A Tale of Two Churches
It looks like this one even has the far right a little upset. I'm looking at World Net Daily, which is just about as conservative a web site as you can find. They're reporting on this story about the federal government sending the IRS to threaten an Episcopal church out in California, because they had a sermon opposing the Iraq war. Of course, this isn't the source I would normally cite for something like this -- this story has been in all the major papers -- but there is a special kind of irony in hearing them tell it:
It sounds like even the World Net Daily sees something fishy in this, as if the federal government should not harass groups that disagree with its policies.
On the subject of the IRS and religious organizations -- this from the Washington Post:
Mmm, it's a long shot here, but I'm going to bet that the government does not choose to hassle Focus on the Family. What do you think?
Questioned about an Episcopal church that's been targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for allegedly talking about taboo subjects from the pulpit, presidential press secretary Scott McClellan said at today's White House press briefing it's not the president's place to "engage in IRS enforcement matters."
The IRS is investigating All Saints Episcopal Church, a registered nonprofit, because of a sermon delivered there in which the speaker criticized the war in Iraq and President Bush's tax cuts.
"Will the president intercede on behalf of this church to stop this investigation that has all the earmarks of a political retribution, since the president has so much respect for churches?" WND asked McClellan.
Responded the press secretary: "I'm not familiar with this specific enforcement action, but I think that that's something you need to address to the IRS, if it's an IRS enforcement action."
"Yes," countered WND, "but I just wonder, is the president – does he approve of this? Won't he intercede on behalf of this church?" Bush won't intercede on behalf of church: Episcopalians targeted by IRS for allegedly talking down Iraq war
It sounds like even the World Net Daily sees something fishy in this, as if the federal government should not harass groups that disagree with its policies.
On the subject of the IRS and religious organizations -- this from the Washington Post:
DENVER -- A Washington-based group has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether Focus on the Family or its founder James Dobson violated IRS rules by electioneering.
James Bopp, an attorney for the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian group, said the group has fully complied with IRS code.
The complaint, filed Monday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also asked the IRS to investigate whether the tax-exempt status of Focus on the Family should be revoked. Tax-exempt organizations cannot participate in campaigns for or against candidates for public office.
The group alleges that news articles showed Dobson endorsed candidates for Congress before the organization officially formed its separate public policy arm, Focus on the Family Action, in July 2004.
Bopp said the organization didn't break any rules.
"Anything Dr. Dobson did to endorse candidates, he did as an individual," Bopp said. Focus on the Family Faces IRS Grievance
Mmm, it's a long shot here, but I'm going to bet that the government does not choose to hassle Focus on the Family. What do you think?
posted by JimK at 2:03 PM
6 Comments:
Jim
The IRS does this all the time and it's usually directed at conservative churches. I agree with you that the IRS is off base but they'll lose in court.
The whole law about pastors not endorsing candidates is a violation of free speech rights and should be revoked.
These two stories illustrate a very knotty problem regarding religion and political partisanship.
Of course, if religious congregations did not get preferential tax treatment -- i.e., they now are tax exempt and all contributions to them are tax deductible -- there would be no problem. Or if the Congress were to determine that such tax exempt organizations could engage in partisan political activity, then there would be no problem. In both instances, the churches or synagogues or mosques as institutions could do anything they wished politically.
Of course, if Congress chose to do the former, it would then be taxing religion -- not a very good or plausible idea in our society. If Congress chose the latter, then every political party would probably tie itself to a church to get the advantage of the considerable tax advantages. I don't think any of us want that.
Or, to avoid having political parties try to tie themselves to tax-exempt churches, Congress could choose to treat political parties as tax-exempt non-profits. Which, given our still relatively progressive income tax system, would mean that a person in a 35% tax bracket making a $100 contribution to the RNC or the DNC or to a political candidate, would really only be contributing $65 out of pocket; and a person in the 15% bracket making the same contribution would be contributing $85 out of pocket -- unless, of course, that person did not have a mortgage and therefore used the standard deduction, in which case he/she would be $100 out of pocket. No one really wants that kind of inequity.
