Basu: If churches campaign, revoke tax-exempt status
Earlier this month, 1,500 churches took part in "Pulpit Freedom Sunday," in which pastors around the country openly endorse candidates for political office, in violation of federal law.
The IRS code explicitly prohibits churches and other tax-exempt 501(c)3 organizations from campaigning for or against candidates. That includes distributing campaign literature and raising money for a candidate or ballot issue.
Yet since 2008, Pulpit Freedom Sunday has operated without sanction from the feds.
It would be one thing if the pastors' defiance were limited to that one-day event, staged as an act of civil disobedience. But churches are increasingly overstepping the bounds and getting away with it.
The most recent information available from the IRS is from the 2006 election cycle. The federal agency received 237 referrals about improper political activity by 501(c)3 organizations. They included 269 cases of direct contributions to political candidates, totaling $343,963. It investigated 100 entities, including 44 churches.
Six years later, more than half of those investigations are still not completed. Though improper political activity was determined in 26 cases, not a single organization's tax-exempt status was recommended for revocation.
Why not? Why would the federal government allow provocateurs to make a mockery of the law and go unpunished? An IRS spokesman declined to talk about the issue. The agency's laissez-faire attitude may have contributed to churches' claim that they are under no legal constraints against overt political activity.
Some of those denials, both from churches and from political candidates seeking their endorsements, are captured in the recent film "Janeane from Des Moines." In it, filmmaker Grace Lee trails a fictitious character named "Janeane," as she attends rallies and speeches leading up to the 2012 Iowa caucuses.
The events and statements captured on screen are real. In one scene, Pastor Jeff Mullen of Point of Grace Church in Waukee, Iowa, calls it "ridiculous" that more pastors don't wage political campaigns.
"You know there is no such thing as separation of church and state, right?" Mullen, who later made a Republican primary bid for the Iowa Senate, tells director Lee. "It's not written in -- it's bogus -- it's, it's a lie." Director Lee says she was amazed to see religion and politics so intertwined. I've seen plenty of it while covering caucus campaigns.
The nonprofit Iowa Family Leader, which is associated with the national Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, held a presidential forum last November at the First Federated Church in Des Moines. The organization calls itself Christ-centered, and one of its main goals is to "protect and defend family values by influencing public policy, campaigns and elections." Michele Bachmann used the forum to decry "censorship in the pews." The president of the Iowa Family Policy Center (the Family Leader's education branch), while noting he could not endorse candidates, hailed Mullen's Senate candidacy, noting the pastor had campaigned for the ouster of three Supreme Court justices the year before. The three justices were part of a unanimous 2009 ruling that led to same-sex marriage being recognized in Iowa. All three were voted out in judicial retention elections after a massive campaign against them by the Family Leader.
This year a similar campaign is targeting a fourth Iowa justice, David Wiggins. Recently, pamphlets against Wiggins were distributed at a service of the nondenominational City Church in Burlington, Iowa. A woman there raised questions, and a complaint was filed with the IRS, but a defiant Pastor Steve Youngblood said he would not be intimidated. He also said he would like to slap the woman who complained.
The IRS should investigate and punish such apparently flagrant violations of the law. But don't hold your breath.
This isn't a free-speech issue. It's a separation-of-church-and-state issue. Churches are free to publish voter-education guides, hold forums on issues and organize get-out-the-vote drives. They just can't do it on a partisan basis.
For government to permit a tax-exempt house of worship to campaign for a candidate amounts to an indirect government subsidy of that candidate. Taxpayers can't deduct their political contributions from their taxes, so why should they be able to do it through their churches? Churches that want to promote candidates have a simple solution: Give up their tax-exempt status.
Rekha Basu is a columnist for the Des Moines Register
