Unless there is a special designation that I'm not aware of, offerings to a church are eligible for tax write offs because they are donations to an organized charity, just like any other charitable donations. So clearly the IRS does define churches as charities.
And the notion that churches are not a huge support network for large scale charity movements is ridiculous. Be it supporting missions trips that build schools, supporting orphanages, supporting (or completely running) soup kitchens, etc etc. As I said before, not all churches do the right things with their money. But on whole, the worldwide church is responsbile for a huge portion of charity work around the world.
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