All Saints and the IRS: the battle escalates

I'm in the adjunct faculty computer room on this Monday morning.  For the second time this year, some wretch has tried to pick the lock on my office door.  They have failed, but they have successfully jammed the lock.  Eloy, my office mate, and I now are waiting patiently for the one locksmith on the entire campus to arrive.

The big local news, of course, is that the IRS has elevated its campaign to revoke my church's tax-exempt status. The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that All Saints Pasadena was hit with a summons late last week, demanding an extraordinary host of documents relating to one particular 2004 sermon preached by our rector emeritus, George Regas.  The Times reported:

(All Saints must surrender) 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.

Though I was not at church yesterday to hear our rector's sermon on the subject, I've spoken to a few friends who were. The Times also had a reporter in the pews,(heck, several Times reporters are long-time parishioners), and a lengthy article about our collective response to the IRS appears in today's paper.

George Regas, the former rector of All Saints (from 1967-1995) comes back to preach at the church a few times a year.  The sermon that launched the IRS investigation was one he preached on October 31, 2004 -- two days before the election.  To my knowledge, I am the only blogger who blogged about the sermon at the time it was given, and probably one of the few regular bloggers in the 'sphere who actually was present that day.   Here's my November 1, 2004 post: God, Voting, and Election Eve.

Rereading my post, I wince.  I don't help the All Saints case much!  Though I voted for John Kerry in that election, I was upset with George Regas for taking what I thought was an exceptionally partisan tone.  His sermon, entitled "How Would Jesus Vote?", left little doubt that Jesus would not vote for the incumbent.  I wrote the day after:

Regas proceeded to tell the jammed sanctuary (high attendance at church yesterday) exactly how Jesus would feel about the Iraq war, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and abortion rights. Jesus, we learned, would consider this war an abomination, the failure to disarm the gravest of contemporary sins, the latest round of tax cuts as an assault on the poor, and the right to abortion necessary in order to save lives. Except for fleeting references to Micah 6:8 (we liberals do love that text), no Scripture was cited to support these positions, but that didn't seem to matter. George Regas was certain of how Jesus would stand on all of these complex modern issues, and by the time he was done, there was little doubt how Regas thought Jesus wanted us to vote.

I didn't put it in bold in the original post.  I am quite confident (or am I?) that no one from the IRS read this post; the LA Times ran an article on the Regas sermon, and that is surely the source of the inquiry.  I wrote at the time that since Regas didn't explicitly endorse Kerry, I didn't think he had violated federal regulatory guidelines.  But I am not a lawyer, and am unfamiliar with the subtleties of the tax code and what non-profits are permitted to say and do.

(For what it's worth, I'm enough of an Anabaptist that before listening to a sermon on how Jesus would vote, I'd want to hear a sermon on whether or not he would participate in the electoral process at all!  It may not be a sin to vote, but it's not a sin not to vote either -- the Kingdom of the Lamb is not of this world, and the transforming of hearts and minds will happen through inner conversions, not elections.  I wrote as much after listening to the Regas sermon. From my November 1, 2004 post:

Ultimately, Bush and Kerry are competing to be the most powerful prince in the contemporary world's greatest principality. And while Christians can and should take an active interest in the affairs of this world, there is no question that real justice, real transformation, and real hope cannot come from the princes of this world.)

All Saints is now trying to decide whether or not to comply with the IRS summons.  The general sense at this early point in the process is that most folks associated with the church do not want to comply.  I was on the Vestry, the governing body of the church, from 2002-2003 (I resigned for many, many reasons not worth going into here).  I know most of the folks on the Vestry now, and I know Ed Bacon, our rector, quite well.  I can't predict the future, but I will be very surprised if our church doesn't end up fighting the IRS in court over this summons.  If I were on the Vestry still, I would certainly be among those who would vote to take on the government.

Again, I am not a lawyer.  Again, I disagreed with most of George Regas' original sermon.  But there's an enormous difference between an explicit endorsement of a candidate ("Vote for Kerry!") and an implicit endorsement of a candidate ("Jesus wouldn't have supported the invasion of Iraq").  The IRS code does not demand quietism and passivity from churches.  Our friends on the religious right regularly fulminate about "anti-family" politicians from the pulpit; they usually stop just short of telling their congregants how to vote.  They don't get investigated.  But if this IRS investigation proceeds, and a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008 -- it may not be long before a flurry of summonses are falling into the laps of conservative preachers who are deemed to have "crossed the line."

I predict that despite a deep animus towards the theological and political orientation of the All Saints community, we are about to see a major outpouring of support from evangelicals and religious conservatives well to our right.   If the IRS can go after All Saints Pasadena during a Republican Administration, they can easily go after Jerry Falwell's megachurch when the political tides turn again, as they inevitably will sooner or later.  And though I was annoyed with Regas' sermon, I think it's absolutely vital that churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious and spiritual institutions feel free to preach on the relationship of faith and politics.  It's one thing to say you can't endorse a specific candidate.  But it's another to say you can no longer proclaim "Jesus is against war."  (Or, for my right-wing friends, "Jesus is against homosexuality.")  If these statements are construed by the IRS as political speech that can cost a church its tax-exempt status, then all people of faith, regardless of where they fall on the conservative-liberal spectrum, are under attack.

I may no longer be on the All Saints Vestry.  But I am very active with the youth group.  I am sure we'll be talking with our teenagers about this, and asking them to consider the cost of defying the government.  Believe it or not, even in this liberal bastion we do regularly talk with our kids about the cost of discipleship.  I suspect that all of us in the All Saints Pasadena family are about to learn a tough lesson about that cost.  I am hopeful that we will prevail in the courts should this case progress.  But I am absolutely confident that whatever the outcome of this investigation, All Saints will continue to be a powerful, prophetic community.  Though I am often at odds with those who lead my church, I stand with them today, and ask those who belong to other faith communities to offer support to us.

