So says the Miami Herald:
The IRS has notified a Liberty City church that it is under investigation for possibly engaging in political activity — putting its tax-exempt status into question.
The probe is related to an appearance last October by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and several black leaders, including U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The reason for the investigation, an IRS official wrote in a 10-page letter obtained by The Herald, is that “a reasonable belief exists that Friendship Missionary Baptist Church has engaged in political activities that could jeopardize its tax-exempt status as a church.”
The situation is murky:
It is not clear whose complaint triggered the IRS investigation, nor is it known if other churches are under investigation related to the 2004 campaign cycle.
An IRS spokesman could not be reached for comment. Federal law forbids the agency from speaking about an investigation or say if the letter even exists.
Meek, the statewide chairman of Kerry’s failed presidential campaign, said the complaints came from outsider groups that may specifically be targeting black churches. He said two other Miami-area churches received inquiry notices last year, but declined to name them or discuss the probes.
“I would like for these groups to show their face. What they’re doing is launching complaints against African-American churches in Florida, which is very unfortunate, and in some cases embarrassing for the institution,” Meek said.
Let me say upfront that I hold no brief for political endorsements from the pulpit. I think it’s corrosive of both political and religious freedoms.
And at the very least, if the IRS report is accurate, the pastor was pushing the envelope:
IRS officials wrote that their concerns were based on an Oct. 13 news report in a tax publication that reported Friendship hosted a “rally” on behalf of Kerry.
‘During the service, the church’s pastor . . . introduced Kerry as `the next president of the United States’ and told the crowd that ‘to bring our country out of despair, despondency and disgust, God has sent John Kerry,’ ” the report said.
An article published in The Herald on Oct. 22 quoted Smith as saying, “to bring our country out of despair, despondency and disgust, God has a John Kerry.”
Nothing the preacher did or said should affect the church’s tax-exempt status, Lewis said. “Everything he and the church did was in accord with the law.”
This all raises some questions for me. Is the IRS investigating other churches? Is there a way to find out, or to find details on which candidates they endorsed? Does this signal a trend, or is it a one-off? And does anyone have any idea what “tax publication” it was that carried a report on this rally?
Even more baffling is the involvement of Americans United For the Separation of Church and State, a group I normally agree with. They’ve filed several letters of complaint in the past few months against both conservative and liberal-leaning churches, including this one in Cincinnati. Again, I don’t have a philosophical problem with what AU are doing, but this is the first time they’ve focused on black congregations. So is this a sudden attack of even-handedness on Barry Lynn’s part, or is there more to the story?
Tell me what you know, and please, don’t be shy about letting me know if you hear of other congregations being investigated.
Update [2005-3-21 19:31:48 by pastordan]: Scratch one of those questions. The “tax publication” in question seems to be this post on the AU website.
nowhere else (at least tonight).
Will these investigations involve only religious institutions who may have had Kerry flyers in the rec hall or something, or will they also be investigating the various fundamentalist churches who regularly preach politics and make up handy little voting guides for their devotees?
If I am not mistaken, the Reverend Jerry Falwell was quite candid about his support for Bush on his several television appearances. Is he not affliliated with a religious institution of some kind?
Falwell is nominally Senior Pastor at of a Baptist church in Virginia. Typically, pastors are allowed to make endorsements or other political statements as private citizens. It’s a little more complicated than this, but an easy way to remember the dividing line is: not in the church building, not with church resources.
Thomas Road Baptist Church…found the name two seconds after I posted the last comment…
What about all the literature passed out at churches on the Sunday before election and the pro-Bush comments from pulpits? If the IRS investigated those, they’d get no other work done. But I guess since it was for Republicans, there won’t ever be an investigation.
It’s pretty well established that flyers distributed within the church have to be without endorsement; there have been some cases recently where the flyers asked leading questions, and the churches got their hands slapped. (This is why in the run-up to last year’s election, you heard a lot about materials being distributed in the parking lot, usually by groups not affiliated with the church.)
I read last night that the IRS had received a couple hundred complaints last year, of which they decided sixty were worthy of further investigation. I’ll be curious to see if the remaining 59 come through, or if they stop here.
If this is a beggining of applying the no politics or lobbying rule to religious groups, cool. Maybe that will be impetus to get rid of that rule. (A whole other discussion.)
But I betcha it is plain old political retaliation.
Also, it isn’t as clear cut as it may seem. The pastor might have edorsed a vote for Kerry from the puplit, but he may not have been acting on behalf of the Church. The Church, for all legal intents and purposes might be a forum for unlimited (i.e. whatever the preacher is moved to say) religious speech maintained by the congregation or Board of Directors, or what have you.
I’ll be very interested in seeing how this turns out.
of how we could set up an entire city within a shopping mall, call it a church, and pay no sales taxes on anything?
It has already been done by a number of mega churches.
The NYT had a long article on this phenomenon a few years back.
Basically you can operate a PX out of a church, you can, in fact, have a McDonanlds franchise and call it your Church snack bar.
To give you some idea of how absurd the IRC is on this matter- I’m defending a church that may loose it’s status because it pays $1.00 a month occupancy for the entire first floor of the minister’s house. Just because three of eight directors are distant relatives of the minister. That, and the fact that they aren’t a mainstream denomonation has resulted in well over 400 pages of correspondence.
