The signs are all around us.
Time magazine recently reported that even the nation's capital city is going broke. "There is no money for substitute teachers. Students will have to sit idle in the gym when teachers are absent." Also, it said, "The city has shut down two fire companies in the past 18 months, and three more are targeted to close."

Not only federal, but state and local governments everywhere are so strapped for funds that school buses and sports, art and music programs have been curtailed and many teachers have been furloughed. Fire, police and maintenance departments are struggling to maintain service levels with fewer employees. This is not acceptable!

To help stabilize the eroding tax base and perhaps soothe resentful taxpayers, why haven't churches been asked to pay for the public services they receive?

Taxing church properties is justified since they are, in part, responsible for the situation we find ourselves in. The First Amendment guaranteed free exercise of religion, but freedom from taxation was never mentioned.

Religion has outgrown the need for tax shelters. In 1875, President U.S. Grant warned of the perils that could accrue from the burgeoning wealth of churches.

In 1850, church property in the United States that was not taxed was valued at a mere $84 million. By 1860, the amount had more than doubled. By 1875, it amounted to $ 1 billion.

Roman Catholic Church holdings alone amounted to $80 billion by 1973, with $54 billion of it in tax-exempt property. The parcels owned in New York City required 29 pages in the Catholic Directory, three columns to a page, in print so fine it invited the use of a magnifying glass, according to C. Stanley Lowell in his book The Great Church/State Fraud.

When Alfred Balk wrote the article "God Is Rich" for Harper's magazine in 1967, church wealth was double that of the combined assets of the country's five largest corporations. Every year since, it has increased.

According to the Statistical Abstract published by the U.S. Commerce Department, in 1990 an additional 29 million square feet of tax-exempt religious buildings were constructed. The cost was over $3.5 billion, and that was a year when residential construction starts were down throughout America.

A few years ago, a magnificent Mormon Temple was dedicated in San Diego. It removed from the tax rolls some of the most valuable acreage in the area.

The edifice reportedly was built for $24 million cash.

C.B. Robertson, in a book Should Churches Be Taxed? estimated that Mormon Church income was at least $1 million a day.

So paying property taxes should not present a great hardship.

It has been reported that some time ago, 37.5 percent of real estate in Boston, 35.9 percent in Nashville and 40 percent in Philadelphia was tax-exempt. The cost of services for which no tax was collected must be assumed by the residents of those cities.

It's getting so out-of-hand that the statement made by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, when he was general secretary of the World Council of Churches, has begun to sound credible.

He was alarmed at the trend and stated, "When one remembers that churches pay no inheritance tax (churches don't die) and that real property used for churches is tax-exempt, it is not unreasonable to prophesy that with reasonably prudent management, the church ought to be able to control the whole economy of the nation within the predictable future."

Prayer in school was forbidden on the basis of the constitutional separation of church and state. Aren't tax subsidies a violation too?

In Engel vs. Vitale a case regarding privileges given to religious organizations, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas concluded that such preferential treatment was unconstitutional.

Such opinions are not anti-religious. They are simply reasonable and realistic. Even the Most Rev. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, in a radio broadcast, suggested that a graduated tax should be levied on church construction.

Jesus himself was displeased at the commercialization of the temple. John 2 :14-16 speaks of how he overthrew the money changers' tables:

"And he said unto them that sold doves, Take these things from here, make not my Father's house a house of merchandise."'

I wonder what he would think today of such things as church-owned apartment buildings, radio and television stations, schools, sugar plantations, newspapers, shopping centers, gas stations, drug stores, a garbage collection business and a girdle factory in Ohio.

The country is in desperate need of new sources of revenue. Religious organizations are in a position to provide it. It's time for Uncle Sam to pass a collection plate of his own.

Kay Alvarez is a freelance writer who has been a columnist, feature newspaper writer and has won a number of awards. Among her magazine credits are Saturday Evening Post and Unity magazines.