No subject

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pulpit25-2008sep25,0,5235934.story
Pastors plan to defy IRS ban on political speech
Ministers will intentionally violate ban on campaigning by nonprofits in
hopes of generating a test case.
By Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 25, 2008
Setting the stage for a collision of religion and politics, Christian
ministers from California and 21 other states will use their pulpits Sunday
to deliver political sermons or endorse presidential candidates -- defying a
federal ban on campaigning by nonprofit groups.

The pastors' advocacy could violate the Internal Revenue Service's rules
against political speech with the purpose of triggering IRS investigations.


That would allow their patron, the conservative legal group Alliance Defense
Fund, to challenge the IRS' rules, a risky strategy that one defense fund
attorney acknowledges could cost the churches their tax-exempt status.
Congress made it illegal in 1954 for tax-exempt groups to publicly support
or oppose political candidates.

"I'm going to talk about the un-biblical stands that Barack Obama takes.
Nobody who follows the Bible can vote for him," said the Rev. Wiley S. Drake
of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park. "We may not be politically
correct, but we are going to be biblically correct. We are going to vote for
those who follow the Bible."

Drake was the target of a recent IRS investigation into his endorsement last
year of former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike
Huckabee. In the end, Drake was cleared.


Drake and 32 other pastors who have signed on to the "pulpit initiative"
have sparked loud condemnations by fellow clergy and advocates of the
separation of church and state.

These critics, such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
argue that Sunday's sermons at churches in Oregon, Texas, New Mexico,
Pennsylvania and other states will violate federal tax law by politicizing
the pulpit. That, they believe, will undercut the independence churches have
long enjoyed to speak out about moral and ethical issues in American life,
including women's suffrage, child labor and civil rights.

"The integrity of the religious community is at stake when religion and
politics become entangled," said the Rev. Eric Williams of the North
Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio.

Williams was recruited for the defense fund but instead joined with 54 other
Christian and Jewish clergy members to file a complaint against the
initiative with the IRS.

The religious leaders asked the agency to stop the Arizona-based defense
fund from recruiting churches and to investigate whether its efforts may
jeopardize its own tax-exempt status.

Representing the religious leaders are three Washington attorneys, all
former IRS officials, who also filed a complaint accusing defense fund
attorneys of violating IRS rules by helping the churches break federal law.

Meanwhile, a separate group of 180 ministers, rabbis and imams also has
sought to counter the "pulpit initiative."

Members of the Interfaith Alliance -- which includes the nation's top
Episcopal bishop -- have signed a pledge to refrain from electioneering in
their houses of worship.

"Political activity and political expressions are very important, but
partisan politics are . . . . a death knell to the prophetic freedom that
any religious organization must protect," said the Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of
All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, who signed the pledge.

All Saints survived a nearly two-year IRS investigation after former Rector
George Regas spoke out against the Iraq war on the eve of the 2004
presidential election. Bacon repeatedly said the church did not engage in
campaigning.

The IRS dropped the case last year even though agency officials indicated
that they still considered the sermon to be illegal.

All Saints leaders voiced frustration Wednesday at pulpit initiative backers
for using the Pasadena church's fight with the IRS as fodder for their
cause.

"These people are wanting to promote one candidate over another and that's a
huge difference," Bacon said.

At the heart of the controversy is the Johnson amendment, named after former
President Lyndon Johnson, a senator from Texas when it was enacted in 1954.
The measure stated that nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations cannot
participate in political campaigns for or against candidates for public
office.

Many churches have appeared to step over the line, but legal scholars could
recall only one church that lost its tax-exempt status -- a congregation in
New York that urged voters not to vote for Bill Clinton in the 1992
presidential race.

The defense fund said churches targeted by the IRS would serve as clients
for lawsuits against the agency in federal court.

The defense fund issued seemingly contradictory statements about the
initiative. On one hand, it insists pastors will not endorse candidates and
will simply exercise their constitutional rights by addressing "the
differing positions of the presidential candidates in light of Scripture."

On the other hand, the defense fund describes its efforts as a "strategic
litigation plan" that seeks to "restore the right of each pastor to speak
scriptural truth from the pulpit" without losing a church's tax-exempt
status.

"The bottom line is that churches and pastors have a right to speak freely
from the pulpit," said Dale Schowengerdt, a defense fund attorney working on
the project. "They should not be intimidated into silence by
unconstitutional IRS regulations or rules."

Still, recognizing the confrontational nature of their strategy and wary of
protests, the defense fund released the name of only one pastor ahead of
Sunday -- the Rev. Gus Booth of the Warroad Community Church in rural
Minnesota, who already is the subject of a complaint filed with the IRS over
a May sermon in which he urged congregants to oppose Obama and Democratic
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton because of their positions on abortion.

"There is nobody who will ever tell me what I can and cannot say from behind
my pulpit," Booth said, "except the spirit of God or the word of God."

duke.helfand at latimes.com