| Monday, November 07, 2005 |
| Let me get this straight ... |
...it is now a violation of a church's tax-exempt status to preach against the war? How can that be, when both candidates for the presidency last year were in favor of invading Iraq? Even the FReepers aren't buying this one...
Update: The LAT has more detail on the sermon that caused all the controversy:
In the sermon, Regas said, "President Bush has led us into war with Iraq as a response to terrorism. Yet I believe Jesus would say to Bush and Kerry: 'War is itself the most extreme form of terrorism. President Bush, you have not made dramatically clear what have been the human consequences of the war in Iraq.' "
Later, he had Jesus confront both Kerry and Bush: "I will tell you what I think of your war: The sin at the heart of this war against Iraq is your belief that an American life is of more value than an Iraqi life. That an American child is more precious than an Iraqi baby. God loathes war."
If Jesus debated Bush and Kerry, Regas said, he would say to them, "Why is so little mentioned about the poor?''
In his own voice, Regas said: ''The religious right has drowned out everyone else. Now the faith of Jesus has come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war and pro-American…. I'm not pro-abortion, but pro-choice. There is something vicious and violent about coercing a woman to carry to term an unwanted child."
When you go into the voting booth, Regas told the congregation, "take with you all that you know about Jesus, the peacemaker. Take all that Jesus means to you. Then vote your deepest values. Now how is any of that an attempt to influence the election? The sermon endorsed neither Bush nor Kerry and addressed both with the same issue: the questionable morality of the war. Perhaps what offended the IRS officials who went after the church is the aspersions cast on the religious right -- or maybe the church rubbed an anti-abortion auditor the wrong way ...
Even more troubling than the fact that the case is being brought at all, is the attempt by the IRS to get the church to essentially cop a plea by "admitting to interfering in an election." That's a brand of big-brotherism that would be more at home in the old Soviet Union than in the United States in 2005.
So much for a conservative government that's respectful of religious liberty.
By the way ...
Did the IRS ever follow up on the Archbishop of St. Louis and other Catholic leaders who urged churches to deny communion to John Kerry should he show up? Or what about the North Carolina church that voted to kick out any members who were Democrats? And what of the hundreds of fundamentalist churches that all but order their congregations to vote Republican? I guess they only merit scrutiny under Democratic administrations? We have a large "mega-church" down here in South Florida whose leader is a die-hard Republican booster, al-la T.D. Jakes. And what about Jakes himself? He is practically a counselor to the president!
Let's face it, there is no way to truly separate churches from politics (especially now that the ministers can line up at the public troth for some of that Faith Based Initiative cash). If such a separation were enforced 40 years ago, there would have been no civil rights movement. 200 years ago, there would have been no abolition movement. Churches have always weighed in orn moral/political issues, and what is more a moral issue than war? Dr. King opposed the Vietnam war, didn't he? When individual churches take sides in a moral/political issue, there should be no jeopardy attached. Where they cross the line is in directly telling parishioners which parties and politicians to vote for and which not to. The California church doesn't seem to have crossed that line. The "join the GOP or leave this church" pastor did (and lost his pulpit, rightly, for it).
Something fishy's going on at the IRS...
Tags: News, politics, religion |
posted by JReid @ 2:28 PM   |
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