Associated Baptist Press - Okla. church latest in effort to test boundaries of tax law, politics
In a test of how far tea parties from the pulpit can go, some far right conservative pastors are endorsing Candidates from the pulpit in direct violation of laws regarding non profit organizations and political endorsements. The inevitable challenges are already coming and you can bet that the tea party will use this tax rebellion as yet another example of false victimhood, this time against Christians.
It is the Federal gov that grants tax exemptions to churches and other non profits through the IRS code, and they can take those exemptions away when these groups go partisan political and stray outside the tax code.
This purposeful provocation will be just another in the litany of false wrongs against Christians inspired and fostered first and foremost by Fox News and their Culture War campaign the past few years.
Anyone who thinks these guys are right just doesn’t understand our constitution very well, and I am fully in favor of all of these churches losing their tax exempt status.
WASHINGTON (ABP) — A church-state watchdog group has called on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate a church in Oklahoma for violating a law that prohibits tax-exempt charities from endorsing political candidates.
The church is one of the latest in an organized effort by a Christian conservative group that aims to change federal tax laws to allow political endorsements from the pulpit while churches retain tax-exempt status.
Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, filed an IRS complaint against Pastor Paul Blair of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla., on Sept. 28. That was two days after Blair, who is also founder of a conservative political action group called Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ, used his Sunday-morning message to endorse Mary Fallin, a Republican congresswoman from the state, for governor.
More at ABP: abpnews.com