And a McChurch can give a deacon’s family member a fast food franchise inside.
Either get rid of 501(c)3 entirely- or give total free speech and religon rights to such organizations. In between is a recipie for abuse.
It shouldn’t matter whether or not the pastor speaks as a private citizen inside the church; the precedent that’s been set is that if it’s at a church function, it’s a church endorsement. Pastors, on the other hand, are allowed to do something like write a letter to the local newspaper making an endorsement. They can even identify themselves as pastor of such-and-such a congregation, as long as it’s made clear that they do not speak on behalf of that church.
I’m curious about the case you mention above, however. How is it that the church is renting the first floor of the pastor’s house? Is that where the church office is located, or is there something more complex going on here?
The church in the pastor’s house is literally- in the pastors house. There’s an altar and pews in the living room that seats the congregation of about 25.
Also, for your second question (this is all hypothetical) lets say you wanted to endorse a candidate for office from the pulpit- you would need the following facts:
If all the above can be established as vaid acts (pretty easy, ?unfortunately?) then you can do a “political rally and endorsement” in the Church building.
Otherwise Church owned facilities (including many conference centers that are an important part of the progressive movement’s infrastructure) could not be rented out to political activists.
Moreover, as casuistic as my argument seems, you have alternate routes to the permissibility of “political action” by 501(c)3’s. One group I’ve worked with actually got IRS approval for their anti-death penalty activity (which the IRS had categorized as political action- e.g. goals that can only be reached via legislation) by arguing that the group wasn’t lobbying congress- but was engaged in seeking divine intervention to end the death penalty.
I’d have to research this, but I do beleive it might be permissible for a religious leader to make claims about the religious signifigance of voting. For example, it might be defensible to say-
“You will go to hell if you vote for Bush”
while it would be impermissible to say:
“Don’t vote for Bush”
or even
“I don’t want you to go to hell, so please don’t vote for Bush”
Makes no sense? You are right- but that’s why I hate the whole (c)3 law and would like to see it chucked out.
For a less reactionary point of view than my own on these matters, check out the information and articles on this web site:
National Center for Responsive Philanthropy
(Follow the link to the “press room” for nice summaries.)
Yup, I think you’re right here. There is a mighty fine line here that lends itself to all kinds of nonsense. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what the alternative is to the 501(c)(3). Taking away the exemption would do enormous damage to small churches, while giving megachurches the opportunity to invade politics as never before.
I think our current system, while it could certainly stand to be improved, is probably the least bad alternative. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
Either get rid of 501(c)3 entirely- or give total free speech and religon rights to such organizations.
Um, no. You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
A far more rational solution would be to revoke the 501(c)3 status of churches. AND, to eliminate the exemption from standard revenue and expenditure reporting standards.
501(c)3 public-service organizations, such as the one I head, should derive their tax benefit from the dmonstrated, measurable benefits they provide to the community. In that way, the tax benefit is paying directly for a public service. And, as long as they are deriving tax benefits, they should be held to government rules about discrimination and equal opportunity. Finally, in return for receiving a public benefit for which they provide a public service, 501(c)3’s should be held to the highest standards of transparency and public accountability.
Churches, on the other hand, are granted an exemption under the irrational sectarian belief that organized worship, of virtually any kind, is, in and of itself–and independently from any tangible charitable work–a public good. That is a discriminatory violation of the principle of separation, and grants disproportionate advantages to anyone who puts on a collar and claims to be worshipping the supernatural – even if they openly created their “church” as a money-making scam, like Scientology.
Unlike an explicit charity, a church serves no tangible benefit to the wider society. It serves a particular, exclusionary partisan community using general public funds. My tax dollars are supporting the efforts, to varying degrees, of various competing religionists to impose their will on me. That hardly seems like a logical expenditure of public funds.
The unique advantages which churches, alone among non-profit organizations, enjoy, particularly real-estate exemptions, further harm the community, by denying equal opportunity to acquire and hold prime real-estate from actual public service organizations, from local government, and from the free market.
Your radical suggestion, however, is counter-productive. The main effect of your rule would be to dramatically reduce the amount of public service conducted outside the central government. Who benefits from that?
You might as well say, let’s stop inhibiting government agencies from engaging in religious activities, because “it is a recipe for abuse”.
Any restriction on behavior is a potential “recipe for abuse”. The answer is not to remove all restrictions, or remove all benefits. The answer is to approach each situation rationally, in order to maximize general public benefit and minimize both economic and social costs.
Churches rationally should not be tax-exempt. But the tax-exemption for public service organizations makes perfect rational sense.
I’ll pick up on a small issue within your larger statemnt:
“501(c)3 public-service organizations, such as the one I head, should derive their tax benefit from the dmonstrated, measurable benefits they provide to the community.”
This is way too subjective to work, IMHO. Also, one of the reasons that Churches can be granted exemption from taxes, despite the establishment clause, is that the “public benefit” provided is the mere existance of non-business, non-govenrment organizations as a balance to the power of both government and business. I’m sorry that I’ve forgotten the name of the (book? article?)- but there was a recent and well thought out argument made that the decline of bowling leagues (and other social organizations) is a major contributing factor to the rise of right wing demogogues and the power of the mega churches.
