Does the Bible allow tithes be used for holy war?
No. Jesus is considered to be the Prince of Peace. Gifts are to be used to spread the gospel, to glorify God, and as recognition that earthly prosperity should not be our objective. The Jews allowed tithes to pay the salaries of their religious leaders. But nothing in the Bible allows church moneys to be used in armed struggle against non-believers. Some of you will ask about the financing of the Crusades. “Ultimately most crusaders had to pay their own way…” according to Alfred Andrea’s Encyclopedia of the Crusades. There were periodic, ineffective attempts at royal taxation of European subjects during the Crusades, and even papal taxation on the clergy, but there was never any uniform “Catholic tax,” in Christendom, and even if there had been, it would not have been justified by the Scriptures.
