For the record, I think churches supporting Democratic candidates, such as the one whose pastor recently urged his members to vote for Obama, ought to have the book thrown at them, too.

It's really not difficult to maintain the appropriate separation. Really, it isn't.

When I was an Officer and High Priestess of the first Pagan Church to receive 501 status, we had to be very careful of this. We would encourage our members to get involved and to vote. As I understand it, that's all any church should do.

I took a look at the advocacy group behind Rev. Taylor, and it's not "Beckett Fund", it's
Becket Fund

They have a related website called
FreePreach.org

Welcome to FreePreach.org. You have probably learned of this website through our letter to every house of worship we could find in the United States--about 300,000. To receive our free, detailed legal analysis of your freedom to preach from the pulpit, click here.

Did you get the letter, PD?

Becket Fund is a Wash DC public interest law firm that does litigation for lots of different faith groups and denominations.  I would say they were only trying to cash in indiscriminately on the groundswell of church-state litigation.  Except they’re nonprofit.  It could just be a self-perpetuating job security non profit (some are).  But they seem to be leaving no stone unturned in creating work for themselves and their colleagues, especially around the odd-sounding allegations that
gay marriage is an assault on religious liberty.

And here’s a revealing story about the legal muscle they provided to an Eastern Orthodox religious order that wanted to build a private residence on a piece of property owned by the order:

The neighbor said she saw the move to acquire the permit as just another example of how deceitful religious groups are.

"We had to wait two years for a permit to build here. Then along come these guys. They told me they had a wealthy lawyer - a brother - who wanted to live there, and they knew they would have to call it a chapel to get around the growth ordinance."

"They talked about their lawyer, saying he had done work for the Bush family," she said. "How creepy. I certainly support the efforts for the appeal."

Lawyers representing the church group say it is exempt from the growth ordinance because of its constitutional right to freedom of religion

Patrick Korton, a spokesman for the Becket Fund, a Washington-based law firm that represents religious groups in defense of their civil rights, said anyone who had been to law school would understand the exemption rights.

[A neighbor’s attorney] said he found the letter from the Becket Fund to be very offensive.
"It’’s a very right-wing group. The letter was blunt, saying in essence, ‘‘Don’’t mess with us, because we’’ll defeat you.’’ I find the way this was handled very unfair to all the citizens in town who have to abide by the ordinance. I find it offensive that a pressure group should be able to dictate to the town."

that this is how we shine the light of Jesus. Being wrong is one thing, but a minister taking such an aggressive, rude, foul-tempered, contentious, non-humble(?)......tone is reprehensible. The Church should not needlesly involve itself in outside affairs (I am obviously borrowing that from someone else) and if it needs to take a stand in should do so in a Christian manner.

How does this advance the cause of Christ?  This guy is definitely grandstanding and abusing his position as a leader of a flock.  That particular IRS code is not unreasonable, and that's the first time I've ever said that.  

Although there is a repressed anarchist in me somewhere (I call him Boris) that is cheering him for flipping the IRS the bird.

Pipe down, Boris.  You're an idiot sometimes.

from the pulpit of an independent baptist church in north alabama ...this was the choir director teaching sunday school:

1. there should be a wall of separation between church and state, but it is a one-way wall. the church should control the state.

2. in the late '60's, a black man sat in a baptist church in the south. he was told, "if you're here to worship the LORD you can stay, but if you're here to integrate the church, you must leave.

the leader of my denomination has printed comments in support of a pensacola tax resister.

none of this advances the Gospel.

All 501(c)3 organizations, religious and secular, play by the same rules regarding political activity -- no express advocacy or endorsements.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has put out a great resource (warning PDF!) on the "do's" and "don'ts" for religious orgs, but they apply equally to non-profits with no religious foundation. It seems a reasonable thing to me to say that if you get tax-exemption AND your donations are tax deductible for contributors, there should be some restrictions on political activity - for me it's like saying that no advocacy can be done with government grant money (yes, yes, in theory because we know it's been violated under this misadministration).

This pastor is all part of the hot air claiming discrimination against religious groups. It's simply making religious groups play by the same rules - that the IRS has overlooked things in the past is no excuse. To me it relates to other First Amendment establishment kinds of issues - that challenges to Christianity's privileged place in the U.S. are increasing is not because of persecution, but a realization that the law/standard has not been applied equally in the past because of Christianity's majority status. Just sayin'...

The sermon in question, at least in my reading,  crossed a line, albeit probably inadvertently.

However, the high profile sermon was reported by the LA Times. Someone filed a complaint. It was the IRS obligation to investigate. If they had not, it would have been negligent. Contrary to popular myth, spread by the religigious right, the IRS does not target churches on matters of abuse to tax status.  They respond only to specific complaints.

The IRS' preliminary finding was that All Saints crossed a line and asked that the church acknowledge it. The chuch pigheadedly (IMO) refused and claimed they were being persecuted. (Boy did the religious right love THAT!).

In most such cases, all the IRS wants is to get a church to understand the law and agree not to do it again. There is no evidence that IRS is out to punish churches, left or right.  The IRS made its point to All Saints and moved on. It remains to be seen if All Saints repeats the error.

I do agree that figuring out what you can and can't do as a non-profit, tax-exempt institution ain't rocket science, although there are some gray areas. Any and all churches ought to be able to live within the perfectly reasonable rules governing the priviledge of tax exemption.

An anti-choice group  just ran an ad in our local paper saying they were holding a meeting at a Baptist church where they would talk about what people can do legislatively.

How close to the line is that? I would rat them out in a minute if I thought it would do any good.

I'm actually surprised it took this long:

a) The church in question is an Assemblies megachurch which has been linked to illegal electioneering in past.

b) According to my own observations--and according to Sara Robinson, the group American United now confirms as well--Assemblies of God churches are pretty much among the top scofflaws in the country in regards to illegal electioneering in churches (major political engines in the Assemblies have existed since the 70's in their modern form alone and since the 1920s-1930s in general in previous "cycles of dominionism").

Heck, theoretically the entire denomination as a whole should have its tax-exempt yanked wholescale; the Assemblies as a whole were among the top fifteen contributors to John Ashcroft's Senate election campaign in 2000, which is about as blatant a 501(c)3 electioneering violation as exists under federal law.