God is my co-defendant: There’s an interesting case in Pasadena, Calif., between the Internal Revenue Service and the liberal All Saints Episcopal Church stemming from a sermon delivered on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. According to the IRS, the sermon crossed the line from religious to political speech, and that could cause the 3,500-member church to lose its tax-exempt status. The church is refusing to knuckle under to the IRS’s bullying, characterizing the agency’s actions at a press conference yesterday as an attempt to quash speech critical of President Bush and the war in Iraq.
The San Jose Mercury News summed up the crux of the matter this way:
The dispute with All Saints centers on a sermon titled “If Jesus Debated Sen. Kerry and President Bush” that was delivered by guest pastor Rev. George Regas on Oct. 31, 2004. Though he did not endorse either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry, he said Jesus would condemn the Iraq war and Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war.
“I believe Jesus would say to Bush and Kerry: ‘War is itself the most extreme form of terrorism. President Bush, you have not made dramatically clear what have been the human consequences of the war in Iraq,'” Regas said, according to a transcript.
‘We smell intimidation, it smells rotten, and we should not allow any aspect of intimidation to be directed to any member of our great country’
— Maher Hathout of the Muslim Public Affairs CouncilThe IRS reprimanded the church in June 2005 and asked that it promise to be more careful. Church officials refused.
According to that article, the IRS claims it investigated 90 tax-exempt churches and charities in 2004 and found wrongdoing in 70 percent of the cases. Four — none of them churches — lost tax-exempt status. In 2005, the agency began audits of 70 churches and charities and has 40 cases pending in 2006.
The only church ever to lose tax-exempt status for partisan politicking was the Church at Pierce Creek near Binghamton, N.Y., which was penalized in 1995 after running full-page ads against President Clinton in USA Today and The Washington Times in 1992 during election season.
The dispute, which could cost the church its tax exempt status, has attracted the attention of religious leaders on the right and left, who say the IRS’ actions could make it more difficult for them to speak out on moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion during the midterm election campaign.
At Thursday’s news conference, church officials were flanked by about 40 representatives of mosques, synagogues and other churches.
“We smell intimidation, it smells rotten, and we should not allow any aspect of intimidation to be directed to any member of our great country,” said Maher Hathout, senior adviser of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
All Saints omewhat has the IRS over a barrel because church leaders refused to answer a questionnaire about church practices and policies, requesting instead to have the case reviewed in court before a judge.
I got to wondering how the IRS found out about that Bush-bashing sermon. I mean, do they put spies in pews? Bug the vestry? Did they “turn” a deacon? It took a little digging — all the way back to November 2005 — but there, in the Washington Post was the smoking mitre, as it were:
The sermon that drew the IRS’s attention was delivered on Oct. 31, 2004, by the Rev. George F. Regas, All Saints’ rector emeritus. It was an imaginary debate between Jesus on one side and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and President Bush on the other. At the outset, the retired pastor told his listeners that “I don’t intend to tell you how to vote.” Then he went on to describe Jesus as deeply saddened by the war in Iraq and poverty in the United States.
“Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine,” he imagined Jesus telling Bush. Later in the sermon, he envisioned Jesus as saying: “Shame on all those conservative politicians in the nation’s Congress and in state legislatures who have for years so proudly proclaimed their love for children when they were only fetuses — but ignored their needs after they were born.”
The morning after Regas spoke, an article in the Los Angeles Times called his sermon a “searing indictment of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.” On June 9, the IRS sent an initial letter to the church, citing the newspaper article.
Who knew the L.A. Times did reviews of sermons? Or that the IRS reads the Times?
While digging for that nugget, I found a letter to the editor in the L.A. Times that reminded me of an incident I’d almost forgotten:
Evangelical leaders are actively recruiting new GOP voters for the November elections. This flies in the face of the Internal Revenue Service’s crackdown on nonprofit organizations that engage in politics. Interestingly, the main thrust of its investigation is All Saints Church in Pasadena. It has been under fire for an anti-Iraq war sermon delivered before the 2004 presidential election. Unmentioned, however, is the East Waynesville Baptist Church in North Carolina, which kicked out its Democratic members in 2005, telling them that if they voted for Sen. John Kerry they must “repent.” From this, I would gather, those evangelical recruiters have nothing to worry about — God is a Republican.
In the 1990s (during the Clinton administration), when the IRS was investigating Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, wingnuts cried persecution. But in the new millenium, evangelical and conservative Christian groups were instrumental in getting Bush elected (or appointed, anyway). How often do politicians and political candidates invoke the name of God for the sake of votes or appear with religious leaders to bask in the glow of their haloes? Happens all the time, don’t it. And aren’t campaign committees tax-exempt? So how come they get their speech protected, but churches don’t?
Anyone who regularly reads Pensito Review knows I am no fan of religion, whether organized or disorganized. But I’m a big believer in free — and unobstructed — speech. The federal government has never defined what a church is because of the Constitution’s freedom of religion clause, but the IRS has trod all over the freedom of speech clause in its pursuit of bad (read: liberal) speech.
It’s no coincidence that the case of the All Saints Church has come to the fore right before the midterm elections. The move is designed to silence dissent on the religious left with the threat of loss of tax-exempt status, while allowing the Christian right to do all the electioneering and vote-getting it desires in the name of God and the Republican Party.
