New Challenge to Politics Ban for Tax Exempt Entities - How will it affect the Church?

I saw the following story yesterday while reading the news: 33 Pastors Flout Tax Law with Political Sermons. Anyone who has spent long enough in the Bloggernacle, with the constant hand-wringing in some quarters over the Church losing its tax exemption due to interference in political issues such as Prop 8, is familiar with the basics. Section 501(c)(3) organizations, which are tax-exempt under federal law, may not participate in partisan political campaigns or risk losing their exempt status. What the above story reports is the next step in potentially eliminating this limitation.

This is a storm that has been brewing for some time in my mind. Religion and partisan politics have become increasingly intertwined in the last 20 or so years. (Duh) This years Republican primary process included one candidate who was a former pastor and did not seem to have completely left his old career behind him. The IRS has occasionally jumped on a church here or there for excessively politicizing its services (see the All Saints case from a couple of years ago for a particularly weak case that the IRS picked up), but to my knowledge such things are rare. But both pastors and politicians want to push this thing further. Hence, the above move to create a test case that would hopefully render the politics ban for tax-exempt institutions void by judicial order.

One can of course debate the merits of the politics ban. On one side, it is certainly an infringement of free speech- for many people, their religious beliefs both lead to certain positions on public issues, but also compel them to speak publicly about them. When individual members of a church do so, its OK, but when someone stands at a pulpit and does it, the IRS finds that unacceptable. On the other side, the politics ban insures that we are not giving a tax subsidy to organizations whose purposes are primarily partisan and political (501(c)(3) organizations include a wide variety of institutions). I can say that I have personally been grateful for the tax-exempt regulations on more than one occasion during my attendance at Church meetings.

Which brings me to the point that I really wanted to make here- if the politics ban on tax exempt entities disappears in a couple of months, what happens with the Church? Will it abandon its policy (pretense) of political neutrality or does it not depend on the threat of losing the tax exemption? Is there a doctrinal foundation for political neutrality standing apart from the preservation of the Church's tax exemption and if so, what is it?

As a final note, as someone who has studied the tax exempt issue in some depth, I do not buy into the arguments that the Church's tax exemption is already at risk due to its participation in campaigns such as Prop 8. So lets steer comments away from that and towards addressing the questions I asked above.

The irony of Glenn Beck

Again, I give you all my sincerest apologies as my aforementioned bar-exam-related "brief hiatus" suddenly morphed into a new-baby-related break which ran into my new-job-related break and thus almost two months without a serious post.

I guess I was excited back in 2006 when I heard that an active Mormon was going to get his own prime-time news show on a major cable news network.  I mean, since we lost Jane Clayson in the morning and Ken Jennings in primetime, major national television was relatively Mormon-free.  Unfortunately, it only took a couple of episodes for the shine to wear off.  I mean, I understand that bigotry and igorance is acceptable and practically de rigueur for talk radio these days, but on CNN HN.  I mean, isn't Lou Dobbs enough for the Ted Turner media empire?!

Of course, he is obviously attracting some viewers since his show is still on the air, and based on conversations I've had, I think that a number of Mormons find his really-conservative-but-not-Republican shtick to be attractive. Which brings me to what is the somewhat confusing irony of Beck's notoriety: he is a terrible public example of a Mormon, and yet represents so many Mormons all too well.  I think that his views on immigrants, Muslims, and climate change (among other issues) are perfectly appalling, but I fear that too many of my co-religionists hold similar sentiments.  So do I lament Beck's fame as an public Mormon figure because I do not want either myself or my church to be painted with his brush, or rather do I lament the fact that he is so shockingly typical?

Seen August 2008 in the parking lot of the Raleigh NC Temple

Oh, the horror....

 

And yes, where I come from, they (but not I) still call it "The War of Northern Aggression."

More substantive post(s) coming very soon...