So maybe the rule against charitable institutions (which is the tax status of religious groups) engaging in partisan politics makes sense. Priests, ministers, and rabbis can speak out on public issues from their pulpits without jeopardizing their tax status -- they just cannot urge voting for or against particular political parties or candidates. There is a lot of leeway there. But that leeway is not limitless.
Anonymous says "The whole law about pastors not endorsing candidates is a violation of free speech rights and should be revoked."
Anonymous has it wrong when he/she says that pastors may not endorse candidates. Indeed, Rev. Robertson ran for President himself in 1988, and presumably endorsed himself. My rabbi or his/her minister is perfectly free to endorse a candidate. The rabbi or minister just must do it on his or her own time and may not use synagogue or church facilities to do so -- just like federal civil service employees may endorse a candidate but may not do it on government time or using government resources.
If Focus on the Family has tax-exempt status, then James Dobson may not use Focus on the Family facilities or time to endorse political candidates. If the Focus on the Family people want to change themselves into a political party or an adjunct of the Republican Party, they should abide by the same tax rules as everybody else.
Here's where we're headed:
"SANTA ANA, Calif. - A federal judge ruled that a lesbian student can sue her school district and her principal for revealing her homosexuality to her mother.
Charlene Nguon, 17, may go forward with her suit claiming violation of privacy rights, U.S. District Judge James V. Selna ruled in a decision dated Nov. 28 and announced Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Orange County’s Garden Grove district had argued that Nguon openly kissed and hugged her girlfriend on campus and thus had no expectation of privacy.
Story continues below ↓
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However, the judge ruled that Nguon had “sufficiently alleged a legally protected privacy interest in information about her sexual orientation.”
No trial date was set. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
“This is the first court ruling we’re aware of where a judge has recognized that a student has a right not to have her sexual orientation disclosed to her parents, even if she is out of the closet at school,” said Christine Sun, an ACLU attorney who brought the case.
“Coming out is a very serious decision that should not be taken away from anyone, and disclosure can cause a lot of harm to students who live in an unsupportive home.”
Nguon sued after Santiago High School Principal Ben Wolf told her mother about her sexuality last year.
“The person to decide when and how to talk with our family about this should have been my daughter, not her principal,” her mother, Crystal Chhun, said in a statement.
District officials have declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also claims discrimination, contending Nguon was suspended several times for ignoring orders from the principal to stop hugging and kissing her girlfriend. Heterosexual couples engaging in similar behavior were not disciplined, the lawsuit contends.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
cause for optimism:
WASHINGTON - Since the U.S. Supreme Court banned the promotion of religion in public schools in 1963, the Bible has virtually disappeared from most American classrooms.
But in recent years, as evangelical Christians have grown in numbers and gained political clout in the United States, Bible studies have been creeping back into schools.
Now, a new textbook for high school students aims to fill a gap by teaching the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, in a nonsectarian, nonreligious way as a central document of Western civilization with a vast influence on its literature, art, culture and politics.
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“It’s not about belief. It’s about crucial knowledge and knowledge belongs in our schools,” said Chuck Stetson, a New York investment banker who is the driving force behind and co-author of “The Bible and Its Influence” — a glossy, 387-page book recently released and now being tested in a small number of schools mainly on the West Coast.
Stetson knows he was stepping into a potential minefield. But he said polls have shown that over two-thirds of Americans want to see the Bible taught in public schools while only around 8 percent of schools were offering it.
The process of approving the book for use in schools differs from state to state and district to district. In some places, it can be added to the curriculum as an elective by the principal; other locales require the approval of a local school board and in some places the state itself would have to approve it. Stetson is hoping to see the book used by hundreds of school districts by the next academic year.
'Constitutional and age appropiate'
“This is the first student textbook we’ve had that is both constitutional and age appropriate,” said Charles Hayes of the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, a nonpartisan foundation that monitors free speech.
“It teaches the subject in a way that will satisfy people who take the Bible as their scripture, but it will also appeal to a broad range of students interested in becoming biblically literate,” he said.