In other words- the social benefit society gets in exchange for granting the tax exempt status is the existance of the organizations as much as the works of the organizations.
All your other points are valid and important, thanks for putting them out there. One last point- I like the reforms you’ve suggested- but I wonder, if faced with the rock and a hard place of scrapping tax deductability for contributions (maintain exemption from taxes on non-business revenues only) or allowing the existing system to continue unchanged- which would you prefer?
Also, please diary your non-profit. I’d be very interested and you never know- turkee may be forthcoming.
I believe the book you’re thinking of is “Bowling Alone.”
Thanks for the response. To keep each comment from becoming interminable, I will post each of the three questions/comments I have in three separate responses.
1. Re: demonstrating measurable benefits to the community being “way too subjective to work”:
I don’t see the problem. The federal government, acting as our proxy, guided by our will as illustrated via legislation, determines criteria for determining which activities and services provide the broadest public benefit.
For example: providing food to the hungry, donating labor to build houses, teaching civics, promoting non-violent conflict resolution, planting trees.
The government then establishes objective metrics to evaluate the degree to which an organization is fulfilling its approved public service mission: for example, that x% of its revenues be used for programs directly related to its approved public service mission, that no more than y% of its revenues be used for administration, and that any net revenues are donated to other approaved public service organizations.
Full, itemized public disclosure of all income and all expenditures is the price for gaining tax benefits (or any kind of taxpayer support, for that matter, whether indirectly through tax exemptions or directly through government funding).
Organizations that consistently meet or exceed these metrics retain their tax-exemption. Organizations that fail to meet these metrics in a given year are placed on probation for one year, but still retain their exemption. Organizations that fail for two consequetive years, or that fail for the third time overall, no matter how long they have been in existence, lose their tax-exemption.
To ensure integrity, besides all returns being in the public domain, periodic random audits are conducted of current as well as past returns. Organizations that are caught cheating in an audit, and who reported compliance with the metrics while actually failing them, lose their tax- exemption, retroactive to include the year they cheated on, even if it is their first offense.
one more thing: in my opinion, any intellectual property created with the direct (via funding) or indirect (via tax exemptions or other benefits) taxpayer’s money, should be released openly for free non-profit public use, under Open Source, Creative Commons, or whatever appropriate license. That is how we operate our non-profit, voluntarily. I think it should be a mandatory requirement for the public good.
Most of this is the way things already work, some of it are suggestions for improvement, none of it is particularly revolutionary.
Comments?
But the world is not a rational place. If everyone were like you and I, your system would work and I’d be all for it.
But my practical experience in the area of Administrative law (the vehicle through wich the IRS would impliment the system you descibe) tell me that nothing works the way it was intended if there are powerful interests at stake.
Here are the “weasel words” and inevitable loopholes that I think would doom your proposal:
Some things are suitable to metrics, like number of meals served or occupancies created. But how the heck do you metric “teaching civics” without either unduly limiting “civics” to knowing and obeying the law, or else creating some sort of government definition of “good citizen”? Likewise “teaching nonviolent conflict resolution” if you metric that, you must either make exempt status contingent on something like change in crime rates (which could create an incentive to avoid providing such services to areas with systemic problems that are leading to rising crime rates) or create a government definition of what what sort of ideas are conducive to non-violent conflict resolution.
The current law actually (without the detailed metrics) requires that organizations have “charitable purposes” which are defined pretty much as you do, except they explicitly include the unmentioned categories of educational and religious organizations and child and animal welfare groups. If you build at least some houses you can be pretty damn ineffective in every other regard and still qualify.
The “educational” category is a good example of why metric are either ineffective or restrictive of free speech:
The old definition od “educational” use to be pretty much “imparts useful information to the public”. A group that publishes and distributes free of charge copies of the periodic table is clearly covered. A group that publishes and distributes advertising flyers for companies that pay them to do so is not covered. There was some gray area, could you “educate” the public by telling them your neighbor is an SOB? What if that was true and the public is better off avoiding the SOB? Could the Flat Earth Society be an “educational” organization? Nobody knew for sure until- feminist and gay groups began publishing journals promoting their ideas- certainly if one could get a tax deduction for educating the public about the ideas of Plato you could get one for educating the public about the ideas of Andrea Dworkin and other feminists? The IRS said no- this is crazy stuff- not useful information at all. In the case of “Big Momma Rag”, the Courts said the 1st Amendment precludes the government making this kind of distinction.
Could the IRS deny “educational” exempt status to an organization beacause the “infomation” they put forward is not demonstrably true? I hope I don’t need to explain why you don’t want the government vetting scientific journals to decide if they are “correct: enough to be “educational”.
The result of these issues being raised was that the IRS decided to look at form over substance- is it a jounrnal, is the “information” imparted in and “educational” manner (the “propaganda” test requires that an argument be developed from assertions of fact in order to be “educational” – some metric!)
Thus, outside of what I think we would all feel is an unduly constricted definition of charity, attempts at metrics run into 1st Amendment issues.
Moreover, in my personal experience, the best charitable work is often done by tiny organizations. As it stands they are terribly burdened by existing reporting and book keeping requirements. Your proposal would, IMHO, tend toward the concentration of charitable activity into larger more professionalized organizations. Which are, by themselves, good things- but they can’t and don’t provide many types of needed services.
