Front-Paged at Booman Tribune
A chill wind is blowing from the Internal Revenue Service these days if you happen to be a minister opposed to the Iraq War. According to The Los Angeles Times, "one of Southern California's largest and most liberal churches" is facing loss of its tax exempt status because a guest sermon by the church's former Rector, the Rev. George F. Regas, delivered two days before the 2004 suggested that Jesus would have told President Bush: "Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster." Regas told the assembled congregation that "good people of profound faith" could vote for either man, and he did not urge the parishioners to vote for or against either candidate.
Federal law prohibits tax exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections, but it would seem to be a big stretch of the meaning or intent of the statute to suggest that criticizing the war in Iraq from the pulpit represents a violation.
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