Right wing religious leaders are free to make political statements. Pat Robertson can get on TV and endorse any candidate he wants. Left wing religious leaders are free to make political statements. Jesse Jackson can get on TV and endorse any candidate he wants. This is America, we have this thing called the first amendment, remember?
What you can’t do is endorse individual candidates from your church and maintain tax-exempt status. So the Rev. Jesse Jackson can’t stand up in his church and say “vote for John Kerry”. But he CAN say “Vote for the candidate that supports the poor. Vote for the candidate that stands for peace. Vote for the candidate that opposes racism. Vote for the candidate that shares your values. Go out and volunteer to work for the candidate that shares our values. Make sure you vote on Tuesday, it’s what God wants.” And he CAN go over to the Democratic candidate’s headquarters and call a press conference endorsing that candidate. And he CAN set up an activist organization and get donations and endorse candidates…he just can’t call that organization a church and get tax-exempt status for it.
Which is why there are organizations like “Focus on the Family” or “The Christian Coalition”. These are NOT churches and do not qualify for tax-exempt status, despite being organizations of the religious right.
I’m personally strongly in favor of separation of church and state, but I don’t see what’s the issue here. If anything, it’s not as egregious as what happened in St. Louis in 2004, when Archbishop Raymond Burke forbade John Kerry from taking communion because of Kerry’s pro-choice views.
The St. Louis denial of communion was not open campaigning from the pulpit by any means. The Archbishop has the authority to deny communion in his Archdiocese, and he chose to do so, that’s an internal religious matter not eligible to be scrutinized or regulated/impaired with by the federal government.
Archbishop Burke did openly make comments against Kerry, however I don’t believe he did so from the pulpit, just because he is an Archbishop does not mean he cannot make public political statements separate from the church itself.
There are any number of reasons behind why this investigation might have been stareted, but my WAG is that a church member, or group of them, complained.
It could have been some sense of genuine outrage, or part of a little community ‘coup’ to oust a “too liberal” minister. A venal junior minister who wants to move up. or the local Young Republicans doing their weekly anti-Democratic dirty tricks? Who knows?
It seems more than likely to me that this was some small Peyton Place drama playing out.
As soon as you start naming names, you’ve walked right up to the line. It doesn’t take very much more of anything to cross the line. Note to preachers: **Don’t name names form the pulpit. **
Hmm. Well, maybe. Keep in mind that the preacher giving the sermon was a guest speaker, not the actual pastor. This tends to argue against the notion of an ambitious junior minister.
The fact that the church’s current stance is being unanimously endorsed by the officers of the church suggests that no serious “coup attempt” had been contemplated. The congregation as a whole (AIUI) has a reputation of being one of the most liberal in the country; one suspects that that would be both socially and theologically (aren’t the Episcopalians the ones who had a couple of California congregations disassociate from the American church over the gay bishop issue and affiliate with an Anglican Communion in Africa?). My point is that a group small enough to conspire to stir shit this way without anybody finding out who dropped the dime would probably be more likely to join a congregation where they’d feel better-supported in their values.
That said, the church has not been shy about having a reputation for liberalism throughout the community. The notion of conservative infiltrators ready to exploit any opportunity to discommode the congregation and cause them to use resources on defense rather than what they see as their Christian calling seems quite plausible.
It’s a large church (about 3500 members, I believe), so it isn’t completely unlikely that it may have a few more conservative members. However, my experience with the church is that it is very liberal. My sister, my brother-in-law, and I went for Christmas midnight mass, and the Christmas sermon condemned a variety of policies associated with the Bush administration. This was, however, not delivered by the visiting guest minister who had delivered the earlier controversial speech but the resident rector.
Well, anecdote != data, but the last two times I attended my parents’ church (which is majority black and in the inner city), Bush got mentioned in both sermons. And not in endorsement, either. And Jimmy Carter spoke from their pulpit (I didn’t see that one). That church, AFAIK, has never been investigated.
And we discussed this at our last church council meeting (I’m currently serving as president). I believe the IRS sent out a notice of some kind. I will look it up if there is any interest.
My experience is largely with ELCA Lutheran churches, which are far more likely to swing left, at least among the clergy. They don’t seem to be having any problems, or at least the problems don’t get publicized.
And yet, what they were doing is illegal. I have no doubt that some members of the congregation drove over the speed limit on their way to church, or didn’t put money in the parking meter. Just because they didn’t get caught and ticketed doesn’t mean what they did was legal.
I, for one, am interested in how “…the IRS sent out a notice of some kind.” and “The church…has never been investigated” work together. Do you mean they got a cease-and-desist letter with no investigation being done? As I understand it, that’s pretty common for first or second offenses, just like trademark violations or file-sharing. If complaints continue, then an investigation will occur.
I’m not religous whatsoever, and was raised that way, yet it would pain me somewhat to think of the small, grass-roots type churches (who really don’t have any money and really are bastions of community) subject to yet another drain on their funds…
But then again, the money-sucking-megachurch-pyramid-schemey crap I seem to see every time I turn around should be taxed so far up the ass they discover their g-spot/prostate.
I’d amend that to: don’t name names of candidates in their capacity as candidates. But to criticize the government, and to criticize particular elected officials behind particular governmental policies on the basis of their immorality as a particular church sees it, should be nowhere close to the line. Doesn’t matter if the church’s theology is liberal or conservative, and it doesn’t matter if the officeholder is running for re-election or not.
The IRS letter was just in the last couple of weeks, and it was not directed at my folks’ or any other specific church - it was a policy directive or something of that sort (I haven’t seen it). I believe it was to all churches in the US, and was based on the case under discussion here. As I mention, my folks’ chirch has never been the subject of an IRS investigation (AFAIK), and nobody has complained about the fairly overt campaigning that occurs more than rarely there. My apologies if I was unclear. The IRS letter and the instances I witnessed of direct mention of politicians in their role as politicians are not directly connected. I mentioned it as an example of rather blatant politicking from the pulpit that did * not* lead to any sort of government investigation.
??? I run a non profit and am specifically not allowed any lobbying efforts, let alone endorsements of candidates. we’'re private, non profit, nonreligious. It’s specifically questioned at annual audits and monitoring.