Moreover, any set of rules you create for the evaluation of administraive and program costs creates incentives to do programatic work, and choose means of delivering services, that shows low administrative costs under whatever accounting system you use. This can shut out certain needy sectors and discourage innovation in program services delivery.
The current means of evaluating “charitable organizations”, which I would define as a two pronged test of “form” (which allows for the abuses we’ve been discussing) and “intent” to be delivering “charitable” services.
We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads us, but the other roads seem to run into constitutional issues or severe restrictions on the definition of charity.
I’d prefer to leave government defined needs to be met by government contracts (direct financial transfers) and understand the public policy behind indirect transfers to highly unrestricted, and occasionally downright icky, organizations as being justified by the social benefit of avoiding “Bowling Alone”.
Actually, in order to receive 501(c)3 status, I had to document the educational and civic value of our mission, and our application was reviewed, as are all such applications, individually by a human evaluator for merit.
In fact, the government does, has always, and has perfect right to, deny non-profit status to certain organizations based on their judgement of the public merit of their work. That is one of the reasons non-profit exemption applications are such a tricky thing to do correctly, and why we needed the generous, pro bono services of Gesmer Updegrove, a leading intellectual property law firm, to help us write ours.
Thus, there is already a qualitative, and not just quantitative, filter in place.
Second, providing a metric doesn’t necessarily mean that the only measure of merit is the number of meals served or the number of homeless sheltered. There are well-established means by which government agencies at all levels evaluate the merit of continued funding for a given civic or educational operation. Those same criteria can be applied when measuring the merit of a tax-exempt program.
Nothing about any of this prevents anyone from doing anything within the law. But, if you want taxpayer funds to do it, you need to demonstrate broad public value.
All this talk about the danger of government making value judgements ignores the fact that that is precisely what governments do, all the time, and that is precisely what we appoint them to do.
All you had to do with the documents is describe what you do and connect it to a charitable purpose. If you were to browse guidestar you would find that the IRS approves many organizations on the basis of 1 paragraph tautologies like “The organization eliminates racial conflict by bringing people together for constructive and fun activities. When people have fun together they develop understanding and appreciation for each other which will eliminate prejudice and racial hatred.” I’m slightly embarassed to admit that I’ve written several such applications for 501(c)3 status and they all got approved. Where I’ve seen organizations rejected is because they go in to great detail about their (obiously qualifying) program without actually simply making the bald assertion that it fulfills a qualifying purpose. You can decribe the most effective soup kitchen in the world, but unless you say that it releives the plight of the poor- you will get rejected.
But you are coming back to the main point-
we either have broad definitions of charitable purposes- open to potential weirdness and abuse, or we narrowly define charity to equivalencies for government programs (actually a subcategory of charitable purposes under existing law). In that case I’d rather cut out the middle man because what you are talking about is the creation of quasi governmental agencies to privatize government functions, a la the U.S. Postal service.
Privitization of government services is something I’m against for accountability reasons. That’s why I’d rather just be vigilant and fine tune the existing system, or just get rid of government involvement.
2. Also, one of the reasons that Churches can be granted exemption from taxes, despite the establishment clause, is that the “public benefit” provided is the mere existance of non-business, non-govenrment organizations as a balance to the power of both government and business.
That logic would remove any need to qualify organizations at all, and would grant blanket tax-exemption to any organization that happens not to make a profit, even if its sole business were to prepare and train mercenaries to overthrow its own government, or if its sole business were to provide peer-support for pedophiles – or, if its sole purpose were to buy donated clothes from charities in order to cut them up and make fan-quilts for Hollywood celebrities. Clearly, just because something is a “non-business” and “non-government”, does not attach any particular public-service merit to it. If my tax dollars are subsidizing your efforts, there should be a clearly identified public benefit from your efforts.
I don’t see why this is complicated. We apply the same metric to the direct expenditure of taxpayer dollars to fund something. Some areas are controversial – should we spend more money on weapons or more on bridges – but the argument takes place in the context of public good. Measurable public good, provided by measurable tax funds. The same thing should apply to indirect benefits such as tax-exemptions.
The mercenary training organization would not be exempt because “purposes contrary to law” are not considered charitable.
However, an organization that educated the public about the benefits of armed insurrection would qualify for tax deductable status as long as they didn’t cross the line into incitement.
Rearding the pedophiles’ group, as long as they weren’t aiding and abetting the crime of sex abuse they should be exempt. Otherwise you would deny exemption to a 12 step program that might actually help prevent abuse. Or jeapordize the exempt status of a classics journal that ran an article on pedophillia in the ancient Greece.
The quilerts are a gimmie- they are teaching a useful trade (needlecraft) and educating the public about the performing arts. If you can have a charity dedicated to preserving and promoting the music of Paul Robeson, you can have one to do the same for J-Lo. (Of course you would probably have to do a half assed write up on how the quilts signify various stages in her artistic development.)
The problem is, I guess, the lawyers- or rather the incapacity of law to measure something like private endeavors for the public benefit.
The only metric that works (poorly right now I’m sorry to say) is the limitation that charitable works not “inure to private benefit”. In other words, no stealing from charities. That metric is almost unworkable (e.g. huge executive salaries and 90% fundraising comissions)- to the point where I really ponder getting rid of indirect subsidies entirely and makin g charity a purely private endeavor. Then use the tax revenues to provide whatever services are needed via the government.
