Debate: Tax-Exempt Churches Can't Endorse Candidates

(April 6) -- If you are on a drive in Gainesville, Fla., cruising down Northwest 37th Street, you might be a little surprised at a handwritten sign on the front lawn of the Dove World Outreach Center. It reads: "No homo mayor."

Who would put up such an unpleasant message on the grass outside a Christian church? The culprit: Pastor Terry Jones. It seems that Pastor Jones is more than a little upset that an openly gay city commissioner is seeking the mayor's office in a runoff election this month. Jones' junior partner also appeared in a church-sanctioned six-minute video screed about the election.

The Dove World Outreach Center should be in a world of trouble with tax authorities. Not because bigotry is illegal. But because federal law prohibits any action by tax-exempt nonprofit groups -- including churches -- to "endorse or oppose" any candidate for public office. Since Commissioner Craig Lowe is open about his sexual orientation, it wouldn't take a genius, or even a high school graduate, to figure out that the church leadership opposes Lowe.

As it happened, just a few weeks earlier, Floridians had the opportunity to come to Orlando and hear a presentation on churches and tax law by Erik Stanley, a top attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund. Stanley and the Scottsville, Ariz.-based ADF have an obsessive interest in changing the tax code to permit preachers, priests and other clergy to use their pulpits to support or oppose candidates for public office. They call their campaign "Pulpit Freedom Sunday."

Stanley says he's only interested in what is said from the front of the church during a service, but that is just today's message. Most of his religious right cohorts had previously supported legislation sponsored by North Carolina Republican Congressman Walter Jones that would have allowed promotions like the Gainesville sign and, arguably, even direct transfers of collection plate dollars to favored politicians.

Stanley's speech included the claim that restrictions on sermon endorsements is "censorship" and that his campaign is "not about promoting any political candidate or political party," and certainly "not about turning churches into political action committees."

The federal courts don't see it this way. Fifteen years ago, a church in Binghamton, N.Y., lost its tax exemption for taking out
an advertisement in several major newspapers during the 1992 election claiming that presidential candidate Bill Clinton was a "sinner" and that people who voted for "sinners" were, well, "sinners" too.

The church sued the IRS claiming censorship and lost.

In no small measure, this is not censorship because it is a voluntary acceptance of one restriction -- no candidate endorsements -- in return for the extraordinarily valuable grant of a tax exemption. A few churches choose to pay taxes and say what they want.

Mr. Stanley and others like him seem to believe "pulpit freedom" is on the verge of disappearance in America. This is nonsense.

Anyone who has ever seen cable news in the past decade knows that a vast assemblage of preachers from the late Jerry Falwell to the recently retired Jeremiah Wright have been talking about moral issues and applauding or condemning policies until they were blue in the face.

People who are real -- or even imagined -- moral leaders would be expected to have opinions on ethical questions in the nation. The IRS doesn't tell them they can't. The IRS just knows what Martin Luther King Jr. knew: you talk about principles of justice in the sacred places and you get your advice about whom to vote for somewhere else. That's why his top aide John Lewis, now a Georgia congressman, told me that King never once endorsed a candidate for office in any church in the nation.

That's what the IRS asks today. That's why a prompt investigation of the Dove World Outreach Center must be conducted as soon as possible.

Barry W. Lynn is the executive director of Americans United For Separation of Church and State. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and an attorney. Read more of his work on Red Room or in his book, "Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom."


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