Welcome to the church, my friends.
Obama speech to denominationAnd this is how the separation of church and state works. Not that I think that the UCC has done anything inappropriate...well, nothing they thought was inappropriate at least. But as we push the separation more and more, agencies like the IRS will finally enforce the laws that have been unenforced for lo these many years. This is what no favoritism looks like. Now, how "ecclesial profiling" will get into the news cycle I don't know. But we should expect it.
spurs IRS investigation of UCCBy Robert Marus
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A speech that Barack Obama made last year to his fellow Congregationalists has spurred an Internal Revenue Service investigation that threatens the tax-exempt status of an entire denomination.
Leaders of the Illinois senator’s United Church of Christ are fighting back, saying the IRS charges are baseless and “disturbing.”
In a letter dated Feb. 20 and received by church officials Feb. 25, IRS official Marsha Ramirez said “a reasonable belief exists” that the denomination violated federal law. Churches and other non-profit groups organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code are barred from endorsing or opposing candidates and political parties.
The UCC is generally considered the nation’s most liberal large Protestant body. Obama has been an active member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for more than two decades. Trinity is the UCC’s largest congregation.
In the IRS letter, Ramirez said the agency’s concerns “are based on articles posted on several websites” that described Obama’s June 23 appearance at the UCC’s biennial General Synod meeting in Hartford, Conn. The senator -- by then an announced Democratic candidate for president -- spoke to about 10,000 church members, according to the denomination and news accounts.
But UCC officials said they took pains to ensure that the speech was not perceived as a campaign event or an endorsement of the candidate.
Obama was invited “as one of 60 diverse speakers representing the arts, media, academia, science, technology, business and government. Each was asked to reflect on the intersection of their faith and their respective vocations or fields of expertise,” a UCC news release said. It also said church officials invited Obama as a church member rather than in his capacity as a candidate and said they asked him to speak a year before he declared his intention to run for higher office.
“The United Church of Christ took great care to ensure that Sen. Obama’s appearance before the … General Synod met appropriate legal and moral standards,” UCC General Minister John Thomas said in the news release. “We are confident that the IRS investigation will confirm that no laws were violated.”
Prior to the speech, a church official told the crowd that the appearance was not intended to be a campaign event and that campaign-related material and other forms of electioneering would not be allowed inside the event venue.
The IRS letter claimed that “40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside” the Hartford Civic Center, where the event was held. But church officials said they barred any campaigning inside the venue.
Thomas said that, while he believes the investigation will ultimately acquit the denomination, he nonetheless is concerned about its effect.
“The very fact of” the investigation’s existence “is disturbing," Thomas said. “When the invitation to an elected public official to speak to the national meeting of his own church family is called into question, it has a chilling effect on every religious community that seeks to encourage politicians and church members to thoughtfully relate their personal faith to their public responsibilities.”
IRS officials do not discuss such investigations with the press because tax information is private. But several ministries and local congregations have been warned and investigated in recent years for electioneering.
The agency is currently investigating Southern Baptist pastor Wiley Drake for using church letterhead and a church-sponsored radio show to endorse Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
Last year, the IRS ended an investigation without any sanctions against All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif. It had been under investigation for a guest sermon its former rector had given just before the 2004 presidential election. In it, he strongly criticized the war in Iraq but said he believed that both President Bush and his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, were good Christians.
IRS officials contended that the sermon amounted to an endorsement of Kerry over Bush. The church contested the charge. In a September letter to the congregation announcing that it was ending its investigation without penalty, IRS officials said they continued to believe the church had illegally intervened in the election.
All Saints’ legal defense ended up costing more than $200,000, according to church leaders. Anticipating a similar financial burden for the UCC, Thomas sent an appeal Feb. 27 to church members asking them to donate to a special legal-defense fund.
“In order to adequately defend ourselves, as well as protect the broader principle of the freedom of religious communities to entertain questions of faith and public life, we will need to secure expert legal counsel, and the cost of this defense, we are told, could approach or exceed six figures," Thomas wrote. “This is troubling news.”
Man pulled over by police, "profiling" revealed him to be a suspect in political rally scheme. Quoted as saying "Just because I wear a cassock doesn't make me a criminal!" More at www.CNN.com.Yeah, something like that. Posted by tripp at February 29, 2008 06:45 AM
Tripp, did you mean this sincerely or sarcastically?
"And this is how the separation of church and state works. Not that I think that the UCC has done anything inappropriate...well, nothing they thought was inappropriate at least. But as we push the separation more and more, agencies like the IRS will finally enforce the laws that have been unenforced for lo these many years. This is what no favoritism looks like."
The Internet is a notoriously bad conveyer of tone, so I thought I'd ask.
Posted by: Megan at February 29, 2008 11:05 AMBoth really...
It's absurd and I think that the UCC is being singled out somehow. So, I was feeling a little sarcastic.
