The rest of the press is finally starting to catch on that Sen. Barack Obama's church is a subject of some importance and interest. The Wall Street Journal reports today:
Obama Pastors' Sermons May Violate Tax Laws
On Christmas morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. compared presidential candidate Barack Obama's impoverished childhood to Jesus Christ's. "Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people," he then trumpeted. "Hillary [Clinton] can never know that."
Mr. Wright wasn't at a convention or a campaign stop. He was standing at the pulpit before the mostly African-American congregation of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Sen. Obama has worshiped for more than 20 years.
Mr. Wright, who will be ending his 36-year tenure as the church's senior pastor in June, has previously been criticized for comments deriding President George Bush and lauding Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Now Mr. Wright's and his successor's repeated enthusiastic promotion of their famous parishioner may be running afoul of federal tax law, which says churches can endanger their tax-exempt status by endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.
Sen. Obama's campaign issued a statement saying that he has repeatedly stressed that personal attacks "have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church." The statement also said he "does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Senator Obama deeply disagrees.'' Mr. Wright declined to comment.
Trinity's national parent, the United Church of Christ, recently disclosed that it's being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for a speech Sen. Obama gave to 10,000 people at a church conference in June in Hartford, Conn., in which he mentioned his candidacy and parts of his platform, namely health-care reform.
As James Fulford points out, it seems a little late in the day for the IRS to notice that black ministers routinely campaign for candidates from their pulpits. They've been doing it with impunity for generations. Heck, both parties bribe ministers, as the 1993 Ed Rollins scandal revealed. After Republican Christine Todd Whitman won a narrow victory in the gubernatorial race, helped along by low black turnout, her campaign consultant boasted, according to Time Magazine in 1993:
In a breakfast meeting with Washington journalists, Rollins claimed that "street smart" New Jersey Republicans had doled out $500,000 in "walking-around money" to black ministers and Democratic Party activists on Whitman's behalf. But in this case the payments were actually sitting- around money, designed to counter Florio's heavy support among black voters by discouraging them from turning out on Election Day. As Rollins told the journalists, "We went into black churches and we basically said to ministers who had endorsed Florio, 'Do you have a special project?' And they said, 'We've already endorsed Florio.' We said, 'That's fine -- don't get up on the Sunday pulpit and preach. We know you've endorsed him, but don't get up there and say it's your moral obligation that you go on Tuesday to vote for Jim Florio.' " He added that Republicans had paid "key workers" in black Democratic strongholds to "go home, sit and watch television" instead of delivering voters to the polls. Bragged Rollins: "I think to a certain extent we suppressed their vote."
The real scandal is what's not even scandalous. At Time went on:
"The controversy cast a powerful light on the unseemly tactics both parties have used to influence black voters in many elections. Payments of walking- around money -- small amounts given to ministers and community leaders to encourage maximum turnout of black voters -- are a staple for Democratic candidates and are legal under New Jersey law. But black party activists say privately that the money is often used to purchase endorsements. "You can buy black preachers by the dozen very cheaply," says a black New Jersey Democrat, who admits participating in such schemes in earlier elections."
Obama has personally emphasized his membership in a Christian church in his campaign rallies and ads, such as in the crucial South Carolina triumph. For example, here's an Obama campaign brochure headlined "Committed Christian" showing Obama speaking from pulpits. The text includes:
"So one Sunday I put on one of the few clean jackets I had and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon called "The Audacity of Hope." And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him ..."
"It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith ... [K]neeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works."
That's a very different slant than the one Obama gave to his joining Trinity in his 1995 autobiography. Then, the emphasis was much more racialist rather than religious, as in this brochure. (I've transcribed the key passage from Obama's memoirs here.)
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As James Fulford points out, it seems a little late in the day for the IRS to notice that black ministers routinely campaign for candidates from their pulpits. They've been doing it with impunity for generations.
Forget the focus on black churches. Trinity belongs to the United Church of Christ, which is not even a traditionally black church, but a white one. The UCC is one of several traditionally white churches that has all but forsaken doctrine for politics. Visit the UCC homepage and look at the top menu for the "Change the World" section. The UCC homepage mentions very little about what the church believes but digs deep into political teritory, with items about "Lesbian, gay, Bisexual and Transgender," "Meida Justice," "Racial/Ethnic Ministries," and "Refugee Ministries." It also has a section on "100,000 People for Peace."
Exhibit B is the Unitarian-Universalist Association, which at least doesn't have the gall to call itself a church anymore but which, I'm quite certain, enjoys the tax and (non-)reporting benefits of one.
Exhibit C is the homepage for Judson Memorial Church. Judson's "pastor" is one Donna Schaper, a list of whose 2007 sermons can be seen here (note the fairly secular list of subjects). Well, not all of the 2007 sermons are there. Notice the start date: June 3, 2007. Why that's so is an interesting story.
The Rev. Donna Schaper is an active member of the "New Sanctuary Movement," a group of churches pressing for amnesty for illegal aliens. She wrote an editorial about it this summer which I happened to read and to comment on. My comments noted that Judson's homepage listed "Worship" below "Peace & Justice" (i.e., political activism) and included people engaged in political acts but not a single picture depicting the church or, well, worshipping.
I also happened to read the sermon given just prior to Memorial Day, which was not very charitable to those who gave our lives for our country. Not long after my comments I revisited the site and noted a few changes, including the removal of all sermons prior to June (including the offending Memorial Day sermon), the reordering of the menu to list "Worship" above "Peace and Justice," and the addition, in the banner, of a single picture of the church, followed by multiple pictures of folks engaging in political demonstrations.
The reality of it is that these "churches" are deliberately abusing government inaction. They engage in political acts under the guise of (tax-exempt) worship. Conservatives tend not to do so either because they don't believe in sullying religion with politics or because they know (recall the Clinton Administration's devouring of the Christian Coalition) that the government will come down hard. But these groups slide by from year to year with nary a worry.
a little late in the day
Better late than never!
Also, how bad does it look for a Harvard Law grad to get his church in trouble with the IRS? Did he not understand the rules, or just not care? Neither is good.
On Christmas morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. compared presidential candidate Barack Obama's impoverished childhood to Jesus Christ's. "Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people," he then trumpeted. "Hillary [Clinton] can never know that."
I'm feeling the spirit of racial unity and non-divisiveness already.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. compared presidential candidate Barack Obama's impoverished childhood to Jesus Christ's
This would be the childhood spent in Hawaii drinking booze, smoking dope, and scoring the occasional blow, all while listening to the marxist ravings of one Frank Marshall Davis?
The only impoverishment I see in Obama's childhood was the moral & spirtual impoverishment from being abandoned by both his father & his mother, and being left to be raised by a bunch of marxist nutcases like his maternal grandparents & "Uncle Frank".
Don't all the fundamentalist preachers that Bush's supporters follow do the same thing?
I'm finding I have a hard time thinking of any policy I like less than having the fking IRS reviewing church sermons and teachings to decide whether they're acceptably apolitical. Why not assign a DHS political officer to each church, too, just to be sure?
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