That’s why I keep going back to the public benefit being citizens engages in non business, non government activity. Idle hands and all.
3. If you are interested in what I do, you can check it out at http://www.piecorp.org/
We are most definitely looking for both financial and in-kind donations, as well as open-source- and public-service-minded folks from all skillsets interested in contributing to a creative project that can, we believe, benefit all of humanity. Contact information is available on the site.
You might also be interested in a published article I wrote, which is also available on that site, called
“A Lever Long Enough: Value driven enterprise in the networked information economy”, which explores how the Open Ethos—manifested in peer-production projects such as Open Source (i.e., Linux & Apache), Open Publishing (Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, Slashdot) and others, all made possible by the increasingly networked society we live in–can be consciously and deliberately harnessed for public good.
Very cool idea! There are a lot of technology to the poor endeavors that have a hard time finding a link between delivering IT to poor neighborhoods and delivering other needed services, you might find a lot of synergy with them. Likewise there are a lot of IT educational groups that haven’t a clue about delivering services to the needy.
You’ve found a cool niche and I will keep your program in mind when discussing program services ideas with compatible groups.
“Churches rationally should not be tax-exempt. But the tax-exemption for public service organizations makes perfect rational sense.”
Two organizations, both promote the ideas and alleged statements of someone who died a couple of thousand years ago, is demonstrably wrong about a number of things, invokes the supernatural, and promotes a morality?
One group is called (for argument’s sake) The Episcopal Church, the other the Society for Education in the Classics.
One of them is fixated on some guy named Jesus, the other on some guys named Aristotle, Socrates and Plato.
You could do it, but the paperwork would be a nightmare and, IMHO, dramtically reduce the amount of non-state provided services.
Unless you want to limit charity to soup kitchens and habitat for humanity- which might be a good idea- you are stuck with a “least bad system” (THX pastor Dan.)
BTW- on a complet tangent, Socrates had 501 jurors- coincidence? I think so.
Easy to distinguish. If all a Church did was educate, there would be no problem. If the Church did not enjoy unique real-estate exemptions, there would be no problem. If the Church did not, as a matter of fundamental, core mission, desire to impose its practices on the rest of us, there would be no problem. if the Church did not enjoy unique political access, merely by being designated a “Church”, there would be no problem. If the Church did not enjoy a whole slew of unique benefits that the Society would not, no problem. If the Church did not uniquely enjoy de facto freedom to operate as a political lobbying organization while still maintaining tax-exempt status, no problem.
I have no objection to a Church operating at the same level with a similar mission to the Society you mention. But the reality is that that is NOT what Churches are all about. Churches first and foremost provide services to their members, and theirss is an inherently exclusive and discriminatory membership.
Now, the law is being changed so that, even within the realm of actual charitable work done by a Church, they can legally extend that discrimination and still benefit from my tax dollars.
There is no charitable or educational requirement to gain exempt status as a church. There is no specific public service requirement at all, as there exists for other 501(c)3’s. In order to gain 501(c)3 status, we had to jump through a great many hoops: we had to demonstrate public benefit (something a church is not required to demonstrate; we had to refrain from certain political activities (something that, in practice, churches have NEVER been required to do); we have to provide certain reporting and accountability that churches, uniquely among similar organizations, are exempt from. The Church you mention is not held to the same standards that the Society is held to.
The IRS only recognizes worship of certain approved religions as qualifying for exemption. That is highly problematic right there. I cannot receive a 501(c)3 exemption to worship my mother. I cannot receive real-estate advantages for a “Church of Paris Hilton”.
I can receive one to worship a mythical miracle-worker that the government, in its infinite wisdom, has deemed legitimate. I can even receive one to worship an ancient space alien who implanted thousands of invisible alien entities in my soul through a volcanic eruption, because John Travolta played a sympathetic Clinton-esque character in Primary Colors, and Bill wanted to give some payback before he left office. So Scientology received recognition as a sanctioned religion, not too long after its entire leadership was indicted for federal offenses including attempting to infiltrate the IRS and falsify records.
The approved “Church” need not educate, need not feed the hungry, need do nothing in order to enjoy the benefits of my tax dollars, and is exempt from reporting on how it spend them or even to substantiate that it is, in fact, a non-profit. The Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions in the world, yet is required to disclose nothing of substance to the government that grants it so many benefits.
No, this is not a difficult issue at all. Alone among exempt organizations, religions are required to provide no public service at all in order to enjoy unique benefits using my taxes.
the silly from the insincere, and so doesn’t.
There actually is 1 test used to qualify a “church”- are the religious beleifs professed sincerely held.
The case (which I will look up if required) involves whether or not being a “faith healer” who takes money for “services” was an absolute legal bar to a prosecution for fraud. The answer? The jury found these particular faith healers to not be credible. So they went to jail.
While your distinction is intellectually valid, please tell me where we find these brilliant and just civil servants who will administer the distinctions you have raised. Going back to one of my earlier points- you could do it, I could do it and there are quite a few qualified people out there. But very very few of those people want to make $30K a year working for the IRS’s exempt organizations unit out in Ogden, Utah.
…Something about the law being a very blunt instrument.
