From
Reuters
Baptist Pastor Mark Harris stood before his flock in North Carolina on Sunday and joined hundreds of other religious leaders in deliberately breaking the law in an election-year campaign that tests the role of churches in politics.
By publicly backing candidates for political office from the pulpit, Harris and nearly 1,500 other preachers at services across the United States were flouting a law they see as an incursion on freedom of religion and speech.
Under the U.S. tax code, non-profit organizations such as churches may express views on any issue, but they jeopardize their favorable tax-exempt status if they speak for or against any political candidate.
"Pulpit Freedom Sunday" has been staged annually since 2008 by a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom. Its aim is to provoke a challenge from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in order to file a lawsuit and have its argument out in court...
In that case, the agency took action against James Hammond, pastor of the Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, after he endorsed Republican Michele Bachmann for Congress.
The move led to a challenge of the IRS' audit procedure for churches, which the agency lost, and since then there have been no publicly known examples of it taking action against churches.
I have often called for the IRS to stip the non-profit status of any non-profit, particularly organized religious bodies of their status. I do not quite understand how the IRS can lose such a court case. When I started my non-profit the wording could not be
any clearer.
Exemption Requirements - Section 501(c)(3) Organizations
To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.
So exactly how is the IRS losing a court case with such a clear rule? I think there is politics going on. Each and every organization that sent a video of their leadership, acting in their capacity as leader of said non-profit (as opposed to as a private citizen outside of their duties under the non-profit) should have the organization lose it's status.
So either the 2009 case was not a clear cut "Pulpit Freedom" event or there are people who are afraid of being the one to pull the tax-exempt plug from these organizations.
