you have to read between the lines and slip a little off to one side or another for my perspective on this whole thing… the news is that the bush-cheney ’04 campaign has sent out an instruction sheet to church-going supporters with a list of 22 things to do before the election.
The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives.
Campaign officials said the instructions are part of an accelerating effort to mobilize President Bush’s base of religious supporters. They said the suggested activities are intended to help churchgoers rally support for Bush without violating tax rules that prohibit churches from engaging in partisan activity.
the difficulty here is, of course, the church-state separation issue, but i think this is a long-term plan from the bush administration to close the huge budget deficit. allow me to elaborate…
a month ago, we had some news about the bush campaign seeking 1600 “friendly congregations” in pennsylvania to build “the most sophisticated grass-roots presidential campaign in the country’s history” –
In the message, dated early Tuesday [june 1] afternoon, Luke Bernstein, coalitions coordinator for the Bush campaign in Pennsylvania, wrote: “The Bush-Cheney ’04 national headquarters in Virginia has asked us to identify 1,600 `Friendly Congregations’ in Pennsylvania where voters friendly to President Bush might gather on a regular basis.”
in response the irs sent out a letter clarifying the sorts of political activities that churches might engage in without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status…
The IRS letter noted that religious organizations are allowed to sponsor debates, distribute voter guides and conduct voter registration drives. But if those efforts show “a preference for or against a certain candidate or party . . . it becomes a prohibited activity,” the letter said.
a month later, the bush-cheney campaign sends out a list of 22 items for the faithful to do to help get bush re-elected. presumably, this is because bush is a religious man himself, and he’s saying that religious people should support him on that basis. but therein lies the rub… if this new effort (the to-do list) compromises the tax-exempt status of all these churches, that opens a huge revenue stream that would help the bush administration close the huge deficit gap that they’ve built over the past few years. and remember, fiscal responsibility is a republican ideal.
A spokesman for President Bush’s campaign, Steve Schmidt, confirmed that it had distributed the document. Mr. Schmidt said the church program, including the collection of registries, was proper.
i’m certainly not a tax expert, and i have no idea how much revenue this might generate, but every bit counts…. so we have a new fiscal policy proposal from the bush administration. it’ll be interesting to see how this goes over.
Tax experts and a church-state separationist group questioned the effort. “Injecting partisan politics into our nation’s sanctuaries is a desecration of sacred space,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in a statement. “Politicizing churches is morally wrong and legally dubious. The Bush campaign should repent of this reckless scheme.”
i’m not the only one that thinks this stinks… on july 1, rabbi david saperstein, director of the religious action center of reform judaism, issued the following statement:
In this current initiative, the Bush-Cheney campaign is pursuing a strategy that risks politicizing religion for partisan gain by encouraging churchgoers to participate in campaign activities through their church networks. According to today’s Washington Post, the President’s reelection team has begun circulating an “instruction sheet” to religious volunteers across the country asking them to recruit campaign supporters amongst other churchgoers, to turn over church directories to the campaign, and to distribute issue guides in their churches. Without knowing more, it is unclear whether following any or all of the 22 campaign “duties” listed would affect the house of worship tax exemption. While technically legal, the effect of these efforts clearly violates the spirit of the IRS’s rules aimed at keeping houses of worship out of partisan electoral activity. This renewed effort to politicize churches and synagogues encourages partisan activities to be conducted or undertaken at official church events or by church leaders acting as individuals at church events, bringing them close to the edge of permissible activity. Coming just weeks after an entreaty for campaign support among 1,600 “friendly congregations” in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, efforts aimed at transforming houses of worship into political campaign offices stink to high heaven.
emphasis is mine. the rest of rabbi saperstein’s statement is available from that link up there.
imagine, if the irs starts using the same sort of creative law-interpreting approaches that the rest of the bush administration is using… we could wind up with huge revenue from the new church taxes. so maybe iraq can’t pay for it’s own reconstruction, but the american catholics will cover it….
