Churches Must Follow IRS Gospel
Tax-exempt status can be taken from churches for activities that fit a loose definition of ‘political activity.’ The IRS boss, a Clinton holdover, has targeted conservative churches.
InsightMag.com
By John Berlau
jberlau@InsightMag.com
As the nation reeled from the devastating terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, religious leaders were on the front line. Even Americans who never had considered themselves religious flocked to local churches, synagogues and mosques to seek solace and pray for the country. On Capitol Hill and in Washington’s National Cathedral, political leaders of both parties joined in public prayer. As if to confirm that there are no atheists in foxholes, not a peep was heard about separation of church and state.
Yet while everyone seems to recognize that religious leaders play a vital role in the public square during times of crisis, pastors, rabbis and other clergymen have faced a web of confusion when trying to speak out about crucial religious issues during elections. This is because houses of worship are threatened by the IRS with losing their tax-exempt status if their leaders engage in anything that fits the agency’s increasingly loose definition of forbidden “political activity.”
“There’s a tremendous chill on the pulpits in America and on the pastors in the pulpits, particularly not to speak out on issues that may be regarded as political,” says Colby May, director of the Washington office of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a public-interest law firm that defends religious liberties. “You find yourself where you have a governor or a senator’s race and the issue of abortion has been debated as part of it. If a church takes a positive pro-life stand and happens just to mention that this has been an issue in the campaign, the chilling question becomes whether the IRS might determine that this was in violation of the ban [on political activity for nonprofit groups].”
One reason that houses of worship are asking questions about this is that, during the Clinton years, the IRS stepped up efforts to go after right-of-center churches. In 1995, for the first time in history, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of a legitimate church for allegedly engaging in political activity. The Binghamton, N.Y., Church at Pierce Creek had run a single newspaper ad in 1992, four days before the presidential election between incumbent George H.W. Bush and Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, charging that Clinton’s support for state backing of abortion and homosexual preferences contradicted the Bible. The ad asked, “How, then, can we vote for Bill Clinton?”
Clinton won, and critics who had encouraged Democratic Party activities in African-American churches nonetheless demanded that the Church at Pierce Creek be punished. Americans United for Separation of Church and State wrote a letter to the IRS saying that the church had violated its tax-exempt status. These charges were echoed by Clinton supporters such as New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. In November 1992 the IRS began a “church tax inquiry,” authorized surveillance of the church and its pastor and, in 1995, made an example of it by revoking its tax-exempt status. The church, represented by May’s ACLJ, sued to restore its exemption, but last year in the case of Branch Ministries v. Rossotti, a federal appeals court ruled the IRS had not exceeded its authority under the law.
This has led to confusion about what churches may do when public issues involve religious considerations. Liberal groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State are telling churches not to do anything smacking of political activity, including handing out voter guides from the Christian Coalition or inviting a candidate to speak from the pulpit. Before the 2000 election, Jerry Schill wanted to put an item in his church bulletin noting the positions on abortion of both George W. Bush and Al Gore but not endorsing either candidate. The priest at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in New Bern, N.C., the Rev. Ernest J. Ruede, confirmed to Insight that he reluctantly nixed the idea. “He feared getting in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service,” Schill says. Vice chairman of the local chapter of the Christian Coalition, Schill placed the item as an ad in the local newspaper instead.
Schill informed his congressman, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), of the fears that his church and other churches had about speaking out. Jones recently introduced the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act (HR2357), which would give churches and synagogues more freedom to speak out on political issues by relaxing IRS restrictions. “If this nation is going to remain free and strong, I think churches have an obligation to talk about issues, and I think there’s nothing wrong at all for those ministers to say how individuals in office or running for office feel about those same issues the church is talking about,” Jones tells Insight.
Jones and others supporting his bill accuse the IRS, which still is headed by Clinton appointee Charles Rossotti, of selective enforcement against right-of-center religious organizations. While the Church at Pierce Creek had its tax exemption yanked for a single ad critical of Clinton, inner-city churches were allowed to have Gore campaign openly from their pulpits. And in the wake of the terrorist attacks, it also appears that until President Bush acted directly, the IRS took no action against Muslim nonprofits with ties to terrorist groups.
