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Atheists and IRS Against the US Constitution
Enza Ferreri Blog ^ | 13 August 2014 | Enza Ferreri

Posted on 08/20/2014 1:28:03 PM PDT by Enza Ferreri

Russell George, treasury department inspector general for tax administration (left), and outgoing IRS head Steven Miller during a congressional hearing on improper treatment of conservative groups

The American tax authority, the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), will monitor churches for electioneering in a settlement reached on 18 July with an atheist group, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF).

In 2012 the FFRF filed a lawsuit alleging that "the IRS routinely ignored complaints by the FFRF and others about churches promoting political candidates, issues, or proposed legislation. As part of their tax-exempt status, churches and other religious groups are prohibited from engaging in partisan political activity."

Monitoring what is said in houses of worship is a clear violation of the First Amendment, since no law can be written by Congress to this effect. The federal Constitution doesn't allow it.

As The American Vision points out,

Monitoring churches is something the Nazis did. When German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) used his pulpit to expose Adolf Hitler’s radical politics, “He knew every word spoken was reported by Nazi spies and secret agents.” [From Basil Miller, Martin Niemoeller: Hero of the Concentration Camp]

The First Amendment does not prohibit churches from speaking out on any issue, including political issues. The amendment is so clear that the people at the Freedom from Religion Foundation almost never cite it:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances...
Notice that the prohibition is directed at Congress, our nation’s national law-making body. It can’t establish a religion and it can’t prohibit the free exercise of religion. Period.

To prohibit a church from addressing politics for any reason is a violation of the First Amendment. Notice that the First Amendment gives everybody, churches included, the right to speak about religion, write about religion, congregate about religion, and “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The goal of an organization like the Freedom from Religion Foundation is to intimidate pastors and churches to remain silent. FRF [sic] knows that if conservative pastors began to address issues from a biblical perspective, it would mean the near end of liberal domination in America.

Former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson warned churches not to speak out on political issues. He claimed that churches that violate IRS regulations could lose their tax-exempt status and be forced to pay a ten percent excise tax on all donations. I would like to see the IRS try to defend the position in court based on the First Amendment. Constitutionally, it can’t be done. Of course this doesn’t mean that it won’t be done since the Constitution is a legal wax nose...

This so-called ban is a direct violation of the First Amendment. The First Amendment is clear that “Congress shall make no law. . . .” In 1954, Congress made a law prohibiting churches from speaking out on political issues and endorsing candidates. The logic is simple. Since Congress passed such a law, then Congress violated the Constitution. This makes the law null and void.

To have this law declared unconstitutional - and to once and for all remove the ability of the IRS to censor what a pastor says from the pulpit - is the goal of the Pulpit Initiative, created by Alliance Defending Freedom in 2008, focusing on freedom of religion issues in response to more than 50 years of threats and intimidation by militant groups.

On Freedom Pulpit Sundays, the last of which was held in June 2013 with the participation of over 1,100 churches, "pastors are encouraged to advise their congregations on political matters, such as marriage and abortion rights, and even endorse or oppose candidates." The next Pulpit Freedom Sunday will be on 5 October 2014.

It's a great act of resistance. Churches shouldn't be bullied.

This is not the first time that the IRS, which is supposed to be politically impartial, has targeted political rivals of the present administration: in the past these have been pro-life, pro-family and Tea-Party groups. A scandal relating to this bias broke in 2013, leading to the current congressional investigation of the IRS for improperly monitoring conservative groups, which has resulted in a moratorium on all IRS investigations. So, in practice, the IRS will not enforce the agreement with the FFRF on monitoring churches because of this moratorium, at least not until it's lifted.

According to Christian Century,

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is widely seen as the most litigious of the dozen or so national atheist advocacy groups. It claims to have brought 40 First Amendment lawsuits since 1977 and is currently involved in legal challenges to a Ten Commandments monument, graduation prayers and a Catholic shrine on public land.
Why shouldn't it? It seems to work, even to the point of going against the American Constitution to satisfy its agenda and still winning.

