<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>donatj</author><text>Separation of church and state is a restriction on the state from being religious, not the church from being political.&lt;p&gt;The bill of rights is a list of restrictions on the state by very definition.</text><parent_chain><item><author>reaperman</author><text>Due to separation of church and state, churches aren’t supposed to participate in political speech either but the largest ones pretty unanimously do every major election. Legally that’s supposed to trigger taxation but it’s political suicide for anyone to go after them for this.</text></item><item><author>mcv</author><text>Tax exemption should be a non-issue. Churches shouldn&amp;#x27;t be for-profit businesses, they should be associations with members contributing to a common, partly charitable goal (although honestly it&amp;#x27;s also just a club). That&amp;#x27;s what they conceptually are, and that&amp;#x27;s how they should work.&lt;p&gt;They should be treated as charitable organisations at best, and then also held to those standards. Any church run as a business should not be considered a church at all.&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;m a member of a Dutch church, and I have no idea what our tax situation is.)</text></item><item><author>once_inc</author><text>My main issue isn&amp;#x27;t the fact that the church is hoarding money and keeping, it is with the fact that the US government makes exemptions for them. What is the reasoning behind the tax-exemption and the exemption to reveal all financial information? Level the playing field and let the church be about its own business.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Mormon whistleblower says his church is a “clandestine hedge fund”</title><url>https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mormon-whistleblower-ensign-peak-church-investment-fund-allegations-60-minutes-transcript-2023-05-14/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>meragrin_</author><text>&amp;gt; churches aren’t supposed to participate in political speech&lt;p&gt;You either misunderstand or misstated.  The entire reason they are protected is because of their political speech.  They aren&amp;#x27;t supposed to be actively endorsing, funding, or participating in campaigning for a politician.  Most everything else is fair game.</text><parent_chain><item><author>reaperman</author><text>Due to separation of church and state, churches aren’t supposed to participate in political speech either but the largest ones pretty unanimously do every major election. Legally that’s supposed to trigger taxation but it’s political suicide for anyone to go after them for this.</text></item><item><author>mcv</author><text>Tax exemption should be a non-issue. Churches shouldn&amp;#x27;t be for-profit businesses, they should be associations with members contributing to a common, partly charitable goal (although honestly it&amp;#x27;s also just a club). That&amp;#x27;s what they conceptually are, and that&amp;#x27;s how they should work.&lt;p&gt;They should be treated as charitable organisations at best, and then also held to those standards. Any church run as a business should not be considered a church at all.&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;m a member of a Dutch church, and I have no idea what our tax situation is.)</text></item><item><author>once_inc</author><text>My main issue isn&amp;#x27;t the fact that the church is hoarding money and keeping, it is with the fact that the US government makes exemptions for them. What is the reasoning behind the tax-exemption and the exemption to reveal all financial information? Level the playing field and let the church be about its own business.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Mormon whistleblower says his church is a “clandestine hedge fund”</title><url>https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mormon-whistleblower-ensign-peak-church-investment-fund-allegations-60-minutes-transcript-2023-05-14/</url></story>