I agree with you. The way things are setup now, religion gets all sorts of special dispensations. To do this, government has to determine what is a real religion and what is not, which sounds to me like it goes directly against the separation between church and state. Religion should be treated the same as any other belief structure.

I realize this doesn’t apply directly to taxation but we defer to religion in multiple ways in the law.

"That the power to tax involves the power to destroy"

https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?re...

That is not an answer to my question.

Even if that were more than a meaningless platitude, why do churches need to be protected against that more than everyone else?

Churches/Mosques/Synagogues/Temples are the source of moral glue holding society together.

The ongoing societal cratering about us will only be hastened by levying taxes on them.

But perhaps that's the goal?

The "ongoing societal cratering" is led by the most vocally religious people.

Religious institutions may be some kind of glue, but certainly not a moral one.