La taxation a toujours été un enjeu d’envergure pour notre société. Dès le début du XVIII siècle, les institutions religieuses se réclamaient d’une exemption de taxes en contrepartie des nombreux services sociaux qu’elles rendaient. Basée sur des principes d’équité, l’imposition d’une taxe permet de défrayer les dépenses communes de notre société. Introduite localement autour des années 1876, la fiscalité municipale a toujours reconnu que les biens de l’État ne pouvaient être l’objet d’une quelconque taxation puisque bénéficiant à tous. De la même manière, les biens des institutions religieuses ont également eu le même privilège depuis le début de l’imposition de la taxe ou presque. Cet historique n’est pas sans explication! En effet, nos Églises participaient activement au développement de la société par le biais de services tant sociaux (aide aux plus démunis, santé, registre de l’état civil, etc.) qu’éducationnels (écoles, enseignements religieux…). Qu’en est-il aujourd’hui? Est-il toujours pertinent de maintenir ces exemptions alors que l’État a pris en main l’éducation, la santé, etc. Alors que les églises catholiques sont cédées, une à une, aux municipalités faute de financement et de disciples, que notre gouvernement québécois tend vers une neutralité pour faire place à un pluralisme religieux grandissant, que nos municipalités cherchent de nouvelles sources de financement, pourquoi conserver ce régime d’exemptions qui semble aller à l’encontre de toutes les tendances de la société? C’est précisément ce que nous étudierons dans ce mémoire. En résumé, l’objet de ce mémoire est d’identifier l’origine de ces exemptions de taxes foncières municipales et d’analyser de manière objective l’évolution juridique de celles-ci. Le tout, pour comprendre les motifs qui soutiennent leur maintien, encore aujourd’hui, dans le but de déterminer leur pertinence ou non lors d’une nouvelle législation. Ainsi, la première partie met donc en contexte l’exemption foncière pour les institutions religieuses au Québec. Elle traite d’abord de la relation entre l’État et la religion, puis présente les principaux impacts fiscaux du régime d’exemption de taxes foncières sur les municipalités. La seconde partie, quant à elle, établit le cadre juridique entourant ce régime. Elle aborde le régime fiscal applicable aux exemptions de taxes foncières, en s’attardant principalement aux articles relatifs aux institutions religieuses et aux presbytères. Ensuite, elle présente des motifs au soutien du maintien ou non du régime d’exemption. Et puis, la troisième partie propose des pistes de solution pour faire évoluer juridiquement ces exemptions dans le respect des attentes de notre société québécoise. Pour finalement, conclure sur une unique destinée de celles-ci. / Taxation has always been a major issue for our society. By the early eighteenth century, religious institutions claimed a tax exemption in exchange for the many social services they rendered. Based on principles of equity, the imposition of a tax makes it possible to defray the common expenses of our society. Introduced locally in the 1876, municipal taxation has always recognized that state property could not be the subject of any taxation since benefiting all. In the same way, the property of religious institutions has also had the same privilege since the beginning of the imposition of the tax or almost. This history is not without explanation! Indeed, our churches were actively involved in the development of society through both social services (assistance to the poor, health, registry of civil status, etc.) and educational (schools, religious teachings ...). What about today? Is it still relevant to maintain these exemptions while the state has taken over education, health, etc.? While Catholic churches are handed over one by one to municipalities for lack of funding and disciples, that our Quebec government is moving towards neutrality to make room for growing religious pluralism, that our municipalities are looking for new sources of funding, why keep this system of exemptions that seems to go against all trends in society? This is precisely what we will study in this memoir. In summary, the purpose of this brief is to identify the source of these exemptions from municipal property taxes and to analyze objectively their legal evolution. All, to understand the reasons that support their maintenance, even today, in order to determine their relevance or not in a new legislation. Thus, the first part puts into context the land exemption for religious institutions in Quebec. It first covers the relationship between the state and religion, then presents the main tax impacts of the property tax exemption system on municipalities. The second part establishes the legal framework surrounding this scheme. It discusses the tax regime applicable to property tax exemptions, focusing mainly on articles relating to religious institutions and presbyteries. Then, it presents reasons in support of whether or not to maintain the exemption scheme. And then, the third part proposes possible solutions to legally evolve these exemptions in accordance with the expectations of our Quebec society. Finally, to conclude on a unique destiny of these.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop and test the Advanced Integrated Model, a typological model in the tradition of Weber’s interpretive sociology, as an asset in explaining recent transformations in American Episcopal-Anglican organizations. The study includes an assessment of the church-sect tradition in the sociology of religion and a summary overview of Weber’s interpretive sociology with special emphasis on the nature and construction of idealtypes and their use in analysis. To illustrate the effectiveness of the model a number of institutional rivalries confronting contemporary Episcopal-Anglican organizations are identified and shown to be explainable only from a sociological perspective and not simply as “in house” institutional problems. The present work sheds light on parent-child conflicts in religious organizations and reopens discussion about the theoretical value of ideal-types in general, and church-sect typologies in particular, when utilized from a comparative-historical perspective

This thesis explores the late-eighteenth-century movement to end Britain’s transatlantic slave trade through recovering one of the major discourses in favour of abolition, namely that of the evangelical Anglicans. This important intellectual milieu has often been ignored in academia and is discovered through examining the sermons, hymns, and prayers of three influential leaders in this movement: Member of Parliament William Wilberforce, pastor and hymn writer John Newton, and pastor and professor Charles Simeon. Their oral texts reveal that at the heart of their discourse lies the doctrine of Atonement. On this foundation these abolitionists primarily built a vocabulary not of human rights, but of public duty. This duty was both to care for the destitute as individuals and to protect their nation as a whole because they believed that God was the defender of the enslaved and that he would bring providential judgement on those nations that ignored their plight. For the British evangelicals, abolishing the slave trade was not merely a means to avoid impending judgement, but also part of a broader project to prepare the way for Jesus’s imminent return through advancing the work of reconciliation between humankind and God as they believed themselves to be confronting evil in all of its forms. By reconfiguring the evangelical abolitionist arguments within their religious framework and social contexts, this thesis helps overcome the dissonance that separates our world from theirs and makes accessible the eighteenth-century abolitionist discourse of a campaign that continues to resonate with human rights activists and scholars of social change in the twenty-first-century.

This thesis explores the late-eighteenth-century movement to end Britain’s transatlantic slave trade through recovering one of the major discourses in favour of abolition, namely that of the evangelical Anglicans. This important intellectual milieu has often been ignored in academia and is discovered through examining the sermons, hymns, and prayers of three influential leaders in this movement: Member of Parliament William Wilberforce, pastor and hymn writer John Newton, and pastor and professor Charles Simeon. Their oral texts reveal that at the heart of their discourse lies the doctrine of Atonement. On this foundation these abolitionists primarily built a vocabulary not of human rights, but of public duty. This duty was both to care for the destitute as individuals and to protect their nation as a whole because they believed that God was the defender of the enslaved and that he would bring providential judgement on those nations that ignored their plight. For the British evangelicals, abolishing the slave trade was not merely a means to avoid impending judgement, but also part of a broader project to prepare the way for Jesus’s imminent return through advancing the work of reconciliation between humankind and God as they believed themselves to be confronting evil in all of its forms. By reconfiguring the evangelical abolitionist arguments within their religious framework and social contexts, this thesis helps overcome the dissonance that separates our world from theirs and makes accessible the eighteenth-century abolitionist discourse of a campaign that continues to resonate with human rights activists and scholars of social change in the twenty-first-century.