Great article. I am a staunch atheist and don’t support the idea of institutionalized religion but I wonder, if approx $63 billion goes to wages, who would pay the wages, if not the church? If the staff were all laid off and working for free, they’d need jobs.

While I do believe institutionalized religion can be morally harmful, I think the business of church has become imperative to our economy.

I’m not sure it would be good for the country [the US, I can’t speak for any others] overall, if churches stopped paying wages. The current spend on wages (approx $63 bil?) could cover over 1 million salaries of $60k/year.

It seems at this point, they’ve gone too far into the business side of things so that dismantling and returning to basics would be a disaster for the economy.

Maybe they should just start paying taxes 🤷🏼‍♀️