Churches Given Anti-Obama Message on Sunday Before Election

CHICAGO, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Political watchdog and secularist groups are asking the U.S. government to investigate whether Catholic bishops and a Christian evangelical group headed by preacher Billy Graham should lose tax breaks for telling followers how to vote in this year's election. More

Churches Given Anti-Obama Message on Sunday Before Election

Try to make your case with someone who actually gives a **** about your opinions

Churches Shouldn’t Be The Next Super PACs
(Bill Buck, Opinion Essay, CBS.com, November 13, 2012)

It is time to end the tax exempt status of religious organizations that advocated for a partisan candidate.

Churches are free to exercise their First Amendment guaranteed right to free speech. But they cannot serve a partisan function and retain their tax-free status.

If churches wish to join the political process then they must function the way any other organization in the political sphere does.

Advocating for or against a candidate is wrong. There has to be a clear distinction between what is church and charity and what is partisan and political.

The political watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to “investigate the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for engaging in prohibited political activity in violation of its protected tax status.”

In their press release they cite a number of press reports of bishops advocating against the election of President Barack Obama. For example, in Illinois, Bishop Daniel Jenky — who previously compared President Obama to Stalin and Hitler — required every priest in his diocese to read a statement condemning the administration and instructing parishioners that those that do not heed his word have no salvation.

The Bishops are not the only tax exempt church entity to violate the law regarding tax exempt status.

A complaint has also been filed with the IRS by the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation about the activities of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Churches play an important role in our communities and should be a place where partisanship is put aside.

It is appropriate for churches to advocate for members to participate in the political process, to vote their values and their conscience.

But there is enough partisanship in our country that tax exempt churches do not need to get into the fray.

If, however, they chose to do that then they must give up their tax exempt status.

The last thing this country needs is for churches to become the next Super PAC where outside money flows through religious institutions to affect the outcome of elections.

FFRF sues IRS to enforce church electioneering ban
( Freedom From Religion Foundation Press Release, November 14, 2012)

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is taking the Internal Revenue Service to court over its failure to enforce electioneering restrictions against churches and religious organizations, calling it a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and of FFRF’s equal protection rights. FFRF filed the lawsuit today in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.

A widely circulated Bloomberg news article quoted Russell Renwicks, with the IRS’ Tax-Exempt and Government Entities division, saying the IRS has suspended tax audits of churches. Other sources claim the IRS hasn’t been auditing churches since 2009. (See AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll’s story, “IRS Not Enforcing Rules on Churches and Politics.”) Although an IRS spokesman claimed Renwicks “misspoke,” there appears to be no evidence of IRS inquiries or action in the past three years.

As many as 1,500 clergy reportedly violated the electioneering restrictions on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012, notes FFRF’s legal complaint. The complaint also references “blatantly political” full-page ads running in the three Sundays leading up to the presidential elections by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association.

FFRF, a state/church watchdog based in Madison, Wis., is asking the the federal court to enjoin IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman from continuing “a policy of non-enforcement of the electioneering restrictions against churches and religious organizations.”

Additionally, FFRF seeks to order Shulman “to authorize a high-ranking official within the IRS to approve and initiate enforcement of the restrictions of §501(c)(3) against churches and religious organizations, including the electioneering restrictions, as required by law.”

FFRF has more than 19,000 members nationwide “who are opposed to government preferences and favoritism toward religion.” FFRF is regularly contacted by its members and members of the public over specific and general violations of church electioneering restrictions, and FFRF staff attorneys regularly ask the IRS to investigate such violations.

This non-enforcement “constitutes preferential treatment to churches and religious organizations that is not provided to other tax-exempt organizations, including FFRF,” the complaint notes. “Churches and religious organizations obtain a significant benefit as a result of being non-exempt from income taxation, while also being able to preferentially engage in electioneering, which is something secular tax-exempt organizations cannot do.”

This preferential tax exemption involves more than $100 billion annually in tax-free contributions to churches and religious organizations in the United States.

In addition to reporting the Graham ministry’s electioneering to the IRS, FFRF has sent letters of complaint to the IRS involving 27 other such violations so far this year. Recent complaints include:

• Green Bay Bishop David L. Ricken, who wrote an article on diocesan letterhead inserted in all parish bulletins about voting and choosing the president and other offices. Ricken warned that if Catholics vote for a party or candidate who supports abortion rights or marriage equality, “you could be morally ‘complicit’ with these choices which are intrinsically evil. This could put your own soul in jeopardy.”

• Peoria Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, who, in an April homily, sharply criticized President Obama, referencing the 2012 presidential election, saying Obama was “following a similar path” as Hitler and Stalin. Jenky said “every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences. . .”

• Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wis., who wrote a Nov. 1 article, “Official guidelines for forming a Catholic conscience in the Diocese of Madison,” published in the Catholic Herald, spelling out “non-negotiable” political areas. “No Catholic may, in good conscience, vote for ‘pro-choice’ candidates [or] . . . for candidates who promote ‘same-sex marriage.’ ”

The lawsuit, FFRF v. IRS, (12-cv-818), was filed by attorney Richard L. Bolton on behalf of FFRF.

“No Catholic may, in good conscience, vote for ‘pro-choice’ candidates [or] . . . for candidates who promote ‘same-sex marriage.’ ”

But simply because 2.7% more voted Dem than Rep does not mean abortion is right and nor does it mean that it is sound policy.