(However, all those points you make about “churches” accumulating resources without necessarily giving something back is valid. I’d rather just vigorously enforce and fine tune existing law taxing unrelated business income and preventing inurement and private benefit. Whatever religion is, is shure ain’t running a McD’s franchise.
Actions prohibited by tax-payer-supported entities should be prohibited by tax-exempt entities as well. Simple. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
It makes no sense that if I receive direct taxpayers support in the form of government funding, I cannot discriminate against gays, but if I receive indirect taxpayer support in the form of a tax-exemption or other benefit (such as the grant of free use of government buildings to the Boy Scouts – which discriminate against atheists as well as homosexuals), then I can discriminate thusly.
It makes no sense that a government-funded agency cannot engage directly in religious proselytizing, while a tax-exempt church can. In both cases, it is the taxpayer who foots the bill.
Simply measure, simply logic.
Comments?
“It makes no sense that a government-funded agency cannot engage directly in religious proselytizing, while a tax-exempt church can. In both cases, it is the taxpayer who foots the bill.”
I beleive it does make sense. If a government agency proselytizes- the government must decide what is proselytized. A violation of the establishment clause. However, if a private citizen- unconstrained by the government- decides what to proselytize, then there is no government establishment of religious beleifs or (necessarily) support for anything beyond subsidizing people who proselytize.
Now if you want to stop subsidizing that because you don’t beleive proselytizing to be a socially valuable activity (i.e contra the idea that teaching normative codes of behaviour is a good thing) that’s fine and may be a very good idea.
The Boy Scouts case (Dale v. Boy Scouts) thing is a freaky case and deserves more treatment than I can give here. But the finding of the Court was contingent on (among other things) the findings that:
I should note that in the wake of that decision, many communities which do protect gay rights have evicted the Boy Scouts from public facilities- and that the Boy Scouts have no Constitutional right to demand such access in contravention of the legal public policy of limiting use of public facilities to non-discriminatory groups (however some facilities must be open to all with equal public subnsidy, including the KKK).
This last point conflates the indirect subsidy of tax deductable or exempt status and the indirect subsidy of receiving general government services. For example- if your town allows the St. Patrick’s day parade and charges them only 10% of the actual security costs, you’ll probably need to give the same deal to the KKK. Hoever, if your town has a provision that buildings used as offices by non-profits get a property tax deduction- you could exclude the KKK (which advocates policies in contravention of the 14th Amendment) but not the Boy Scouts (whose discriminatory policies are not, as of yet, deemed in contravention of the policy of the 14th Amendment.) If the SCOTUS were to rule tomorrow that homosexuality is a strict scrutiny classification like race- Dale v. Boy Scouts would be thrown out by implication.
My blood sugar is now low. Snack time.
They bar atheists, too. And the Boy Scouts are chartered by Congress and Congress has set aside public land for their exclusive use (the Jambouree). Unlike their ban on homosexuality, which is of the “don’t ask don’t tell” variety, the Boy Scouts actively require a loyalty oath to God, thus forcing young atheists to either lie, or to be excluded up front from the Boy Scouts.
Throughout the federal government, including military jobs, potential hires for a variety of positions who have “Eagle Scout” on their resume are hired at a higher beginning pay rate than others – yet atheists are denied this opportunity and thus suffer tangible economic loss. This is official government policy, not some bad habit.
The VFW requires a loyalty oath to the Judeo-Christian God as well. My father, who volunteered at age 30 to fight against tyranny in World War II, was barred from the VFW – while the likes of Timothy McVeigh are welcomed.
Returning atheist veterans from Operation Desert Storm were barred from marching in the major official victory parade in Chicago, either among the veterans or under a separate banner as atheist veterans.
These forms of officially sanctioned discrimination against atheists happen all the time, Constitution notwithstanding.
And the “liberal” churches are markedly absent from the protest lines, and their voices are never heard.
When is the last time you heard a progressive voice talk about the Boy Scouts, and mention atheist exclusion rather than gay exclusion?
Today there are openly gay legislators, as well as blacks, hispanics, women, and disabled. Still seriously underrepresented, the more so the higher you go in government, but at least they are there.
There is not a single openly atheist legislator in either house of Congress. There is not a single openly atheist member of the Executive branch. There is not a single openly atheist federal judge. And guess what? There is not a single openly atheist representative at the state level either, in any branch of our government.
More southern rednecks would vote for a gay jewish lesbian liberal woman than would vote for a white male atheist conservative.
My tax dollars pay for violations of my civil rights every day of the week.
And that is wrong. But since atheists aren’t members of a religion- they are not protected by prohibitions against religious discrimination (NOT my point of view, but it informs the state of the law.)
Primarily because by defing atheists in terms of opposition to estalished religions, they define atheism as a variety of religon. However, as atheists don’t necessarily view themselves as religous or do religious things as a result of their atheism, they are shut out of the benefit provided to religious organizations for their value as social activities. Moreover fundies can come up with cheap rhetorical accusations that atheists want to have their cake and eat it too.
I have a 60 page paper I wrote going in to the legal signifigance of the understanding of atheism in the context of establishment clause jurisprudence. Wanna copy via e-mail?
Love a copy.
And the point you made just reinforces the arbitrariness of granting “legitimate” religions a unique, privileged status with regard to taxation.
Society discriminating against atheists is one thing – officially sanctioned discrimination is quite another.
