{"id":46212,"date":"2014-11-03T14:24:45","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T21:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/03\/political-pulpits.html"},"modified":"2014-11-05T08:31:18","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T15:31:18","slug":"political-pulpits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/03\/political-pulpits.html","title":{"rendered":"Political pulpits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here's the bottom line: churches get tax exemption on money donated to them and on their assets. To then use those donations and assets for explicit political purposes gives such donations a favored status over ordinary political donations (which are not<\/i> tax deductible) and church a favored status over other non-profits, tax-exempt organizations (which follow the same sorts of rules).<\/p>\n

That's wrong, and wrapping a cloak of religion around it doesn't make it right. If we want the pulpits as candidate advocacy groups, then let's remove all<\/i> tax exemptions from churches.<\/p>\n

But congratulations to the Religious Right for cowing the IRS into not pursuing these violations of the law for fear of causing a huge political stink. Yay for freedom!<\/p>\n

Originally shared by +Les Jenkins<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This is annoying. Part of the price churches pay for their tax exempt status is not endorsing candidates. If you want to endorse candidates from the pulpit then pay taxes like the rest of us. The longer the IRS ignores this issue the more of them that are going to flaunt the rules.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\n
\n<\/a>
\nRogue pastors endorse candidates, but IRS looks away<\/a><\/span>
\nA record number of rogue Christian pastors are endorsing candidates from the pulpit this election cycle, using Sunday sermons to defiantly flout tax rules. Their message to the IRS: Sue me. But the tax agency is doing anything but. Although the IRS was sued itself for not enforcing the law and admitted about 100 churches may be breaking the rules,…\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here's the bottom line: churches get tax exemption on money donated to them and on their assets. To then use those donations and assets for explicit political purposes gives such donations a favored status over ordinary political donations (which are not tax deductible) and church a favored status over other non-profits, tax-exempt organizations (which follow … Continue reading “Political pulpits”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,109,353],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts","category-church-state","category-elections-2014"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134641,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/11\/need-moar-money-political-campaigns.html","url_meta":{"origin":46212,"position":0},"title":"Because we need MOAR MONEY in political campaigns!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 11-Sep-17 9:19am","format":false,"excerpt":"Various House GOP members are adding in little bits and bobs of campaign finance deregulation into different budget bills, because clearly they think that finding more ways (and more hidden ways) to let people spend their way to political success will favor their party make us all More Free! Among\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Paul-Ryan-speaker-of-the-house.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":132739,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/02\/coming-soon-to-a-pulpit-near-you.html","url_meta":{"origin":46212,"position":1},"title":"Coming Soon to a Pulpit Near You","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Feb-17 6:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Trump's vow to \"destroy\" the Johnson Amendment -- which prevents churches from preaching about specific candidates or else potentially lose their tax-exempt status ...... is actually probably a good thing.Which sounds like a weird thing for me to say, since I find church-state entanglement to be almost always to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135269,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/02\/coming-soon-pulpit-near-vote-guy.html","url_meta":{"origin":46212,"position":2},"title":"Coming soon to a pulpit near you: “Vote for This Guy”","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Nov-17 11:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While it didn't make a big splash in the initial analysis of the House tax reform bill, one provision in there is interesting and disappointing in both small and large ways. The GOP bill will repeal the Johnson Amendment which, back in the 1950s, basically said that a church (or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"Trump and Bible","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Trump-and-Bible.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":28628,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/17\/caesars-wife-must-be-beyond-reproach.html","url_meta":{"origin":46212,"position":3},"title":""Caesar's Wife Must Be Beyond Reproach"","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 17-Jul-12 5:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Is there some horrible smoking gun in Romney's tax records -- ownership in a Chinese melamine factory, or contributions to NAMBLA, or sub-par donations to the Mormon church, or writing off his wife's Cadillacs as second and third homes because she let the\u00a0gardener\u00a0sleep in them? \u00a0Probably not. Probably just a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30323,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/24\/preaching-political-candidates.html","url_meta":{"origin":46212,"position":4},"title":"Preaching political candidates","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 24-Sep-12 1:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Maybe it's time to simply do away with tax exemptions for churches. Because it leads to tangles like this.The purpose of such tax exemptions (which are statutory law, not Constitutional right) is that churches ostensibly perform charitable work for the community, and, secondarily, to avoid taxation from being used as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6732,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/11\/if_it_makes_a_d.html","url_meta":{"origin":46212,"position":5},"title":"If it makes a difference to you …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 11-Jan-05 11:04am","format":false,"excerpt":"... the tax code has been tweaked this year to let you claim on 2004 taxes any donations made to a tsunami relief organization up until 31 January 2005. Or...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46253,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46212\/revisions\/46253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}