Pastors fight IRS ban on endorsing candidates!

[Jake Martinez]

Posted on The Tennessean-By Bob Smietana, The Tennessean-On October 1, 2011:

““For the past four years, pastors in Nashville and around the country have tried to pick a fight with the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS has refused to fight back.

The pastors are challenging an IRS ban on endorsing candidates from the pulpit, which is based on rules that forbid nonprofits from taking part in political campaigns. Preachers say the ban violates their rights to free speech and freedom of religion.

“I don’t want anyone censoring what I say in the pulpit,” said the Rev. Henry Coles of World of Faith Christian Center in Nashville, with a congregation of about 400.

Coles is one of 475 preachers nationwide signed up for Pulpit Freedom Sunday this weekend, according to the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group based in Scottsdale, Ariz., that organized the event. Most will endorse candidates and then send their sermons to the IRS.

If the IRS investigates them, the Alliance Defense Fund will sue.

“The issue of whether the IRS can censor what a pastor says in the pulpit has never been tested in court,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.

Clergy should think twice before breaking the law, said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“Americans attend church for spiritual guidance, not to get a list of candidates to vote for on Election Day,” Lynn said in a statement.

The ban on nonprofit political endorsements dates to the 1950s. Lyndon B. Johnson was mad at nonprofits that opposed his re-election, so “he rammed these rules through to punish his opponents,” said Richard Hammar, editor of Church Law and Tax Report.

The IRS has not punished any pastors involved in Pulpit Freedom events. Hammar said both conservative and liberal churches often ignore the ban without consequences.

The Rev. Steve Hickey, pastor of Church at the Gate in Sioux Falls, S.D., is one of 100 preachers who took part in last year’s event. He believes that if a politician holds a position that conflicts with his faith, it’s his job as a preacher to point that out, no matter what the IRS says.

At least four pastors in Middle Tennessee participated last year. The Alliance Defense Fund declined to list who else in the Nashville area was participating this year.

Frank Sommerville, a Dallas-based attorney who advises nonprofits and churches, said the IRS has not investigated any churches since 2009, after a judge ruled that an investigation of a Minnesota megachurch was invalid. The agency must draft new procedures before launching any new church investigations, Sommerville said.

Even when those rules are in place, he doesn’t expect the IRS to tangle with the Alliance Defense Fund.

“The IRS is never going to be baited into a confrontation with a well-funded, well-lawyered organization,” he said.”

• Contact Bob Smietana at 615-259-8228 or [e-mail].

Source:

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20111001/NEWS/309280146/Pastors-f...

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Note:  If you have a problem viewing any of the listed blog posts please copy web site and paste it on your browser. Be aware that some of the articles and/or blog posts or videos listed within the contents of the above blog post(s) may have been removed by this administration because they may have considered them to be too controversial.  Sure seems like any subject matter that may shed some negative light on this administration is being censored-What happened to free speech?-You Decide.

“Food For Thought”

God Bless the U.S.A.!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E&feature=related

Semper Fi!

Jake

[M]

Given the restrictions of the First Amendment I don't see how the IRS which is an enforcement arm of the Federal Government can create a ruling that could prohibit the free exercise of Religion, and what the Pastor says from the pulpit is the free exercise of Religion. Why are there no lawsuits against the IRS for denying the Religions their Constitutional Rights? Has this Country gone soft in the head?