The American Vision concludes its denunciation thus:

One last thing. The purpose of Christian involvement in the political field is not to use the power of the State to impose a Taliban-style religious-political system on the nation but to decrease the power of the State at every level.
The separation between Church and state has largely the purpose of protecting the Church from the power of the state. It's ridiculous to think that it means that only Christians, clergy or laymen, of all the different groups that make up a society, should not be entitled to hold political views as Christians or to express them publicly.

Even more absurd is to believe that Church ministers can earn the right to speak of political issues to their flocks only by paying tax money to governments that will squander it and will make themselves greater and more powerful with it, of which type of government conduct the Obama administration provides many excellent examples.


TOPICS: Government; Politics; Religion; Society
KEYWORDS: atheists; churches; constitution; irs

1 posted on 08/20/2014 1:28:03 PM PDT by Enza Ferreri
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To: Enza Ferreri

The power to tax is the power to destroy.


2 posted on 08/20/2014 1:31:08 PM PDT by IronJack
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To: Enza Ferreri

There response is tht they are not preventing them from speaking. They are just not getting a tax exemption.


3 posted on 08/20/2014 1:36:42 PM PDT by amnestynone (A big government conservative is just a corporatist who is not paying enough taxes.)
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To: Enza Ferreri
The guy on the right looks like Andreas Katsulas who played the one armed man in The Fugitive with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.


4 posted on 08/20/2014 1:39:40 PM PDT by upchuck (It's a shame nobama truly doesn't care about any of this. Our country, our future, he doesn't care.)
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To: Enza Ferreri

i’m just willing to wager that Rev.s Sharpton, Jackson, Wright, Farrakhan and all those birds of similar plumage will have nothing to worry about. However, any house of worship with even a hint of anti-Administration feelings? Jackboots!

Now having said that, I do have a list and Westboro comes at the top. Sorry but that is how I feel!


5 posted on 08/20/2014 1:49:29 PM PDT by SES1066 (Quality, Speed or Economical - Any 2 of 3 except in government - 1 at best but never #3!)
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To: Enza Ferreri
However, the 1st Amendment does not guarantee tax-exempt status for religions. That is how they can prohibit churches from expressing political views. They are not stopping them from expressing their political views, just removing their tax exempt status.

I don't agree with this, just saying that they are not in affect denying them of their 1st Amendment rights.

6 posted on 08/20/2014 1:51:45 PM PDT by Robert DeLong (u)
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To: Enza Ferreri

Does the constitution prohibit taxing churches and if not, how did the tax-exempt status come about?

Perhaps they should “Render unto Caesar...” and cut those strings.


7 posted on 08/20/2014 1:56:13 PM PDT by jaydee770
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To: Enza Ferreri
Get rid of religious tax exemption and problem solved.

Then again, I don't support income taxes for people or organizations.

8 posted on 08/20/2014 2:06:05 PM PDT by GunRunner
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To: Enza Ferreri

Personally, I always thought pastors who had to specifically tell you who to vote for were idiots. Or maybe it was that they thought their parishioners were so stupid that they had to spell it out for them.

Every day pastors and priests talk about the sanctity of marriage, about the sanctity of life, about the sin of homosexuality. They can point to passages in the Bible which support their teaching. That is perfectly acceptable religious speech within the wording of the Internal Revenue Code and the Regulations promulgated thereunder. However, the religious leaders cannot say: Vote for Candidate Smith. That’s over the line. But if Candidate Smith is clearly following the teachings of your pastor while Candidate Jones is clearly not, then your pastor shouldn’t have to point that out. Their acceptable preaching has already shown you what you should do.

