The IRS has notified a California church that its tax-exempt status could be revoked after a guest speaker gave a sermon that opposed the war in Iraq along with the tax cuts proposed by President Bush. All Saints Episcopal Church has a history of supporting Democratic and liberal causes with sermons and its website, which included the church's opposition to three propositions on the ballot in California's recent special election, saying that the three initiatives would “alter the very fabric of our lives as a democracy by limiting the right to representation and the right to express a political point of view.”
The church did cross the line from mere postulations on spiritual matters to go into the realm of political expression, and the IRS does possess the right and responsibility to go after tax-exempt organizations that do such things given that they are forbidden to make political statements by law. All Saints was wrong to engage in political expression, and no amount of braying and howling by its members and leaders will change this basic fact. Church rector J. Edwin Bacon labeled the IRS actions as “a direct assault on freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” However, there are those of us who see the actions of All Saints and other churches who make such statements under the auspices of freedom of religion as a direct assault on the separation of church and state in this country.
What is troubling about this instance isn't the fact that All Saints is being confronted with legal consequences for its actions, but instead the fact that not one church has been prosecuted in the same manner for any statements of support it might have made for the tax cuts, Republican leaders, and the various wars our country is engaged in. We know that these churches are in existence. In Waynesville, North Carolina, nine members of the East Waynesville Baptist Church were voted out of their memberships after pastor Chan Chandler told members from the pulpit that those who planned to vote for John Kerry should repent or leave the church. Despite the fact that some forty potential witnesses left the church in protest over the methods and reasons used to eliminate the nine members who were voted out, the IRS has yet to take action against East Waynesville Baptist Church.
Legal enforcement of the laws prohibiting political expression and involvement by tax-exempt organizations such as churches should be uniform. The facts as they exist currently suggest that uniform enforcement and application of the law is not the strong suit of our Internal Revenue Service. It isn't that East Waynesville wasn't as vocal about its political leanings as All Saints was, because the East Waynesville incident was publicized throughout the state of North Carolina and was even covered by the Washington Post. In forty-five seconds, I was able to Google search and find the story of East Waynesville on the Internet. Surely the Internal Revenue Service could have done so, if in fact the enforcement of federal regulations against political interference by tax-exempt churches was so important to its agents and leadership.
The All Saints incident highlights a troubling trend that has existed for some time: the partisan use and enforcement of the power of supposedly independent government agencies to selectively eliminate illegal dissent on the part of churches whose misfortune happens to be that their view is not in vogue with the powers that be. Illegal speech should be prosecuted because it is illegal, and not because it conflicts with the prevailing political winds.
The following articles were used as source material in this blog:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9962725/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/07/AR2005050700972.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment