Well, it's finally happened. In an election year when the conservative politicians have been practically LIVING in churches trying to get the evangelical vote, the IRS has finally raised it's head and gone after the tax exempt status of churches and denominations for messing in politics.
Trouble is, they went after the wrong folks.
IRS Opens Investigation of Obama Speech To United Church of Christ Meeting
In July of last year, the UCC (which by the way, is my tradition) invited Sen. Barack Obama to speak at its national meeting, the General Synod. During the meeting, according to people I know who attended and news reports, at no time did the denomination call for an endorsement of his candidacy or push its members to vote for him. True, Obama volunteers were trying to drum up support for his run for the White House, but this was done outside the convention area. But still, on come the Feds.
The UCC has sent out letters and emails pleading with its members to help raise funds for legal defense of these charges.
So tell me, where are the investigations of the churches who backed Romney, Huckabee, and Clinton? Are we to understand that not one of the leaders of those churches (or, in the case of Romney, an entire religion) gave an endorsement? Why is it that only the UCC is being investigated? Am I the only person that thinks this is just a tad partisan?
For the UCC side of things, including links to the text of both the IRS letter and Sen. Obama's speech at the General Synod, click here.
Peace.
You can read the actual complaint sbmitted to the IRS here: http://www.ucctruths.com/irs.pdf
ReplyDeleteThe specific allegations revolve around the three main criteria established by the IRS which are pretty simple to understand: If you are going to have a candidate speak as a non-candidate, the church cannot make a reference to their candidacy in any way, the candidate cannot mention they are a candidate and there can be no campaigning related to the speech - all of which happened in this instance and all of which are well documented in the complaint to the IRS. The UCC web site had numerous references to Obama being a candidate leading up to his appearence, the speech included references to his candidacy and there was active campaigning with 40 volunteers at the entrance to the Hartford Civic Center before, during and after his speech. Following his speech, the campaign volunteers were led into the Civic Center so they could get pictures with Obama. To make matters worse, UCC leaders should have known the content of Obama's speech since he gave nearly the same speech a week earlier to the Iowa Conference of the UCC.