Buena Park Minister Wiley S. Drake has again asked for his followers to pray for the death of leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State because of its role in alerting the IRS to the church's endorsement of Huckabee for President.
You can read the text of his original August 14 call for death prayers (notice that Drake calls for this action, which clearly seems to be a call for his congregation and others to take religious action, at the "key points of the parliamentary role"), and his renewed call for imprecatory prayer, and at this link, the complaint filed with the IRS by Americans for Separation of Church and State. According to the complaint, Drake indicated that the press release "comes from my office, pastor" and also mentioned his role in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog, Pastor Again Asks Followers to Pray for Death of Critics, has a lengthy excerpt from the LA Times story and links to various other items discussing the matter. See also McKibben, IRS Investigates Pastor's Huckabee endorsement, LA Times, Feb. 14, 2008.
Wiley, a Southern Baptist Minister, first announced his endorsement of Huckabee on a press release on church letterhead, and then later repeated the endorsement on the church's radio program, the Wiley Drake Show. See Flaccus, IRS Probes Huckabee Endorsement, AP, Feb. 13, 2008. Drake claimed he was just making a personal endorsement within his free speech rights. Id. The Baptist Press reiterates that approach, claiming that the use of church letterhead and the statement in a program broadcast from the church basement are just personal statements and do not carry any church endorsement. Kelly, IRS Probes Drake's Endorsement of Huckabee, Baptist Press, Feb. 15, 2008.
Note that this isn't the first time Drake has done this--he created Southern Baptist Convention letterhead when he was an officer in that organization in 2006 and used that stationery to endorse Mountjoy for his Republican party bid for the U.S. Senate. McKibben, IRS Investigates Pastor's Huckabee endorsement, LA Times, Feb. 14, 2008. Interestingly, when Drake created and used Southern Baptist letterhead to make a political endorsement, the Southern Baptist Convention wasn't so sure that it wasn't an improper religious rather than personal statement: the Convention's executive committee general counsel August Boto sent him a stern warning not to do it again! Kelly, IRS Probes Drake's Endorsement of Huckabee, Baptist Press, Feb. 15, 2008. Drake even acknowledged, after the fact, that he shouldn't have done it. See Warner, Reform-Minded Wiley Drake Won't Accept Traditional Obscurity of SBC's 2nd VP, ABPNews.com, Oct. 27, 2006.
Pardon me, but the idea that a pastor using church letterhead is simply making a personal endorsement is not realistic and not, in my experience, the way church congregations work. The congregations that I was a part of (in Mississippi and Texas) viewed statements made by the pastor on public issues with church identification to be statements on behalf of the church congregation. The pastor was the congregation's voice.
Obviously, the timid slaps on the wrist that the IRS gives to churches that violate the law to participate in political campaigns does nothing to change their courses of action. The IRS needs to act by revoking tax exemption for organizations that violate the law.
Why is this important? Churches are given tax-exempt status to permit them to pursue their religious aims without having to pay over taxes on their activities to government. That is a special privilege and depends on a critical separation between church and state--no money to the government, no control by the government in the religion, and no interference by the religion in political and government activities.
Church participation in election campaigns is, quite simply, against the law. Endorsement by a pastor in an official press release on church letterhead and then a few days later on a church-affiliated program seems very clearly to be the kind of activity that is attributable to the church and not a mere opinion of the person who happens to be a pastor. This is one of those areas where the appearance of endorsement by the organization is a problem, and any representative, such as Drake, should take extra care not to give any cause for thinking that the church itself has endorsed a candidate. Drake failed to do so.
This activity is inconsistent with the fundamental principles that underlie the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. Those constitutional guarantees amount to a pledge that the government will not impose a religion and that it will not interfere in religious practices. But the use of tax-free financing by a church to intervene in an election through endorsements and other means of supporting political candidates violates that pledge by using the "tax expenditure" (foregone federal revenues) to support its religious intervention in politics. Other taxpayers, who may disagree strongly with the particular religious viewpoint of that religious organization, must pay more in taxes because of the exemption, yet the churches benefiting from the tax exemption are using the funds made available to them because of the exemption to act against those other taxpayers' religious interests.
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