@Flimzy Yes. For instance, a person who is not so devout in his faith may have little problems with marrying a completely nonreligious person. Both persons, in this case, are nonreligious, but the latter goes a bit more and self-identifies as one.
I know the differences are about
faith alone (anglicanism) or faith + good works (catholicism)
bible only (anglicanism) or bible + papal teachings (catholicism)
the pope is just a bishop (anglicanism) or the pope is the head bishop (catholicism)
no purgatory (anglicanism) or purgatory exists (c...
> It's pretty terrific that Kentucky taxpayers, including LGBT, atheist, and/or non-Christian taxpayers, get to see their tax dollars being used to support rank bigotry disguised as entertainment. Neat.
Whether a business venture is eligible for tax-payer money has little to do with the ideology it may or may not convey, and everything to do with the perceived benefit on the local economy.
If such a theme park (which would literally sicken me to the stomach, BTW) will bring business to the area, then even the Atheist-owned, LGBT-owned, Buddhist-owned, etc, businesses in the area will benefit financially.
Churches (and other religious organizations) get tax breaks because they are perceived (at least in theory) to provide valuable services to society as a whole, even though they (obviously) promote ideologies which don't correspond to the whole of society.
@fredsbend Huh. I might have leaned towards closing that one as too broad, but you did give a thorough and comprehensive answer. I think my main issue with the Anglicanism one is this line: "any other points?". Actually, now that I think about it, it could also be closed as primarily opinion-based. If that question is edited into better shape, I would be fine with reopening it.
@El'endiaStarman IMHO, asking "What are the primary differences between denomination X and Y?" (as the SDA question does) is a reasonable overview question. However asking for an exhaustive list of differences, as the Anglican/Catholicism question essentially does, is "too broad".
@Anonymous Right. And it's on the theory that religion, in general, benefits society, that churches and other similar religious groups in the US (and likely other places) are given preferable tax status.
@Flimzy I think receiving a tax break for churches makes sense, because if a church has to pay taxes, then a churchgoer / member may have to pay 10% tithe to the church, which would then go to the government. In other words, more money than a person who does not go to church.
@Anonymous I think churches should be treated like any other social club. If they want to run a charity on the side, that should be treated like any other charity (and audited as such, of course).
@TRiG The local community church in my neighborhood, affiliated with the United Church of Christ, used to operate a food pantry completely, but the job became too big and they started an independent non-profit organization for the food pantry.
That happened only three years ago.
I think that's the only food pantry in the community. :P
@AJHenderson From an IRS standpoint you can't make a profit. You can have a net gain in the bottom line from one year to the next, but you can't pay shareholders a dividend.
profit also allows you to grow your non-profit as you grow your reserve
yes, the hardest part of my Dad's job is getting the objective focused people in a non-profit to pay attention to the financial needs of the organization
actually, intelligent supporters tend to look for non-profits with good finances
if a non-profit is showing a mild profit and expanding reserves, it means that they are making good use of the money normally, especially if their objective to administrative ratio is good
those are the two key descriptors I look at when evaluating a non-profit
It's not obvious at all, and it's so odd that in this modern day and age thousand-year old superstitions are still going strong - whether Abrahamic religions like Judaism, Christianity or Islam or Indian religions like Hinduism, Jainism or deity worshiping offshoots of Buddhism such as Taoism etc.
yeah, another fun statistic, I forget the exact numbers, but for the girlscouts, something like 60% of their operating revenue comes from 2 weeks of cookie sales every year
try managing an entire business primarily on 2 weeks of unpredictable profit levels per year
@AJHenderson: What is the distribution of cookie sales income? Clearly there's a cost involved... how much goes to the individual girlscout, or her own chapter (or club or whatever it's called), how much to the organization as a whole, etc?
it is a larger girlscout council. Two councils combined in to one
and that is the combined council
before that he worked for the NY State Farm Beaureau, before that, a medical research non-profit that fired him for saying they couldn't spend money the way they were without going out of business (they went out of business less than two years later), before that Youth for Christ, before that the Health Care Association of New York State
yeah, but he's also been paid pretty well along the way for most of the jobs
still less than he could have been making, but a much more fun and rewarding career as well
and as a CFO, he still was never making bad money other than YFC
YFC he had to stop because YFC made people raise their own funds and nobody wanted to donate to the office staff
so after going through a large portion of my parents personal savings and still making under $20k a year from supporters, he had to pull the plug on it
but he's also pretty good at his job. He was with HANYS for almost 20 years and that is a several hundred employee trade organization for all the hospitals in NY and with relationships to the other hospital trade associations in the US. He was making low 6 figures as their CFO
but again, he probably would have made 50% to 100% more for a similar size organization in the private sector
Wednesday prayer meeting service shared about how missionaries in Israel operated. The missionaries dont get money every month and have to raise fund to give to the mission centre
I mean, his career varied pretty wildly within non-profits
but NPOs is his specialty and he knows them very very well
I actually learned business and NPO finance better than personal finance at first, which actually lead me to making some financial mistakes early on
because I was used to thinking of several thousand dollars as a relatively small amount of money that you simply go out and ask people for in NPO finance, but in personal finance, a few thousand dollars is much larger
luckily, as a software developer who was living at home, it didn't take that long to get out of it when I started working, but it still took the better part of a year
@AJHenderson I think "non-profit" hospitals make good use of that and other tricks. Running a hospital is seriously one of the most profitable things you can do.
@El'endiaStarman yes and no, when you consider how large the organizations are and how much the administrators have to run, the salaries aren't actually that huge. That said, they do often have too many layers of administration
but the amount the top people get paid really isn't generally out of line with norms
but there are scam charities out there that give like 90% of their income to "operating costs" which primarily consist of funneling the money in to the pockets of the people running the "charity"
even some popular ones are notoriously bad. Like MDA (muscular dystrophy association) which is famous for its telethons and Fire fighter boot drives only gives something like 40 cents of every dollar towards actually finding cures and treatments for Muscular dystrophy
over 60 cents of every dollar goes to raising more money and paying operating expenses
to say nothing of the outright scam ones (but yet still legally operated) where it is less than 4 cents of every dollar being put to use
What are the main differences between 7th Day Adventists and Catholic/Protestant churches?
It's not obvious at all, and it's so odd that in this modern day and age thousand-year old superstitions are still going strong - whether Abrahamic religions like Judaism, Christianity or Islam or Indian religions like Hinduism, Jainism or deity worshiping offshoots of Buddhism such as Taoism etc.
The Upper Room
The Upper Room