Obama politicks at church's expense
From the American Spectator column by Jeffrey Lord...
As you know, on June 23, 2007, you gave a speech to the United Church of Christ's General Synod during our church's 50th anniversary celebration in Hartford, Connecticut. The invitation was extended well before you became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. You are one of us, and while I disagree with you politically and could not be in Hartford, certainly I initially thought the idea of inviting you to speak was a good one. Contrary to the image our denominational leaders seek to promote, all members of our church are not liberals, and certainly I am not. Yet as a conservative I believe the exchange of ideas is what America is all about.
Everything changed with your formal announcement that you were running for president. Instantly your potential appearance posed a problem for the UCC, as the IRS has quite specific rules regulating the appearance of political candidates campaigning in front of church audiences. The rules are the result of an amendment to the tax code in 1954 by then-Senator from Texas Lyndon B. Johnson, the Democratic leader of the Senate. This law was, per Jill "J.R." Labbe, the deputy editorial page editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, payback against "two non-profits in Texas that were actively campaigning against" LBJ's re-election to the Senate. At the instigation of the UCC's own Reverend Barry Lynn, the head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, various Christian conservatives have been penalized financially by the IRS for crossing over this line laid down by the Johnson law, most notably the late Reverend Jerry Falwell. While it is troubling that neither you nor the UCC expressed the slightest concern when a conservative's freedom of speech was being repressed, this episode inadvertently opens a chance for everyone to come together on the basic issue of freedom of expression by supporting a repeal of the LBJ law, a law that clearly is about nothing more than intimidating people of faith into silence.
Be that as it may, the LBJ law is in place. It is the law, and the IRS must enforce the rules, taking the same approach to the UCC that the UCC's own Reverend Lynn insisted be taken with Jerry Falwell and other conservatives. The moment your status as a candidate changed, both you and the UCC had two options. One, you could have gracefully refused the invitation, citing the Johnson law and your candidacy. Or the church could simply have withdrawn the invitation to you on the same grounds. Two, the church could have easily complied with the IRS rules under the Johnson law by simply inviting your competitors for the Democratic nomination. Yes, you would have been sharing the spotlight, but under the circumstances that shouldn't have been too much to ask of you.
In the event, neither of these options -- withdrawal or inviting other candidates -- was taken. And so you went to Hartford. Almost immediately you violated IRS rules, discussing your presidential candidacy from what, under the circumstances, meets the legal definition of a pulpit....
Senator, your campaign has now released a statement saying that you had only spoken about your "personal spiritual journey" at the UCC General Synod that day and were not campaigning for president. This is just not true....
UNSURPRISINGLY, ALL OF THIS resulted in a complaint being filed with the IRS following your presentation. In addition to your speech and the stories featured by the UCC's own website, the complaint cites numerous media accounts describing your appearance as a campaign event. This is bolstered by photographs of volunteers manning Obama campaign tables at the entrance to the Civic Center, volunteers who were then ushered inside for the oldest of campaign rituals -- a photo op with the candidate.
As a direct result of your actions, this last week the UCC -- our mutual denomination -- has now been notified officially by the IRS that it is under investigation.
Our national church suddenly stands in danger of losing its tax exempt status -- because of you. Do you have any idea what losing our tax-exempt status could mean to a church like mine here in Pennsylvania if in fact we are tagged financially for federal, state and local taxes? I'll tell you: this means choices about paying the heat bill versus the tax bill, paying the light bill versus the tax bill, paying for any number of church activities targeted at needy community or church members versus the tax bill and so on. Even more to the point, the president of the UCC, the Reverend John Thomas, has been abruptly forced to appeal to all of the UCC's members for urgent financial help because of what you have done, informing us that "we will need to secure expert legal counsel, and the cost of this defense, we are told, could approach or exceed six figures."
Exceeding six figures, of course, means we're talking over a million dollars. A million dollars to cover for your personal mistake. Of which the UCC has so far managed to raise a paltry $43,847.37 in a special "UCC Legal Fund" as this is written.
You make much about America's presumed inability to sustain the financial costs of the Iraq War. There is no way, by the admission of Reverend Thomas himself, that the United Church of Christ can sustain the financial costs of your decision to pitch your presidential campaign to the General Synod in violation of the LBJ law without doing serious damage to the most vulnerable in our society....
The UCC, by the way, maintains a list of almost 30 UCC-related websites on its UCC funded UCC News "Blog Roll." Interestingly, the UCC administrator has barred UCC Truths from this Blog Roll, a blatant contradiction of the UCC's indignant cries about freedom of speech. Did I mention that this administrator, an ordained UCC minister, has acknowledged that he is an Obama campaign worker? Specifically a writer for the People of Faith for Barack? Which means that the UCC is apparently allowing someone officially connected with your campaign to use his position as the church's official blog administrator for UCC News to keep a church-related website critical of you off the church's Blog Roll. Quite aside from being the very image of a conflict-of-interest and raising issues of censorship and a lack of diversity, this is what comes under the rubric of an "in-kind contribution" from the UCC to your campaign. Again. What does it take for everyone concerned to understand that the IRS is investigating precisely this kind of linkage between your campaign and the UCC?...
Certainly the UCC's leadership, beginning with the Reverend Thomas himself, also bears a considerable portion of the blame for this turn of events. It boggles the mind that a national leader of this very old and very treasured institution of faith that traces its roots to the earliest beginnings of America would so cavalierly risk its mission, finances, local churches and above all our reputation simply to indulge his personal passion for the extremism of far-left wing politics. Yet this is precisely what has been done. The fact that a member of your campaign staff serves as the church's official blog administrator and is keeping a UCC-related site critical of you off its Blog Roll underscores a stunning inability by both church officials and your campaign to realize the seriousness of an IRS investigation for our church even now.
Actually, the IRS threat of removing tax-exempt status from churches is a bluff on the part of the IRS. They've actually never done it, but use the pretense that they can to scare churches--traditionally conservative--silent in the field of politics. It's only been recently that Liberal churches have realized that they can no longer remain immune from the threat they themselves have helped launch against conservative churches. The legal costs, however, are very real inasmuch as the UCC will presume the IRS has a legitimate power to strip the church of its non-profit status.
I also have a problem with the notion that the UCC is redeemable since there remains a handful of conservative members. This is the denomination known for nation-wide, Liberal commercials, that criticize other churches for not accepting homosexuals. with a leadership that unabashedly supportive of what the Bible clearly defines as immoral, it is beyond hope, and any real Christians should leave the denomination and stop wasting their time.
Posted by Danny Carlton at March 8, 2008 3:35 PM