As we near the November elections, the IRS is moving on its audits of churches that it suspects may have violated the prohibition against intervention in campaigns during the 2004 elections. See "I.R.S. Eyes Religious Groups as More Enter Election Fray," New York Times (Sept. 18, 2006). Religious conservatives were very active in 2004, providing church membership directories to Republican operatives to assist with voter registration. Both conservative and progressive churches invited candidates to speak at services and discussed issues important to their members. Now, both groups are working hard to invigorate their membership, but hopefully with more attention to the possibility of IRS audits of their activity.
In its February 24, 2006 report on its investigation of complaints related to the 2004 elections, the IRS found that 37 of the 40 churches whose investigations it had completed had violated the law about campaign intervention, but none lost their tax exemption. In a June 1 release, the IRS reminded churches of the importance of avoiding intervention in election campaigns. The IRS has also developed new internal procedures for processing these issues in connection with the 2006 elections. See here.
Progressive groups apparently intend to develop materials setting out principles that should be used to evaluate candidates, but without mentioning particular candidates. See Times article, above. Conservative groups like Focus on the Family indicate that they will send out letters "laying out the issues that separate the candidates in certain major races." Id. The latter sounds like a more likely violation of the law, but apparently Focus on the Family is not too concerned. The Times notes that Tom Minnery, a senior vice president, "regard[s] the threat of I.R.S. penalties as exaggerated."
These increased activities on both the conservative and progressive sides suggest that the I.R.S. "after the fact" investigations can do little to stop the use of churches as a bully pulpit for particular candidates or parties unless real, visible and even-handed sanctions are handed down. Yet, as I noted in an earlier A Taxing Matter posting, it is hard to know, without greater transparency about the process, the identity of churches examined, and the nature of the evidence, whether the investigations are dealing with the most egregious activities or in fact are chilling appropriate and legal discussion of issues of paramount moral concern that are also, of course, ones raised in the course of campaigns. The AllSaints Episcopal Church in Pasadena has done the country a favor by providing full transparency on its website about the investigation into the October 2004 sermon by a visiting minister who considered an encounter between Jesus, Bush and Kerry on issues of war and poverty. Interested readers can find the church's press release about the IRS examination, the July 24 letter from the agency with a list of questions about detailed church practices, the church's response, the IRS summons, as well as the Regas servmon that is the subject of the inquiry and the current pastor's September 17 sermon "Neighbor Love is Never Neutral."
In the latter sermon, the pastor outlines what he sees at stake for religion in America.
Neutrality, silence and indifference are not an option for us. We must express our conscience in word and in deed or we will lose our soul in addition to losing our way. If the IRS is successful in chilling the voices in American pulpits and houses of worship, religion in America will lose all relevance and moral authority and offer nothing but impotence in the face of this war of aggression in Iraq, the genocide in Darfur, the explosive growth of terrorism, the violence of occupations in Palestine and Iraq, the global AIDS epidemic, the death of one child every three seconds in the world due to disease and poverty, torture in secret detainee camps, the shredding of the Geneva Conventions, bigotry based on race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation, underfunded public education, and the growth in poverty. ...American pulpits must not cower from speaking truth to power.
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