WASHINGTON (ABP) — A church-state group has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate another church for appearing to endorse a presidential candidate this election season.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the IRS to investigate Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Miami for hosting a rally with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, in a worship service Oct. 10.
The service featured Kerry as well as African-American Democratic leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Introducing Kerry, the church's pastor, Gaston Smith, called Kerry “the next president of the United States” and said to the congregation, “To bring our country out of despair, despondency and disgust, God has a John Kerry.”
Tax-exempt non-profit groups, such as churches, organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax codes are not allowed to endorse political candidates or parties.
Barry Lynn, Americans United's executive director, told IRS officials the church appeared to have breached the law. “This appears to have been a clear case of a church hosting a partisan political rally,” Lynn said, in a letter to the agency. “I believe the obvious aim of this event was to endorse Kerry' s candidacy and spur congregants to vote for him. As such, the church has run afoul of federal tax law.”
The letter marks the eighth time this year that Americans United has complained to the IRS about churches engaging in partisan campaigning.
The other incidents have involved complaints about the pastor of a conservative Southern Baptist church in Arkansas appearing to endorse the re-election of President Bush, and an African Methodist Episcopal church in Massachusetts appearing to endorse Kerry.
Although several members of Congress have pushed hard in the last two years to change the law to allow houses of worship to retain their tax exemption while engaging in partisan politics, the bill has gone nowhere due to stiff opposition from Americans United and other religious-liberty watchdog groups.
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