It reminds me of parents with children. You lead by example and through advice. For 18 years (more or less) you are raising that child to the best of your ability. Once they are an adult, you have to trust that they know exactly where you stand on issues. Ok, they tend to frustratingly have minds of their own, but they do know what your point of view is. They know who you think they should vote for even if you don’t say a word to them.

So, pastors who tell you who to vote for are putting their churches needlessly at risk for losing their tax-exempt status. Shame on them!


9 posted on 08/20/2014 2:11:03 PM PDT by ConstantSkeptic (Be careful about preconceptions)
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To: Enza Ferreri
How about rescinding the tax exempt status of every church who allowed Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton or barry to speak from it's pulpit??
10 posted on 08/20/2014 2:14:41 PM PDT by joethedrummer
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To: Enza Ferreri

Clearly it’s time for civil disobedience.

At the very least.


11 posted on 08/20/2014 2:14:47 PM PDT by unixfox (Abolish Slavery, Repeal the 16th Amendment)
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To: jaydee770

That’s exactly what Chuck Baldwin is advocating, getting churches completely out of their tax shelter voluntary enslavement.

That whole thing was an LBJ brainchild. He got tired of being criticized by the churches, so he worked a bribe to shut them all up. Except the minority churches, of course, who never paid any attention to the legal limitations.


12 posted on 08/20/2014 2:21:00 PM PDT by afsnco
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To: Enza Ferreri

These IRS n atheisters don`t know what hornets nest they don stirred up agin

Religious leaders & citizens make gunpowder ingredients

“but the making of Salt Petre has made such rapid
progress especially at Portsmouth where both CLERGY
and Laity are employed six days in the week 8
the Seventh is seasoned with it.”
“Provincial and State Papers, Volume 8 During the Revolution 1776-1783”, By New Hampshire “, Nathaniel Bouton p26 taken from “The New Hampshire Gazette”, Jan 9 1776, No.1001
[my caps]


13 posted on 08/20/2014 2:21:37 PM PDT by bunkerhill7 ("The Second Amendment has no limits on firepower"-NY State Senator Kathleen A. Marchione.")
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To: amnestynone

PULPIT POLITICS U.S. CIVIL WAR STYLE

“Politics are usurping the place of religion to a deplorable extent in the pulpits of New England Sermons are degenerating into stump speeches. The clergy are taking a more and more active part in political movements.
You will hardly find a political convention in which one or more of the most active and noisy members are not clergymen.
If you enter a New England church on any Sunday in the year
the chances are at least even that you will hear a political harangue which part of the audience will be moved to applaud and part to hiss.

And the political opinions which are enunciated from the pulpit are generally accompanied with a most offensive dogmatism and positiveness This is natural enough.
The clergyman is regarded with peculiar deference as
a man removed from secular struggles and secular stains and
set apart to break the bread of life to the people He is rarely contradicted he is treated by men as men treat women he “ ....
“Nor do we put the objection to political preaching solely on the ground that such preaching offends the earnest political convictions of a portion of the congregation and thus keeps them away from church”

“Pulpit Politics: Or, Ecclesiastical Legislation on Slavery, in Its Disturbing
Influences Upon the American Union”, ...
By David Christy, 1862, pp612-614

Political preaching from the pulpit was never prevented under a censure of tax. Au Contraire, the Income tax laws of the 20th Century cannot be used ex post facto to intimidate clergy from speaking out for or against political issues as they have done in the War between The States and for over 200 years.

Evidently the IRS and et alii aethistos are violating the principals and essence of the U.S. Constitution.
The power of the First Amendment of free Speech EVERYWHERE in the USA cannot be infringed by threats of a tax which never existed during the exercise of such a pulpit politic right of free speech. The precedent herein of Civil War clergy preaching from the pulpits trumps any tax law ex post facto which is unconstitutional in its very essence.


14 posted on 08/20/2014 3:08:14 PM PDT by bunkerhill7 ("The Second Amendment has no limits on firepower"-NY State Senator Kathleen A. Marchione.")
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