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.