Liberals find sauce for the goose, rather untasty

From the Los Angeles Times...

Stepping up its probe of allegedly improper campaigning by churches, the Internal Revenue Service on Friday ordered a liberal Pasadena parish to turn over all the documents and e-mails it produced during the 2004 election year with references to political candidates.

All Saints Episcopal Church and its rector, the Rev. Ed Bacon, have until Sept. 29 to present the sermons, newsletters and electronic communications.

The IRS investigation was triggered by an antiwar sermon delivered by its former rector, the Rev. George F. Regas, at the church two days before the 2004 presidential election. The summons even requests utility bills to establish costs associated with hosting Regas' speech. Bacon was ordered to testify before IRS officials Oct. 11....

Facing the possible loss of his church's tax-exempt status, Bacon said he plans to inform his roughly 3,500 active congregants about the investigation during Sunday's services. Then he plans to seek their advice on whether to comply.

"There is a lot at stake here," Bacon said in an interview. "If the IRS prevails, it will have a chilling effect on the practice of religion in America."

Funny, they never voice concerns over all the Conservatives churches who faced the same thing voicing concerns over abortion, pornography and other efforts by Liberals to cement immorality into law. 

From Insight Magazine...

...during the Clinton years, the IRS stepped up efforts to go after right-of-center churches. In 1995, for the first time in history, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of a legitimate church for allegedly engaging in political activity. The Binghamton, N.Y., Church at Pierce Creek had run a single newspaper ad in 1992, four days before the presidential election between incumbent George H.W. Bush and Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, charging that Clinton’s support for state backing of abortion and homosexual preferences contradicted the Bible. The ad asked, “How, then, can we vote for Bill Clinton?”...

Yet meanwhile...

In February 2000, according to press accounts, the Rev. Floyd Flake, a Democratic former congressman, introduced Gore from the pulpit of the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City by saying, “This should be the next president of the United States.” In March 2000, according to press accounts, the Rev. E.L. Branch told members of the Third New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in inner-city Detroit to vote against Bush in the open Republican primary to embarrass Republican Gov. John Engler. In 1999, according to the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Pastor Zebadee Bridges of the Asia Baptist Church endorsed and collected money for Democratic gubernatorial candidate William Jefferson during a Sunday service.

When Republicans introduced the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act, it was roundly and vigorously opposed by Liberals. 

So what are those who opposed the bill saying now that Liberal churches are beginning to receive the same scrutiny that Conservative churches have always had to fear...

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who unsuccessfully tried to launch a Government Accountability Office investigation into the IRS' probes of churches nationwide last year, called the summons "a very disturbing escalation" of the agency's scrutiny of All Saints. 

"I don't want religious organizations to become arms of campaigns," he said. "But they should be able to talk about issues of war and peace without fear of losing tax-exempt status. If they can't, they'll have little to say from the pulpit."

The view was echoed by the Rev. Bob Edgar, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA. "I'm outraged," he said. "Preachers ought to have the liberty to speak truth to power."

"There is a lot more to be done about this, and it may include some actions of nonviolent civil disobedience," Edgar said. "Since 9/11, the IRS, like the FBI, has been moving back to the 1950s and 1960s when a great deal of such activity was propagated against church leaders like Martin Luther King."

After years of intense IRS scrutiny of Conservative churches, including investigations for distributing voter's guides, confiscation of property because their ministers paid their own taxes rather than allow the church to conform to unnecessary and unconstitutional tax requirements, among many other examples the blatant bias, apparently couldn't be ignored. The problem is that Liberal churches expected to be exempt from the very laws they were insisting be enforced on Conservative churches, and have become accustomed to violating them. Now that they're getting caught, they're screaming that the IRS is being biased against them. Such irony.

Posted by Danny Carlton at September 18, 2006 11:50 AM