerness to draw the false analogy to anti-miscegenation laws.

  9. Gavin says:

    The first sentence of the original post:

    Two pastors in Utah…

    Do you mean Idaho, or is there another case of religious liberty being protected in Utah?

  10. Tom Gilson says:

    I meant Idaho.

  11. Holoupenko says:

    Skepticism First:

    I wonder: are you first and foremost skeptical about your own strongly implied (per your handle) epistemically-methodological approach to first be skeptical? In other words, do you honestly apply your own (implied) rule to itself? If so, what’s your fall-back?

    Or, is it a mere slogan by which you try (but fail) to create an impression of epistemic superiority?

    Just sayin’…

  12. Skepticism First says:

    Holoupenko:

    Orginally, it was just a nickname. But I’ve found that it’s become quite useful for figuring out who is interested in addressing points that I make, and who is interested in avoiding those points by finding something completely irrelevant to comment on.

  13. Tim Wood says:

    Good post. There are two items that you didn’t bring in.

    The first was the recent Supreme Court decision on Hobby Lobby and contraception (link to search on duckduckgo.com) that, in essence ruled, yes to your question. From my understanding of the case, they laid down some guidelines as to ownership, particularly that it had to be a relatively small group of owners, such as a family.

    The second item is that a non-profit can own a for profit entity; references to that usual include the term “earned income”.

    Both raise interesting possibilities.

  14. Ray Ingles says:

    Tom Gilson –

    Sure, there are significant similarities there. I was just reacting, maybe overreacting, to his overeagerness to draw the false analogy to anti-miscegenation laws.

    I was referring to the legal similarities. (Though, note, Barclay was willing to allow interracial marriages at his chapel, he just refused to officiate.) I know we disagree on the moral similarities.

  15. Holopupenko says:

    @12:

    Nice attempt to deflect, but your approach (per your handle) bears directly on how you respond to the topic at hand (in fact, on any topic). Soooo… try to be honest and answer the question: do you or do you not apply “skepticism first” to your own skepticism?

  16. Big Fat Roly Poly says:

    Hi everyone. This is the artist formerly known as SkepticismFirst. I’ve changed my handle so we can get back to the discussion at hand, because Holopupenko apparently can’t get over the nicknames people choose for themselves.