Compare the USA and Australian Church Govt subsidies

Research Report: How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the United States

Ryan T. Cragun, Stephanie Yeager, and Desmond Vega

I have never heard of Ryan T Cragun before, but he has written a lot of interesting material about religion in the USA, and as a Ex-Mormon will have an interesting viewpoint.

This report is worth reading in it's entirety, (really it is) and then the footnotes as well, but to sum it up the subsidies from the US Government amount to $US 71 Billion at least. Remember this is subsidies not wealth, this does not include their assets.

A comparison with Australia could be made with the figures from John Perkins and Frank Gomaz from 2008 on much the same topic. Their conclusion was about A$31 billion in Government subsidies to Churches.

So according to these numbers, each US Citizen pays, or more likely misses out $228 per person per year, while Australians pay an amazing $1476 per person per year!!

The usual disclaimers apply, as no one actually knows how much the churches actually have, (that also includes themselves)  all these numbers are speculative.

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it's a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."- Benjamin Franklin