c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The half-century-old tax laws that forbid churches from directly engaging in partisan political activities are fraying. Some say they should be discarded. Others think that would be a sin.

Acting on complaints, the Internal Revenue Service is conducting inquiries into political activities at churches and other tax-exempt institutions across the country, even as Congress considers legislation to ease legal restrictions and encourage preachers to peel off the kid gloves.

Under federal law, churches are tax-exempt. But as such, they are banned from partisan political activities; preachers are prohibited from endorsing candidates from the pulpit.

Both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans are among opponents of relaxing those rules, fearing it would bring political combat into the pews and damage religious institutions.

“We don’t want to see red churches and blue churches,” said Joseph Loconte, a research fellow in religion at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Constitutional issues aside, Loconte said, “It’s a horrible idea for church ministers to endorse candidates from the pulpit because it’s so inherently divisive.” It splits congregations and alienates people, he said.

But the practice is already well along, according to many political leaders, and candidates of both major parties benefit. Indeed, the law banning church political activity and endorsements resembles, to some, the Prohibition era ban on alcoholic beverages _ on the books but widely ignored.

Former Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe recently told reporters he was “dismayed” by the stance of many Roman Catholic churches in last year’s election. “The way they went into their pulpits and told people it was a sin to vote for John Kerry was nothing short of outrageous,” said McAuliffe, who describes himself as “a strong Catholic.”

Kerry, also Catholic, was criticized by many Catholic theologians for his pro-choice position on abortion.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, brushed aside McAuliffe’s complaint. “We address public policy issues, not politicians,” she said. “We don’t get involved in electoral politics. Whoever is elected we deal with and make decisions based on the teachings of the Catholic Church and the bishops’ policies. We don’t get into the issues of whether they are elected or defeated.”

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Walsh called McAuliffe “a partisan seeing things from a partisan point of view.” She said she attends Mass daily and never heard anybody “say from the pulpit that it is a sin to vote for anybody.” But she couldn’t say it never happened. “We have tens of thousands of priests. I can’t judge what every one said every time.”

McAuliffe’s successor, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, also is concerned about priestly political activism but more cautious in talking about it. If anything, Dean said, Catholics should back Democratic candidates because his party’s social mission “is almost exactly the same as the social mission of the Catholic Church.”

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An IRS spokesman declined to comment on the progress of IRS church inquiries.

But Pamela J. Gardiner, Treasury Department deputy inspector general for audit, said in a report issued Feb. 17 that 34 such inquiries were undertaken in connection with last year’s election.

Only once in recent memory has the IRS stripped a church of tax-exempt status. That case involved the nondenominational, evangelical Church at Pierce Creek in Binghamton, N.Y., after it purchased newspaper advertisements on the Friday before Election Day in 1992, calling Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton a sinner unfit for the presidency.

Nobody is suggesting the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church or any other major church is in serious danger. “We’re never going to tax the churches, no matter what they do,” said Stephen Wayne, a political scientist at Georgetown University. “It ain’t going to happen.”

Quite the contrary. On Capitol Hill, there is a push to invite even greater direct church partisanship in political campaigns. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., now claims 174 co-sponsors for legislation he has reintroduced (it was unsuccessful in past years) to remove what he calls the “absolute ban” on political speech by the clergy. He calls his bill the “Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act.”

“As a convert to Catholicism, I am a firm believer that churches and rabbis have a moral obligation and a calling to defend the teachings of the Bible and to speak out,” Jones said. Right now, he said, the law inhibits them from endorsing candidates from the pulpit and can be used to “intimidate” the clergy, though he said that law “cannot be enforced.”

Said Jones, “It’s a free speech issue.”

Far from an absolute ban on political speech by the clergy, the Internal Revenue Service tax guide for churches and other religious organizations specifically states that the law “is not intended to restrict free expression on political matters by leaders of churches or religious organizations speaking for themselves, as individuals. Nor are leaders prohibited from speaking about important issues of public policy, or inviting candidates to speak at a church, if opposing candidates are also invited.”

However, the guide warns that to remain tax-exempt, religious leaders “cannot make partisan comments in official organization publications or at official church functions.”

Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the non-partisan Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is hoping for an IRS crackdown.

“I think we’re likely to see some results over the next year or so, because the level of church electioneering in 2004 was unparalleled in modern history,” said Lynn, an attorney and a minister in the United Church of Christ.

Some members of the clergy “went way over the top in partisan endorsements” of both Republican and Democratic candidates, Lynn said, though he believes Republicans were more often favored. He said he heard of one black church in Florida where a pastor hailed Democrat Kerry from the pulpit as “the new Moses.”

But Lynn challenges suggestions that the law, like the prohibition against alcohol, is widely ignored. “Most pastors do not endorse candidates,” he said. “They don’t want to break up their congregations. It’s tough enough to talk about issues like the war in Iraq. Endorsing candidates makes it a bigger firestorm.”

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Rather than a free speech issue, Lynn said, the Jones legislative initiative is about “conservative Republicans pushing a bill they believe will seal victories for Republicans in many states.”

John S. Baker, a professor of law and expert on political philosophy at Louisiana State University, is among those concerned about political warfare spreading into religious territory.

“For 200 years we’ve been successful in avoiding it,” Baker said. “Anything that gets the Internal Revenue Service involved in religion is not a good thing. It seems to me people once understood you don’t stir up the religious hornets’ nest.”

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