First up from the God machine this week is a religion story I’ve been following quite closely lately, involving a dispute between All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena and the Internal Revenue Service.
If you’re just joining us, a guest pastor at All Saints delivered a sermon shortly before the 2004 presidential election. The Rev. George F. Regas imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with Bush and Kerry and said that “good people of profound faith” could vote for either man. He added, however, that he imagined Jesus telling Bush, “Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster.”
The comments prompted the IRS to launch an aggressive investigation. Recently, the agency ordered All Saints to turn over documents — including copies of sermons, emails, newsletters, even financial records — the church produced in 2004. This week, All Saints said no.
A liberal Pasadena church on Thursday declared that it will refuse to comply with an IRS investigation into its tax-exemption status launched after a guest speaker was critical of President Bush in a sermon.
At a news conference attended by 50 cheering supporters gathered before the marble altar at All Saints Episcopal Church, the Rev. Ed Bacon said his 3,500-member congregation did not violate tax regulations barring tax-exempt organizations from endorsing or opposing candidates when a former rector, George F. Regas, criticized the Bush administration two days before the 2004 presidential election.
The Episcopal faith, the 58-year-old rector said, “calls us to speak to the issues of war and poverty, bigotry, torture, and all forms of terrorism … always stopping short of supporting or opposing political parties or candidates for public office.”
Joined by members of other faiths, he added, “We are also not here for ourselves alone but to defend the freedom of pulpits in faith communities throughout our land.”
The church has hired Marcus Owens, a former head of the IRS exemption office, as one of its attorneys, and Owens looks forward to a court challenge. “We believe the only way to challenge the IRS’ actions in this case is through a summons enforcement proceeding in court,” he told IRS officials in a letter, “and therefore the church respectfully declines to respond to the summons. Rev. Bacon will not appear to testify Oct. 11.”
Next up is a bizarre faith-related measure that’s holding up the entire Defense appropriations bill in Congress.
Taxpayers may find it hard to believe that the must-pass $500 billion defense budget could be held hostage to a mischievous amendment empowering evangelical chaplains to speak in the name of Jesus at nonreligious military gatherings. But that is the case in Congress, where hard-right Republicans have held up passage of the defense bill in an attempt to license zealot chaplains to violate policies of religious tolerance at secular ceremonies.
Despite the firm opposition of the Pentagon and ecumenical chaplain groups, House Republicans have been defending this egregious pro-evangelical thumb on the scale in negotiations with the Senate.
We expect the Senate, mindful of the nation’s multidenominational legions fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, to reject the fine-print travesty. At its heart is religious intolerance — not respect of chaplains’ consciences — and a naked attempt to elevate evangelical beliefs to primacy in the ranks. These very abuses caused a scandal at the Air Force Academy two years ago after cadets complained that ranking officers tolerated evangelical chaplains’ proselytizing and discriminating on campus.
Reasonable people seem to realize this isn’t a fight with merit. No less than the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, called the provision “unnecessary and likely counterproductive,” adding, “At this time, our country needs no legislation in this area.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said this week that he opposes including the amendment in the defense bill and suggested lawmakers consider the issue in hearings when Congress reconvenes in January. If it’ll help make this nonsense go away, I’m all for it.
And, finally, I thought I’d note a disconcerting religion-related poll published this week.
Joel Rosenberg, the New York Times bestselling author whose books have eerily predicted bad things like 9/11, has a new one coming out, and in it he takes on the superbig question: Is the end near? Seems many think so. For Epicenter, a book on the Middle East crisis, Rosenberg had the polling firm McLaughlin & Associates ask 1,000 adults if they agreed that current events were evidence of what the Bible calls the last days. In the poll, provided exclusively to Whispers, a remarkable 42 percent agreed. The breakdown is even more startling: Half of women agree, 75 percent of blacks agree, and 57 percent of those ages 18 to 25 agree.
No, I don’t understand it either.