Giving with the one hand ...

 

In a former parish I found there was a tacit agreement that anyone doing verger duties would let their fees go to the church. It struck me as wrong that anyone should make assumptions about the financial situation of other people. Also, I argued at the time, would it not benefit the church rather more if people claimed their verger fees but then donated them back, duly gift-aided where possible?

Then I had an image of Jesus overturning the table of the money-changers.

People commonly believe that Mark 11:15-18 is heavily down on churches being used as market places, and look somewhat guiltily at a book stall behind the font as a sign of the evil god Mammon's presence. But the main thrust of this passage and its synoptic equivalents seems to say more about the church determining that Mosaic law on sacrificial offerings could only be met by purchasing ritually pure animals from the church itself, and then setting the exchange rates to be levied so as to avoid unclean coinage going into church coffers. Yet, and yet, Jesus in his well-known 'Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's' comment (Mark 12:17), had the church's cards well and truly marked by showing how easily his detractors were able to produce a 'forbidden' Roman coin in the temple precincts.

If we offer our two copper coins (Mark 12:42) in a gift-aid envelope, what we're actually doing is saying 'I want some of the tax I have paid on my income to go to this or that charity, up to the whole of my tax payments'. Which is to say, into this or that charity rather than the NHS, social housing, education, etc.

The gift-aid scheme was lobbied for not by average church-goers, RNLI supporters and so on but by rich companies and individuals seeking to game a host of tax-avoidance schemes. If we use gift-aid in our regular giving, I have the uneasy feeling that we are complicit in such schemes. We can scarcely complain about wholesale avoidance of income and corporate tax if we whittle away what's left.