Society discriminates against African-Americans, too, but the government does not – officially, at least. Where official discrimination is proven against a certain class, it is deemed unconstitutional.
IANAL, but I understood that atheists ARE protected by the establishment clause, according to legal precedent and the opinions of most people not named Joe Lieberman (including, even the current president, who has explicitly reaffirmed the equal right of atheists to be free from religious intrusion). The Supreme Court has ruled, repeatedly, that Lieberman’s claim that the Constitution protects “freedom of religion, but not freedom from religion”, is not, in fact, true, and that atheists have equal protection against imposition of a religion upon them as member of other religions do.
Thus, my understanding has been that the issue is not lack of legal protections, but failure to enforce those protections under the law – and, more recently, activist reinterpretation by conservative legislators and jurists to overturn precedent and deny that protection.
Is my understanding in error? As I say, IANAL, but I would be happy to post supporting arguments by folks who are.
It’s one of those mind bending lawyer logic things but an atheist only gains protection for their self as an atheist insofar as they define their atheism as a religion to take advantage of the protections afforded.
An atheist who is discriminated aginst by a fundie has a claim of religious discrimination arising from the fact that he was punished for being a non-Christian rather than from the fact that they have positive relious beleifs (how could they?)
In order to avoid establishment clause problems in the definition of religion the SCOTUS, in the C.O. cases, basically boiled the scope of government test for whether something is religion (and therefore protected against an establishment by discrimination) to determinging whether there are normative beleifs (or considered lack thereof) arising from a concept of a creator (or lack thereof). Older case law upholding discrimination against atheists hasn’d been totally overturned but explained away as arising from unenlightened confusion of atheism with nihilism. Which leaves open the interesting proposition that the state may discriminate against nihilists. But this also creates a dependent definition of atheism as a non deistic religion rather than a lack of religion.
You summary is right, but I do beleive there is a fine point of distinction between the protection of atheism per se and the protection of non-religion.
Long paper on the way..
to ed gillespie at gmail dot dot dot com minus spaces and extra dots. much appreciated. and yes that is an actual email address. I had to hop on that shit before someone else did 🙂
I’d like a copy. My email address should up show.
Me three. Please.
This is something that needs a lot more discussion but I’m signing off for tonight ..just wanted to post to let people know they are being read.
Well, thank you for that. It’s very sweet.
…at the very least, if the IRS report is accurate, the pastor was pushing the envelope:
During the service, the church’s pastor . . .told the crowd ‘to bring our country out of despair, despondency and disgust, God has sent John Kerry,’
Pastordan, in various sermons you published on dailykos before the elections (explicitly saying that they were the actual sermons you were delivering from the pulpit to your actual (former) congregation), you stated the following:
Pastordan Sermon for August 5, 2004:
Pastordan Sermon for September 2, 2004:
Most significantly,
Pastordan Sermon for September 16, 2004:
That is just three quick examples.
Can you explain why your sermons to your former congregation do not “at the very least, push the envelope”? Can you explain why talking with the leaders of the congregation about doing a fundraiser for Democratic candidates is not shredding the envelope to smithereens?
Seems hypocrisy is not an excusively Republican trait.
“the church’s pastor . . .told the crowd ‘to bring our country out of despair, despondency and disgust, God has sent John Kerry,”
IMHO, that is perfectly fine religious speech. The pastor didn’t tell the congregation to vote for Kerry, just that God sent Kerry to run for president. Now if some dirty little minds think that is somehow a crass political endorsement rather than a reading and interpretation of scripture and Christian doctrine… I’ll give them a wink and a nod, but say that I don’t think the law was violated.
Perhaps a law that so encourages the expansion of hypocracy and political vendettas in the religious sphere is not a good law. Because an honest answer to your question about the difference between an impermissible act and a permissible one is that there is no difference in the content of the speech or even the physical setting, the make or break difference has to do with how the event is legally “sanitized” by a bunch of paperwork nobody will ever see unless the church has to defend itself against the IRS.
See why I get impatient with that area of the law?
the same pastor had said god had sent bush to lead us, would that wink and a nod turn into the finger, a quick vomit in the pew, and a call to the IRS? I personally witnessed such a thing, and while my reaction was simply to gag for a minute and then walk out of the sermon, come back later in the day and ream the priest, then never return, I can see how others may have taken it to a more serious level, like some sort of authority.
I don’t know how I feel in general about the issue. All that I know was how disgusted I was, and to be honest, I don’t really blame the IRS for investigations. In fact, I think that there should be more.
The only party to which I would be interested in ratting out that preacher would be the Allmighty, and I don’t have that phone number.
I’d like to see the law applied evenhandedly, but I’d also like it if bacon grew on trees.
Problem is, the current state of the law is such that the legality of the situation you describe is more contingent on prophylactic legal work than it is on what was said, when, and where.
any omniscient being has already seen the misdeeds, so I don’t think you need to be looking for the phone number. ahhh how I long for a truly secular society.
My question was not about the difference between a permissable and impermissable act. My question was why the poster characterized language used by a pastor in a sermon as skirting the limits of the law, when the poster’s own language used as a pastor in a sermon not only matches, but clearly exceeds (see “democratic fundraiser”) the language criticized.