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a cosponsor of the Jones bill, tells Insight: “I don’t know that [selective enforcement takes place] for a fact, but it certainly seems to be that way.”
Former IRS commissioner Don Alexander, a Richard Nixon appointee credited with ending Nixon’s politicization of the agency, tells Insight: “I think there was selective enforcement during the Clinton years, when a church against Clinton was audited and its exemption revoked, [but] Clinton and Gore making political speeches from the pulpits … has been ignored. I don’t think you have the right to ignore what is in my judgment a clear violation of law.”
Supporters of the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act also contend that conservative religious institutions often are reported to the IRS by left-wing activists or antireligious zealots as a way of silencing them. Chief among groups doing the reporting is Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which through its Project Fair Play has filed complaints with the IRS on dozens of churches it claims engaged in political activity.
Although Americans United bills itself in a press release as a “leading opponent of the religious right,” its executive director, the Rev. Barry Lynn, denies that Project Fair Play is partisan. “We are equal-opportunity complainants when it comes to this kind of activity,” he tells Insight. Indeed the organization’s Website points to three examples of the group reporting churches that allegedly urged members to vote for Democrats or against Republicans.
In February 2000, according to press accounts, the Rev. Floyd Flake, a Democratic former congressman, introduced Gore from the pulpit of the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City by saying, “This should be the next president of the United States.” In March 2000, according to press accounts, the Rev. E.L. Branch told members of the Third New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in inner-city Detroit to vote against Bush in the open Republican primary to embarrass Republican Gov. John Engler. In 1999, according to the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Pastor Zebadee Bridges of the Asia Baptist Church endorsed and collected money for Democratic gubernatorial candidate William Jefferson during a Sunday service.
Did Rossotti’s IRS pursue these claimed complaints from Americans United as vigorously as those about conservative churches? Insight’s inquiries suggest it did not. An official of the New Orleans church says that he never heard of the Americans United complaint and that the IRS never contacted the church. “I haven’t heard anything of it,” says the official, who refused to give his name. “I have a right as a citizen to endorse anyone I want to endorse.”
When Insight asked Kay West, administrator of the Detroit church, if the IRS contacted her, she replies, “Of course not.” She claims the press accounts were misreported.
The IRS warned Flake not to make such endorsements again, the Wall Street Journal reported, and required him to sign a statement that he understood and will comply with IRS rules, but did not take away his tax exemption.
The ACLJ’s May says the hands-off treatment these churches received, in contrast to revocation of the Church at Pierce Creek’s tax-exempt status for running a single ad, is evidence of biased enforcement. “You’ve got to wonder why the Church at Pierce Creek or any other church would come before the IRS and get their ticket jerked, but none of these other churches did,” he says. Especially in view of the many black churches in inner-city Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago and elsewhere that became centers of Democratic Party politicking during the last round of national elections. An IRS spokesman declined comment about specific cases on whether there was bias.
Noting that “the worm can turn” and liberal churches might one day be harassed, May says the solution is to allow all houses of worship the right to engage in some political activity without losing their tax exemptions. Scholars such as James Davidson of Purdue University have noted that the IRS restriction on nonprofits has been in place only since 1954, when Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas Democrat, pushed through an amendment to prevent two of billionaire H.L. Hunt’s nonprofit anticommunist groups from supporting Johnson’s primary opponent. Before that, churches had a long tradition of speaking out politically. Patrick Henry’s famous “Give me liberty” speech was delivered from the pulpit of a Richmond, Va., church where an unauthorized session of the Virginia Assembly had convened.
“This isn’t about the other guy gets away with it and this guy doesn’t,” May says. “This is America. We believe in freedom, and we don’t want to be in the business of telling our pastors what they can and can’t do.”
John Berlau is a writer at Insight.
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