But within Baptist circles at least, there has been a huge push on the separation. And I think that's great. The thing is that some of the freedoms we have enjoyed in this country as Christian institutions are due to a certain cultural favoritism...and a certain collaboration with the government. Churches are polling places. As long as they don't take stands/uphold one politician over another they can keep their not-for-profit status. There are certain umbrellas that exist...agreements (tax laws?) on paper that are only loosely upheld.
Now that there has been a push from the churches for separation...I wonder if the government won't somehow push back. "Fine. No more not for profit status for you." I don't know. That's what I am reading into the upswing in prosecution of the so-called violators of the tax code.
What do you think about this? Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? Perhaps. I'm unsure.
Posted by: Tripp at February 29, 2008 04:01 PMI believe it's a despicable political act on the part of the government. Unless they go after John Hagee, that is. If that's the way the IRS wants to play it, then use the same measure for conservative pastors that is apparently being used for liberal churches.
Posted by: Songbird at February 29, 2008 05:57 PMI've been thinking about this, and have come up with nothing conclusive.
The original point of the separation of church and state in the U.S. was to prevent the government messing with the citizens' religious practices.
But there was no such thing as 501(c)3 status then. That was a much later development. So the legal label of "nonprofit organization" may not be in complete alignment with the original "separation of church and state" policy, no matter how you slice it.
I still concur that the government should not mess with citizens' religious practices, *as long as* those religious practices don't countermand the laws of the nation -- for completely fictitious example, I think a person who commits murder as part of a religious ceremony should be subject to prosecution under the law.
And a more real-world example: once upon a time I knew a person who refused to pay federal income taxes because the use of those taxes conflicted with that person's religious beliefs, specifically the application of tax revenues to military budgets. I never came to a conclusive opinion about that; fortunately, my inconclusiveness didn't matter.
If you turn it around, though: should "separation of church and state" also mean that a religious organization should not be permitted to affect a citizen's interaction with the state?
Regardless of folks' answers to those questions, I concur with Songbird's view that this action concerning the UCC and Senator Obama is right-wing politics in action. It will come back to bite them in the posterior.
Posted by: Megan at March 1, 2008 12:26 PMMegan,
Yeah, it's sticky. When is breaking the law a protest? And when it is simply criminal? I too know people who do not pay their taxes because of their pacifist stance.
This is the trouble with the separation...religious institutions are powerful. Imams, priests, rabbis, pastors, and others can have incredible influence, and if they can steer their congregations to vote one way or another, then thousands of people can be mobilized for a cause very quickly. This is sometimes a good thing. This is sometimes a bad thing. It seems to me that the IRS is trying to say that this is always a bad thing.
Your comment about not-for-profit status is a good one to remember. Since our tax dollars can no longer support a religion (They once did, state specifically...Massachusetts, no?). Religions give churches a break...I think that this was some compromise back in the day.
All very interesting...and complicated.
Posted by: Tripp at March 2, 2008 06:36 AMIf the IRS wants to say it's a bad thing, then it has to be a *universally* bad thing -- ALL religious organizations must be held to the same standard.
As you and others have pointed out, this is not the present case.
I don't think the IRS should have the power to say that members of a church may not speak to that church's congregation in public, no matter what public service job the member may hold. Being elected to the Senate should not bar Sen. Obama from speaking to his fellow UCC'ers. Being elected President should not bar Pres. Carter from speaking to the Southern Baptists (when he was still in office and still involved with them). Etc.
Posted by: Megan at March 2, 2008 02:16 PMMegan,
I agree completely. Though, I am not totally certain, isn't that the law, though? Or is it pure endorsement?
I just don't know all the ins and outs of it. And, it seems, perhaps the IRS is not always clear either.
Posted by: Tripp at March 2, 2008 06:06 PMFor information's sake:
http://www.au.org/site/PageServer
Peace...
Posted by: Tripp at March 2, 2008 06:12 PMIsn't what the law? And isn't what pure endorsement? Endorsement of whom or what, by whom or what?
Pronouns without referents, oh help!
Posted by: Megan at March 3, 2008 11:16 AMLOL...oops!
And looking back at it, I'm not even sure what I was talking about.
Okay...
Is it illegal to endorse for a minister to endorse a candidate from the pulpit (or in any other "official capacity")? I know it happens. But is it illegal?
That's what I really want to know.
Posted by: Tripp at March 3, 2008 11:38 AMPer MSNBC, "Under federal tax law, church officials can legally discuss politics, but they cannot endorse candidates or parties without risking their tax-exempt status."
The whole article, about an IRS warning issued to a pastor who endorsed Huckabee on church letterhead, is here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23155264/
Further on in the text, there's some discussion of the distinction between the pastor's personal endorsement, and a "church endorsement." I don't know whether the IRS wound up buying that distinction.
Here's a link to an NPR story about a similar IRS reprimand to a Pasadena church for political endorsement. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5011910
Posted by: Megan at March 3, 2008 11:52 AM