By Robert Marus
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A speech that Barack Obama made last year to his
fellow Congregationalists has spurred an Internal Revenue Service
investigation that threatens the tax-exempt status of an entire
denomination.
Leaders of the Illinois senator’s United Church of Christ are
fighting back, saying the IRS charges are baseless and “disturbing.”
In a letter dated Feb. 20 and received by church officials Feb.
25, IRS official Marsha Ramirez said “a reasonable belief exists”
that the denomination violated federal law. Churches and other
non-profit groups organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal
tax code are barred from endorsing or opposing candidates and
political parties.
The UCC is generally considered the nation’s most liberal large
Protestant body. Obama has been an active member of Trinity United
Church of Christ in Chicago for more than two decades. Trinity is
the UCC’s largest congregation.
In the IRS letter, Ramirez said the agency’s concerns “are based
on articles posted on several websites” that described Obama’s June
23 appearance at the UCC’s biennial General Synod meeting in
Hartford, Conn. The senator -- by then an announced Democratic
candidate for president -- spoke to about 10,000 church members,
according to the denomination and news accounts.
But UCC officials said they took pains to ensure that the speech
was not perceived as a campaign event or an endorsement of the
candidate.
Obama was invited “as one of 60 diverse speakers representing the
arts, media, academia, science, technology, business and government.
Each was asked to reflect on the intersection of their faith and
their respective vocations or fields of expertise,” a UCC news
release said. It also said church officials invited Obama as a
church member rather than in his capacity as a candidate and said
they asked him to speak a year before he declared his intention to
run for higher office.
“The United Church of Christ took great care to ensure that Sen.
Obama’s appearance before the … General Synod met appropriate legal
and moral standards,” UCC General Minister John Thomas said in the
news release. “We are confident that the IRS investigation will
confirm that no laws were violated.”
Prior to the speech, a church official told the crowd that the
appearance was not intended to be a campaign event and that
campaign-related material and other forms of electioneering would
not be allowed inside the event venue.
The IRS letter claimed that “40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign
tables outside” the Hartford Civic Center, where the event was held.
But church officials said they barred any campaigning inside the
venue.
Thomas said that, while he believes the investigation will
ultimately acquit the denomination, he nonetheless is concerned
about its effect.
“The very fact of” the investigation’s existence “is disturbing,"
Thomas said. “When the invitation to an elected public official to
speak to the national meeting of his own church family is called
into question, it has a chilling effect on every religious community
that seeks to encourage politicians and church members to
thoughtfully relate their personal faith to their public
responsibilities.”
IRS officials do not discuss such investigations with the press
because tax information is private. But several ministries and local
congregations have been warned and investigated in recent years for
electioneering.
The agency is currently investigating Southern Baptist pastor
Wiley Drake for using church letterhead and a church-sponsored radio
show to endorse Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
Last year, the IRS ended an investigation without any sanctions
against All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif. It had been
under investigation for a guest sermon its former rector had given
just before the 2004 presidential election. In it, he strongly
criticized the war in Iraq but said he believed that both President
Bush and his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry,
were good Christians.
IRS officials contended that the sermon amounted to an
endorsement of Kerry over Bush. The church contested the charge. In
a September letter to the congregation announcing that it was ending
its investigation without penalty, IRS officials said they continued
to believe the church had illegally intervened in the election.
All Saints’ legal defense ended up costing more than $200,000,
according to church leaders. Anticipating a similar financial burden
for the UCC, Thomas sent an appeal Feb. 27 to church members asking
them to donate to a special legal-defense fund.
“In order to adequately defend ourselves, as well as protect the
broader principle of the freedom of religious communities to
entertain questions of faith and public life, we will need to secure
expert legal counsel, and the cost of this defense, we are told,
could approach or exceed six figures," Thomas wrote. “This is
troubling news.”
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