Actually, I don’t think the problem is with the rule, I think the problem is with people who, because of their religious role, claim a special moral authority, and then deliberately and blatantly violate the spirit of the law, while carefully skating around its letter.
That is the hypocrisy of which I spoke.
The fact that among 110,000 evangelical churchs that actively participated in the Bush campaign, handing out GOP voter booklets and even registering Republican voters inside the church, the fact that none of these violations will be prosecuted does not surprise me. Nor should anyone with a basic knowledge of history expect this liberal violation to be prosecuted. On the contrary, there is a bill pending in Congress that would remove any restrictions from open political action within church walls. Expect every conservative and fundamentalist church leader in the country to rush to the defense of this liberal pastor. They don’t want harmful precedent set here. Expect every conservative politician to rush to put the kibosh on this, as well, for the same reason. It’s all hand-waving, smoke and no fire, anyway.
We have had this conversation before.
You have repeatedly demonstrated yourself to be someone who is more interested in rehearsing his internal dramas than carrying on a meaningful conversation. And since those dramas involve taking whatever I say and turning it your purposes (questioning my integrity and making yourself out to be a victim), I’m not very interested in trying to talk to you.
I’ve told you before what you need to reclaim enough credibility to be a conversation partner with me. Go and brush up if you need to.
Until then, I will not respond to (or even read) the substance of your comments.
Goodbye.
You can choose not to respond, but that will not prevent the community from reading the critiques.
You apparently feel that your comments should be granted some special immunity because you are a “man of the cloth”. I treat all arguments on their merits, you are no different.
You can pretend that every time I point out a substantive contradiction in your writings, that it is all personal, but that is a transparent rhetorical trick and will fool few.
Better to respond to substance and show that you support open debate and discourse. Otherwise, your actions bely your preaching.
c’mon man.
It’s been a week. You’ve got a lot to say without making it personal. If you’ve got a history at Kos, bury the hatchet and make a fresh start.
I simply posted actual comments by a poster who made a specific statement.
Why is it not legitimate debate to point out that the poster made statements nearly identical to, and then even beyond, the precise statements he critisized?
Is there a single fact I mentioned that is not accurate? Were those quotes not accurate? Were they taken out of context? Are they not directly relevant to this discussion? Do they not relate to the specific comment of pastordan that I responded to?
On the contrary, responses that seek to discredit me personally rather than respond to the substance of my message are the type of responses you should be objecting to, booman.
If you are to thwart this kind of legitimate argumentation for personal reasons, because you happen to like a certain poster who refuses to entertain intellectual challenges to his statements, then I sorely misjudged you.
I hope not. I hope you are not going to hold certain members here to different standards than every one else, grant certain immunity to criticism to people merely because they put “pastor” before their name, or hold other posters to harsher standards because of a preformed bias about their intent.
Just because pastordan pretends that my comments are based on some grudge he pretends I have, doesn’t automatically grant that charge merit.
Unless you have specific issue with the content of my post, your comment here is utterly inappropriate and unfair. And surprising.
and the issue is “making it personal”. As in “Seems hypocrisy is not an excusively Republican trait”- here clearly referring to Dan.
The exact same point could have made without the show of disrespect.
You just got done having a flameout with dKos. Why be so aggressive here, and so soon?
The point was still made. Supporting someone who avoids responding to substance by demanding that other members perform some kind of ritual in order to be worthy, will only harm the long-term interests of this site. I wish you would reconsider.
The best way to avoid flames is not to respond to a perceived offensive tag to an otherwise substantive post, but to focus on a constructive response to the constructive part of the post.
By making me the issue, you are assisting pastordan in deflecting attention from the substance.
let’s discuss this offline. It will be easier to resolve. And it won’t get into a stupid ego thing.
I have praised pastordan’s posts when I thought they merited praise. Shortly after the elections, I posted a diary whose entire thrust was to say that “I was going to make a case here, but someone has already made it much better than I could have, so go read this post by pastordan.”
We should respond to substance, not personalities. You should demand a focus on substance, not personalities.
It is nonsense to pretend that my critique here is not substantive, but is instead part of some secret personal agenda, and thus can be dismissed. Rather, it is demonstrably the case that pastordan, like many religionists, treats all criticism on matters of faith as personal assaults by hate-consumed anti-religionists. This conveniently removes from them the responsibility for responding to the substance of the critique.
I stand by my comment here, and await a substantive response to the inconsistency, if not outright contradiction I noted between pastordan’s statement in this diary, and his own pronouncements on precisely the same subject as the pastor he criticizes. Not because he is “pastordan”, not because he is a Christian, not because he is a kossite, but because of the actual substance of the actual comments at issue.
please, and read the email I sent you. You are overreacting to my mild rebuke.
First an apology. My original comment concluded with a sentence that was unnecessary and inflamatory, as our gracious host subsequently pointed out. In retrospect, it contributed nothing to the substantive point I was making, and distracted attention from the actual substance of my comment.
So, here is a restatement, without the inflammatory conclusion.
Whether or not pastordan decides to respond, I hope others will, as the larger issue is one that is worth examining, in my opinion.
Pastordan, in various sermons you published on dailykos before the elections (explicitly saying that they were the actual sermons you were delivering from the pulpit to your actual (former) congregation), you stated the following:
Most significantly,
That is just three quick examples.