Tax Exemption and Talk
In the fall of 2008 the Alliance Defense Fund, an evangelical organization, promoted a campaign called “Politics from the Pulpit”, encouraging ministers to preach on political issues and endorse candidates. This was intended as a challenge to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule forbidding tax-exempt organizations to endorse political candidates.
Use of the pulpit to preach about politics is generally a bad idea, and endorsing candidates is worse. Such advocacy for a political position or candidate may even be counter productive. In one of the most famous political endorsements by a minister of a presidential candidate, the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard in 1884 supported James G. Blaine the Republican candidate for President by labeling the opposing Democratic Party as representing “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” That statement probably played a role in Blaine’s loss of the election.
However, if the IRS challenges the Alliance Defense Fund’s tax exemption I will support the Alliance on this issue.
The function of the Internal Revenue Service is to collect taxes. Nothing in the Constitution gives it any jurisdiction regarding free speech. If churches raise money for candidates, that certainly is the business of the IRS; but suppressing free speech definitely is not.
In one of the most famous pronouncements of the Supreme Court, Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1943:
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion…
Tax exemption is a government privilege; but no official may demand that we surrender one of the most basic American liberties–free speech and the expression of our opinions–in exchange for it.
In 1963 the Supreme Court in its Sherbert decision stated that:
It is too late in the day to doubt that the liberties of religion and expression may be infringed by the denial of or placing of conditions upon a benefit or privilege.
The interference by government in religious matters should be challenged, and the Alliance is doing just that. The way to deal with opinions we find bad, dangerous or foolish is to offer better ones. Thomas Jefferson wrote that “It is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.”
Preachers should be held to account for their opinions by their congregations and other citizens, not by a government agency.