“The Bible and Its Influence” is not the only game in town. A North Carolina group called the National Council on Bible Curriculum in the Public Schools has a Bible course now being used in 316 school districts in 37 states.
The Anti Defamation League has denounced this program, which uses the King James translation of the Bible as its text, saying it “blatantly crosses the line by teaching fundamental Protestant doctrine.” But the group’s legal counsel Mike Johnson denied this.
“Take the resurrection of Christ. A teacher cannot tell a classroom that it’s a historical fact. That would be a violation of the Constitution. But a teacher can say that the Bible says it’s a historical fact,” he said.
“One can’t teach that the Bible is objectively true, but one shouldn’t teach that it’s objectively false,” he added.
“The Bible and Its Influence” sets out its ground rules and philosophy on its opening pages. “You are going to study the Bible academically, not devotionally. In other words, you are learning about the Bible and its role in language and culture,” it tells its readers.
“You will be given an awareness of religious content of the Bible but you will not be pressed into accepting religion. You will study about religion as presented in the Bible but you will not be engaged in the practice of religion.”
With prominent theologians of different religions and denominations among its editorial board, the authors made a serious effort to make sure that the book did not elevate one religion over any other.
“We caught quite a few factual mistakes, but I also looked for places where the Christian point of view was assumed. There were some and we made some changes,” said Marc Stein, general counsel of the American Jewish Committee who reviewed the text before publication.
Criticism from the left and right
Still, there has been criticism of the book coming from both the political left and right. On the liberal side, Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said the book sanitized the effect of religion throughout history, by minimizing Christian support for slavery and Christian anti-Semitism.
“To teach religion objectively, you really have to teach the good, the bad and the ugly and this book only teaches the good,” he said.
On the other side, Dennis Cuddy, a Christian conservative who has worked as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Education, said the book raised doubts about God and prompted students to ask the wrong questions.
“If you are going to teach the Bible, are you going to teach it as if it were the word of God? At the least, it should be taught as truthful. It shouldn’t be presented as something that is false,” he said.
But Joan Spence, a high school teacher in Battleground, Wash., said she as well as students of her elective English class on the Bible appreciated it very much.
“Before I had this book, I had to do all the research myself to teach a class on the Bible as literature. This book, with its many examples of art and literature, makes it easier to keep the class academic rather than religious,” she said.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
anonymous said:Here's where we're headed:
"SANTA ANA, Calif. - A federal judge ruled that a lesbian student can sue her school district and her principal for revealing her homosexuality to her mother.
**************
Headed in the right direction. The principal had no right revealing her sexual orientation. It is hers to reveal.
More to this story:
Lesbian student can sue school, judge says
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SANTA ANA, Calif. -- A federal judge ruled that a lesbian student can sue her school district and her principal for revealing her homosexuality to her mother.
Charlene Nguon, 17, may go forward with her suit claiming violation of privacy rights, U.S. District Judge James V. Selna ruled in a decision dated Nov. 28 and announced Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Orange County's Garden Grove district had argued that Nguon openly kissed and hugged her girlfriend on campus and thus had no expectation of privacy.
However, the judge ruled that Nguon had "sufficiently alleged a legally protected privacy interest in information about her sexual orientation."
No trial date was set. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
"This is the first court ruling we're aware of where a judge has recognized that a student has a right not to have her sexual orientation disclosed to her parents, even if she is out of the closet at school," said Christine Sun, an ACLU attorney who brought the case.
"Coming out is a very serious decision that should not be taken away from anyone, and disclosure can cause a lot of harm to students who live in an unsupportive home."
Nguon sued after Santiago High School Principal Ben Wolf told her mother about her sexuality last year.
"The person to decide when and how to talk with our family about this should have been my daughter, not her principal," her mother, Crystal Chhun, said in a statement.
District officials have declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also claims discrimination, contending Nguon was suspended several times for ignoring orders from the principal to stop hugging and kissing her girlfriend. Heterosexual couples engaging in similar behavior were not disciplined, the lawsuit contends
"anon free"
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