The Pulpit and the IRS

Bless 'em, those California Episcopalians are sinking deeper and deeper into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, whose minions now are threatening to yank their church's tax-exempt status. It was a sermon that got the whole rangle going, by bringing up issues like the war in Iraq and abortion in what the IRS worried was too "partisan" a way. The tax officials could have a point, but if and only if the rector's preaching included support for a particular political candidate or party. This is the only kind of fire to which the IRS can legitimately hold church leaders' feet.

Or arms and hands, as in throwing yours around a politician invited into your pulpit to the exclusion of his or her opponent. Preachers who take this low political road deserve the chastising they should get for it. But it is their parishioners and not the IRS who should be calling them to account, by making it unmistakably clear that partisanship gets in the way of promoting serious discussion on important issues that cannot help but generate more than one point of view.

All Saints Episcopal's rector at the time of his allegedly incendiary sermon must have been a pretty shrewd fellow. He framed what he preached as an imaginary debate between President Bush, Senator John Kerry, and Jesus. How about that for wrapping yourself up in the First Amendment? If, however, what this preacher intended by the strategy was to sneak around the clear intent of the tax laws, then his use of the pulpit was hardly heroic. (It's puzzling that the IRS seems to have no concern with Jerry Falwell's far more blatant misuse of his own religious authority to shore up the flagging zeal of partisan conservatives everywhere.)

Currently, the Pasadena, California case is only one of many IRS efforts at intensifying the enforcement of its rules governing tax exemptions for non-profit organizations. They include warnings --- e.g., to religious leaders in South Dakota not to campaign against a challenge to a law banning abortions in the state --- along with complaints, e.g., against a Boston church in which the pastor introduced Senator John Kerry as the next President of the United States, and an Ohio church that invited only one party's gubernatorial candidate to speak, on the ground that his opponent opposed a ban on same-sex marriage. The IRS also hears complaints from others, such as one against a priests' group committed to campaigning for pro-life candidates in the next election. Hopefully, the IRS will continue to see its work with complaints as important while it backs away from some of its over the top warnings.

With respect to ensuring religious believers' right to seek and speak the truth about social issues, I have grave doubts that the IRS' pastoral insights will ever be as sound as its accounting procedures. Distinguishing social action undertaken in service to God's Kingdom from partisan political enterprises is not something that should be left to the discretion of governmental agencies already gasping for air in an atmosphere polluted by over-surveillance, over-control, and all-around paranoia. Properly to enforce its regulations on tax exemptions for churches, the IRS needs the help of the very organizations it must monitor, and those organizations need to be ready to provide it.

One way that church leaders can help is to show better insight themselves into the pastoral consequences of their political involvements. A pastor's marching in one candidate's parade can only leave parishioners who do not see eye to eye with that candidate out in the cold with respect to seeking sound pastoral counsel on the broader aspects of social issues. Worse still, it will undermine the credibility of other church leaders with the very tax folks who are the most confused about how Christian thinking can have inescapably partisan aspects without becoming captive to partisan ideology.

For instance, in today's political climate, inclining toward either a pro-life or a pro-choice position on abortion cannot fail to have partisan implications. But it is the politicians as much as the churches that have seen to that, providing one very good reason for decrying what both of the major political parties have come to in recent decades. But this does not mean we cannot, whether inside or outside our churches, encourage discussion of these options in a more than merely partisan way. If church leaders can keep this straight, the IRS will not have to try do it for them. Both church and country will be better off having tax guys chase real scofflaws rather than tell religious leaders what they can and cannot say from their pulpits and in their e-mails.

A Lesson In Faith From The Amish

It was excruciating to read some of the words that Charles Carl Roberts left behind, along with lubricating gel, following his execution of innocent Amish schoolgirls. He wrote of hating himself and God, of "unimaginable emptiness," of molestation, and of getting even, as if somehow his widow and children, along with the rest of us, should find in these phrases a credible explanation for acts so despicable as to defy even the best of our theologies.

Immersed in unspeakable loss, and further accosted by people for whom God's absence and impotence seem more palpable than God's presence and power, the Amish families most impacted by the horrors that Roberts perpetrated on their loved ones seem also to be the ones least affected by them, spiritually. What we have been hearing from these gentle people, from the very first hours following the murders and the suicide, centers on a single word: forgiveness. One Amish grandfather was overheard putting it this way: "We must not think evil of this man." I can only hope that I would be that kind of grandfather in terrible circumstances like those that he and his own family had to face.

But right now, I am failing this test of faith, and I think that others may be also, while feeling rotten about not measuring up. To put it bluntly, there is nothing in my most charitable imaginings about this contemptible human being's deficient genes, up-bringing, bad breaks, or personal losses that in any way mitigates the unfathomably evil nature of what he chose to do in that Amish schoolhouse. Boiled down to the spiritual essentials, I can't seem to get past it. I know I should get past it. And I truly believe that by the grace of God I will get past it. But at this moment, Satan is winning.

Off-center as my faith may be, however, it is not yet so contaminated by disgust and moral outrage that I cannot keep clearly in mind just whose hour it has been for the past few days. The Satan who has been winning is not an omnipotent, malignant force that took possession of Charles Carl Roberts, but only the great deceiver, who kept whispering in his ear --- and in ours--- the most monstrous lie of all, that there is something, finally, that can separate any of us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. That there are people who do not bear the image of God in their souls. That all things are not working for good after all. That in the final analysis, the Amish are merely sweet, naïve, wrong-headed people who give the lie to any hope that the meek truly will inherit the earth.

Well, Lord of the Flies, I know that you are taking great delight in my having been knocked off my pins over the suffering of these families. But here is something that you may not know about me, because you clearly do not get it about the Amish. I hear them, and I hear them well, when they tell me, and all of the rest of us --- you, too --- to love every enemy, to do well by those who stalk us, to leave judgment in the hands of the Creator alone, to counter evil with good, and in every way and at all times, above all, to forgive.

Your problem, Beelzebub, is that you never got over being a creature rather than being the Creator yourself. And you have never given God a break since. He's only one God, you know. Not even He can make another one, no matter how much you and the Charles Roberts of the world keep complaining about it, and taking it out especially on the truly innocent among us who know their place before God, accept and like it, and are grateful to occupy it even for just a little while.

It used to give me trouble trying to understand how Jesus could ever have considered his burden in life to be light, especially light enough so that he could carry everyone else's. Then, I finally began to figure out that it had everything to do with his message and his life of forgiveness. He never seemed to be burdened with resentments and demands, or with the melancholy that so often comes from holding them in. Given the relatively high incidence of depression in many Amish communities, it is probably fair to say that they are a people willing to risk being forgiving toward those who hurt them even before they can get all of their own anger out. Some have tried to call this a psychiatric disorder. To me, it is courage.