{"id":10983,"date":"2007-06-01T15:00:15","date_gmt":"2007-06-01T19:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10983.html"},"modified":"2007-06-01T15:00:15","modified_gmt":"2007-06-01T19:00:15","slug":"pastor-who-blasted-romney-as-satan-lands-in-hot-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/pastor-who-blasted-romney-as-satan-lands-in-hot-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Pastor who blasted Romney as ‘Satan’ lands in hot water"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned<\/a> a couple of weeks ago that Bill Keller, host of the Florida-based Live Prayer TV program as well as LivePrayer.com, wrote in his daily devotional, “If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!” Keller, a fairly prominent televangelist in religious right circles and a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s college, distributed the message to 2.4 million email subscribers.<\/p>\n

It was a striking comment, but more importantly, it might also have been legally problematic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Florida evangelist Bill Keller says he was making a spiritual — not political — statement when he warned the 2.4 million subscribers to his Internet prayer ministry that “if you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!”<\/p>\n

But the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State says the Internal Revenue Service should revoke the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status of Bill Keller Ministries, nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Keller, 49, who has a call-in show on a Tampa television station and a Web site called Liveprayer.com, on May 11 sent out a “daily devotional” that called Romney “an unabashed and proud member of the Mormon cult founded by a murdering polygamist pedophile named Joseph Smith nearly 200 years ago.” If the former Massachusetts governor wins the GOP nomination and the presidency, Keller’s message added, it will “ultimately lead millions of souls to the eternal flames of hell.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Federal tax law prohibits tax-exempt groups, including churches and other religious ministries, from intervening in partisan political campaigns. When a pastor uses his or her tax-exempt group to tell followers not to vote for someone, that generally counts as “intervention.”<\/p>\n

Keller told the WaPo that he was making a “spiritual statement about Mitt Romney.” That’s rather hard to believe.
\n
\nMy friends at Americans United fleshed out the details<\/a>, making clear that Keller was focusing on the election, not religion.<\/p>\n

Keller goes on to say, “Having Romney as President is no different than having a Muslim or Scientologist as President. Please, don’t tell me that Mitt Romney is the best option. I’ll stay home and not vote before I will vote for satan, since if you vote for Romney you are voting for satan!”<\/p>\n

Four days later, Keller wrote another column attacking Romney and recommending that readers support a third-party candidate.<\/p>\n

“As you know I am a huge advocate of Christians taking their stand in all areas of the marketplace, including politics,” writes Keller. “Most likely our only real option will be choosing a third party candidate who will take a stand to uphold Biblical values. I already know that in this two party system we have, a third party candidate has virtually ZERO chance of ever being elected. However, this election is going to be a test of conscience for Christians.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’ll be interesting to see how (or whether) the IRS follows up, but it seems pretty clear that Keller was using his ministry to intervene in the election.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Bill Keller, host of the Florida-based Live Prayer TV program as well as LivePrayer.com, wrote in his daily devotional, “If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!” Keller, a fairly prominent televangelist in religious right circles and a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s college, distributed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}