Comments

[Douglas, Friend of Osho]

I belong to a faith community and to be honest, I think churches should be taxed. Naturally, there's no reason why yours, Hugo, should be singled out, but I do believe the tax-exempt status is as big a violation of the seperation clause as any. Oddly enough ,the only church I've known to be publicly for taxation of religion is...the Church of Satan, which has never sought tax-exempt status.

[Hugo]

Douglas, do you favor taxing all non-profits? The SPCA? The Sierra Club? The Red Cross? If not, why hold churches to a different standard?

[James]

Hugo,

I thought of you as I was reading some of the morning press on the issue and wondered whether you'd be posting on it. Thanks for reading my mind!

Douglas,

I'm not a lawyer, less yet a constitutional lawyer, and am not prone to quoting from case law. But I think Chief Justice Marshall was correct in ruling on McCulloch v Maryland that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy."

Maintaining the separation of church & state seems to REQUIRE a tax-exempt status, lest the government get into the business of persecuting a church, or denomination through taxation.

[John]

Luckily the law isn't so strict here. But certainly, you are quite right to tell Caesar to mind his own business. Dissenting Ministers often preached election sermons in the 18th and 19th century-In Bristol, they went straight from church to the polling booth to vote for Edmund Burke.

[Jonathan Versen("Hugo Zoom")]

hey Hugo,
you might be interested to know that "Billmon" mentions your church's situation in his most recent post; he sees it as indicative of a larger trend.

[Douglas, Friend of Osho]

Hugo: Yup, I do, especially if it would result in a reduction in direct mail. FWIW, I also favor ending or at least severely curtailing limited personal liability conferred on shareholders in corporations. The free ride ought to be over for everyone or extended to everyone.

James: Individuals, housheolds and companies get persecuted through taxation. Why should churches miss out on the fun? Besides, I think it's more likely the threat of revoking tax-exempt status, rather than the actual taxes would be used to police churches, don't you? Not that I think it was right for the Mormons to refuse to ordain blacks, but I'm convinced they would still refuse today if the IRS hadn't hemmed and hawed about their tax-exempt status because of this practice in the 1980s.

JOHN: We wouldn't be having this argument if churches ponied up.

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

Not that I think it was right for the Mormons to refuse to ordain blacks, but I'm convinced they would still refuse today if the IRS hadn't hemmed and hawed about their tax-exempt status because of this practice in the 1980s.

I wouldn't know about that. At the time the doctrine was changed, in 1978, the mission in Brazil was challenging the whole refusal to ordain blacks, as the church had a bunch of people eager to build a temple in a country where they couldn't figure out how to tell who was eligible for the priesthood under their old rules.

[SamChevre]

Well--it could be partisan. However, pro-life groups have also been warned/harassed, and Operation Rescue lost its tax exemption recently--so I do not think this is entirely a partisan issue.

[Burton]

Once again this demonstrates the evil nature of the IRS. It simply has too much power and there is no way to reform it.

There's only one solution: time to abolish the IRS!

[Kathy]

How did the aspects of the gospel Regus preached about become "liberal?" This is not a rhetorical question. When did we separate the whole gospel: belief in Jesus as Redeemer and Messiah + living out his culture of life as demonstrated in his ministry and resurrection? It makes me so sad that conservatives claim one half of the equation and liberals the other.

I find Regas' promotion of abortion baffling--but that's another issue--everything else Regas said pretty much squares with the Gospels. However, it's not about voting. That's where Regas crossed the line from pastor-ing to politic-ing.

I don't trust the Democrats to be any better at embodying kingdom priciples than Republicans and churches are deceived when they advocate partisanship.

One of our pastors gave a sermon at my church that was squarely opposite to everything Regas said about Jesus. And yet we claim to believe in the same Jesus. No wonder we don't seem to be making much of a difference in the world.

[Anthony]

Under the McCain-Feingold law, your minister's actions would be clearly illegal, as they occurred less than 60 days before the election, and it was quite obvious which candidate was being criticised.

[Ian]

Being a Preacher's kid, I'm always interested in the feud between the pulpit of the church and the dias of Capital Hill. I find it strange that the IRS is squeezing out the coffers of All Saints while Jerry Falwell can say on his broadcast that Hillary Clinton would lose against Satan himself in a vote determined by his congregation. To me, this is the same type of grand-standing the IRS is condemning. The difference? Party affiliation. My prayers are with you during this unjust fight. Keep the faith!

[Marty]

Hugo, I appreciate your academic perspective, however, we need to cut right to the chase about All Saints. They brought this on themselves and are involved in this political fight because they are in many ways a political entity. The leadership of the church - Bacon & Regas - thrive on this stuff and the public attention. As I experienced, from my perspective, when I was employed at All Saints the political distractions were overwhelming, with ministry and faith development often taking a back seat. Even though I grew up a liberal Kennedy democrat - and remain so to this day - I feared expressing my pragmatic opinions due to the oppressive environment and what I considered a lack of tolerance for any thought that deviated from those in power. I still stand with All Saints on many issues, but their methods and volatile approach at weaving faith and politics - while maintaining a separation of church and state - is highly susceptible to criticism. I hope this issue is resolved and All Saints is able to move forward with its ministry in the context of worship, personal faith formation, and social justice.

[sharon p kelly]

Falwell just compared Hillary to a devil yesterday, didn't he? Is that the kind of political stand we're NOT suppopsed to make? Will he be invistigated by the irs? I'd love to hear that smug coot take some heat.

[Hugo]

For the record, Marty was a former senior youth minister at All Saints, and he knows the church well. He and I have a different perspective, naturally, but I respect his contribution to our community. Marty, it's good to hear from you.