Because of this reality, the courts cannot allow the parsonage exemption and exclude the housing exemption without showing preference for certain religious groups over others. Both the parsonage and pastor housing exemption are part of a legal tradition that serve to prevent the entanglement of the state in ecclesiological concerns. That’s an ideal even atheists should support.

A federal court of appeals has rejected an atheist group’s lawsuit seeking to strike down a 60-year-old tax provision protecting ministers, notes the Becket Fund. The ruling allows ministers of all faiths to continue receiving housing allowances. “This is a great victory for separation of church and state,” said Luke Goodrich, Deputy General Counsel of the Becket Fund of Religious Liberty. “When a group of atheists tries to cajole the IRS into raising taxes on churches, it’s bound to raise some eyebrows. The court was right to send them packing.”

Aside from the question of constitutionality, the clergy exemption raises a question that many people — whether religious or not — are likely to be wondering: Why exactly do ministers receive a tax exemption for their housing allowance?

To answer the question we must first consider how taxation of church property, including clergy housing, has historically been considered.

Since at least the time when Joseph served in Pharaoh’s Egypt, religious property has been exempt from certain forms of taxation. (Genesis 47:26) The practice continued in the Roman Empire and through medieval Europe and was part of the common law, which America adopted from England. The common law granted tax exemptions to established churches and, through the equity law tradition, to all churches. From the 15th century to the 19th century, most pastors lived in the parsonage, a house provided by the church. Housing was thus a form of non-cash payment that was exempt from taxation since the parsonage was church property.

By the early twentieth century, though, both clergy housing and taxation had changed considerably. So in 1921, Congress passed the Revenue Act, which exempted from the gross income of ministers the rental value of any “dwelling house and appurtenances thereof” provided by a church as a part of clergy compensation. This parsonage exemption, however, applied only to ministers who lived on property owned by their church and disadvantaged ministers whose churches provided a housing allowance rather than a church-owned parsonage. In 1954, Congress amended the tax code to allow ministers to exempt a portion of their income to the extent used by the minister for housing. According to the Senate Report, the purpose of this addition was to eliminate the disparity in the tax code between ministers who lived in a church-owned parsonage and those who were given a stipend with which to secure housing.

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