BNA's Daily Tax Report for November 28, 2006 included commentary on "Probes of Church Political Activity Heat Up With Midterm Elections Completed" (BNA Daily Tax Report No. 228, at J-1). As discussed on several earlier postings on this blog, churches exempt under section 501(c)(3) are not permitted to intervene in political campaigns--either for or against a candidate. Yet political leaders have reached out aggressively to religious institutions to solicit their involvement in the election process and, in many cases, in their particular campaigns. Church attendance is very closely associated with particular party support.
" 'The single biggest predictor of whether people vote Democratic or Republican is church attendance,' Frank Cannon, principal with Capital City Partners, told BNA Nov. 21. 'It used to be economics or class but now it's the church.' Exit polls have shown that between 70 percent and 85 percent of voters who attend church once a week or more vote Republican, while those who rarely if ever attend church vote Democratic 75 percent of the time, he said." Id.
Barry Lynn, the director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has accused James Dobson, the leader of the conservative religious group Focus on the Family of "attempting to create a political machine akin to a 'religious Tammany hall.'" Id. Some might say that until the 2006 elections it appeared that the effort had been hugely successful--Bush and other administrative officials have made no bones about their goal to support faith-based initiatives with federal taxpayer money and they have openly solicited support of religious conservatives, and the Christian Coalition used churches to distribute voter guides that could be viewed as mobilizing evangelicals in support of conservative Republican candidates prior to 2004. The Republican party made a direct effort to get church directories and other access to churches. Lynn says Focus on the Family could be seen as merely taking up where the Christian Coalition left off (when it faced mismanagement and financial problems), with "county coordinators" and "church coordinators" to handle get-out-the-vote drives. Lynn's organization mailed information to churches in the eight states targeted by Dobson's group, to inform them about the problems of church-based campaign activity.
The BNA report states that Lois Lerner, the director of exempt organizations at the IRS, admitted that the IRS received about the same number of complaints of improper church participation in campaign activities in 2006 that it received in 2004. Numbers referred for examination, however, were only half what they were in 2004. The IRS indicated that about three-fourths of the tax exempt organizations examined in 2004 involved some illegal activity, but only three organizations (none churches) lost their tax-exemption as a result.
BNA includes the following among the list of the church infractions that the IRS addressed through issuing "written advisories": cash contributions to a candidate's political campaign, posting signs on church property, giving preferential treatment for speaking engagements, using the pulpit to endorse candidates, distributing voter guides encouraging readers to vote for particular candidates. Each of these is quite clearly a violation of the 501(c)(3) requirements. The IRS justifies not removing exemptions on the basis of "one time, isolated incidents". Yet Lerner also admitted that some of the incidents were "flagrant" violations--for example, a minister's words might not mention any particular candidates, but pictures of particular candidates would appear on a screen behind the minister while the words focused on particular issues. These ministers had the gall to claim to the IRS that they were not advocating for a candidate because they did not mention a name. Lerner notes that the IRS made clear in February 2006 that indirect speech counts.
Marcus Owens, an attorney in the law firm (Caplin & Drysdale) that is representing Pasadena's All Saints Church in its IRS contest over tax exemption, notes that fewer examinations in 2006 likely doesn't mean better adherence to the rules but less IRS resources to pursue the problems. "Their internal management systems have been so stressed that they have lost the ability to deal with judgmental issues." Id.
The BNA article reports on a conservative's effort to be sure liberal churches are targeted. William Murray, president of the Religious Freedom Action Coalition, created a website to facilitate "ratting" on liberal churches. Murray claims a church right to engage in political issues is about free speech. I'd argue that this is about tax exemptions--if churches want to engage in political campaigns and actively support particular candidates, then they can give up the huge subsidy that the United States provides to them through tax exemptions.
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