{"id":6914,"date":"2006-03-21T13:02:20","date_gmt":"2006-03-21T18:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6914"},"modified":"2006-03-21T13:02:20","modified_gmt":"2006-03-21T18:02:20","slug":"santorums-legally-dubious-army-of-churches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/santorums-legally-dubious-army-of-churches\/","title":{"rendered":"Santorum’s legally-dubious army of churches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than a month ago, the IRS issued an alert<\/a> to tax-exempt institutions nationwide, explaining (again) that churches and other tax-exempt organizations cannot legally intervene in partisan campaign matters. The tax agency also announced plans to vigorously enforce the law during this election year.<\/p>\n

There’s a group of ministries in Pennsylvania, however, that may have missed the memo. As the New York Times reported<\/a> today, a coalition of conservative nonprofit organizations, called the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, are holding partisan training sessions as part of a drive to get churches to help re-elect Rick Santorum. What’s more, the NYT obtained a tape that helps prove it.<\/p>\n

The first training session, on March 6 in Valley Forge, included a videotaped message from a single candidate, Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who faces a difficult re-election fight.<\/p>\n

“I encourage you to let your voices be heard from the pulpit” on vital issues, Mr. Santorum said, urging the pastors to champion a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, according to a recording made by a person at the session. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a liberal group critical of the effort, provided the recording to The New York Times.<\/p>\n

After the tape, organizers offered participating pastors copies of the senator’s book “It Takes a Family.” Colin A. Hanna, founder of the conservative advocacy group Let Freedom Ring and master of ceremonies, called the book “thoroughly and soundly grounded in Christian doctrine and Scripture as the revealed word of God,” according to the recording.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s more, the Pennsylvania Pastors Network is hiring 10 full-time campaign organizers to help churches get out the vote, “suggesting a sizable and well-financed effort,” which is being organized by Gary Marx, who helped direct the Bush campaign’s work with Christian groups in 2004.<\/p>\n

To say this is legally dubious is to put it mildly.
\n
\nThese guys aren’t even trying to be subtle. They’ve created a network of pastors who are supposed to direct congregations to play a role in the Santorum campaign’s get-out-the-vote drive.<\/p>\n

Mr. Santorum spoke on the tape for about seven minutes. A spokesman for the senator, Robert Traynham, said his statement was “generic video greetings about a public policy initiative that will be pending before the United States Senate,” referring to the debate over the proposed ban on same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

“You are the leaders of the flock,” Mr. Santorum told the pastors. “You have a responsibility to be informed and to inform” and “to help guide those who seek your counsel,” especially about the importance of banning same-sex marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My friend, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the network reflected “a growing backdoor, under-the-radar effort to lure churches into political campaigns” that could risk their tax exemptions.<\/p>\n

That last point is particularly significant. The Pennsylvania Pastors Network is effectively asking churches in the state to take all the risk — putting their ministries’ tax-exemption at risk — while Santorum gets all the gain.<\/p>\n

What’s more, as the NYT noted, this scheme in Pennsylvania could “test the promises by the tax agency to step up enforcement of the law that prohibits such activity by exempt organizations.” In other words, this might be a key controversy for the future — if ministries get away with creating a mini political machine to help Santorum, they’ll no doubt want to try and duplicate the effort elsewhere.<\/p>\n

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

Less than a month ago, the IRS issued an alert to tax-exempt institutions nationwide, explaining (again) that churches and other tax-exempt organizations cannot legally intervene in partisan campaign matters. The tax agency also announced plans to vigorously enforce the law during this election year. There’s a group of ministries in Pennsylvania, however, that may have […]<\/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-6914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6914","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=6914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}