Tax to the Future

This picture with its caption was very prominently placed above the fold in this morning's New York Times. The caption reads, "The Rev. Rick Warren, who fought for tax breaks for clergy members, conducts an afternoon service at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif." I've made one, minor alteration to it. Take a few seconds to see if you can find Waldo.

Find him? . . . Of course you did -- it's the focal point of the picture and this was done without Photoshop. It's the face of Washington College founder William Smith, and he's very appropriately placed. For if you went back 220 years, took away the stadium screen, praise band, and Hawaiian shirt, you'd have a very similar scene with William Smith front and center.

Smith's success at Washington College came quickly, albeit not easily. This left him with some extra time and energy, which Smith devoted to the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Maryland. As you've probably figured out by now, Smith had limitless ambitions. One of them was to reorder the mess left by the Anglican clergy who fled America during and after the Revolution. When the theocratic monarchy of Great Britain was deposed, so went the tax structure that kept the church organized. This presented a problem for those in Rev. Smith's line of work -- when he first came to Chestertown in 1780, he was paid in bushels of wheat.

So Smith got together the Anglican clergy left on the Eastern Shore to work out a tax system to pay for the churches, and when that was successful, those on the Western Shore wanted in. It was a big hit and worked so well, that Smith got this just brilliant idea in his head. He thought that if he lobbied really hard, he could get the Maryland state legislature to enact a "Religious Bill," which would levy a tax on all citizens -- regardless of religious denomination -- to go to the clergy members of their chosen faith.

Like most taxes, it wasn't recieved very well. From Charlotte Goldsborough Fletcher's Cato's Mirania.

Never having recieved tax money to pay their clergy, the Presbyterian and other sects were accustomed to supporting their clergy without a state subsidy. They thought the episcopal congregations should support their clergy without a state subsidy. Lobbying for this bill turned out to be a grave political error on the part of Bishop-elect Smith. Opposition to it was led by the Rev. Patrick Alison (Presbyterian and an alumnus of the College of Philadelphia), who objected not only to the religious tax but contended that an equitable distribution of the taxes collected was impossible because the Episcopalians, as the Anglicans now called themselves, outnumbered all other sects and would receive the lion's share of any distribution.

You see, for years before the Revolution, the Presbyterians and other denominations had been subsidizing the Anglican church through their taxes, and they were not interested in going back.

Upon realizing the unpopularity of this proposal, Smith pointed over everyone's shoulder, shouted, "What the hell is that?!" and escaped on a makeshift skateboard.

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Back to the Future references, Episcopalian Church, Funny Pictures, Maryland State Legislature, Religious Bill, Taxes, William Smith