Your Church is under Attack!!!

Below is a copy of an e-mail I received from the ACLJ concerning the efforts of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (Americans United for Communism ;-), "Humble Howard" Dean and others to stop our Priests, Pastors, Ministers and others from silencing our churches on speaking out on issues of Morality and other issues of the day, which any church should have the freedom to discuss without fear of losing their tax-exempt status.

This Petition supports H.R. 235, the "Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act." The ACLJ is not asking for donations to sign this petition.

Don't allow the Internal Revenue Service to close your church and silence your religious leaders!

Recently, I sent you an email to inform you of a vague, half-century-old law which enables the IRS to shut down your house of worship.

This obscure law is being used by Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) and others to intimidate churches into silence on moral issues.

Join our nationwide campaign to give our religious leaders back their voice for morality by adding your name to our Houses of Worship FREE SPEECH PETITION.

It all began in 1954 when then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson sought political retribution against an opponent who was assisted in his campaign by two non-profit organizations.

As a bill to revise the tax code was being debated on the floor of the Senate, LBJ pushed a little-noticed amendment that barred all tax-exempt groups - including churches - from participating in political activity.

The penalty: loss of tax-exempt status. A heavy price to pay for exercising their free speech rights.

Today, churches in America ARE paying the price. They are threatened with lawsuits and the revocation of their tax-exempt status. Intimidation is silencing our ministers on crucial topics like abortion and same-sex marriage!

In other words - churches are putting their tax-exempt status at risk whenever they speak out on issues of the day.

We must put an end to this! This is a blatant violation of our First Amendment free speech rights.

But we need your signature to help stop this injustice and protect our ministers and houses of worship. Add your name to our online FREE SPEECH PETITION and make your voice heard!

Religious leaders not only have a constitutional right to address the moral issues of the day, many believe they also have a responsibility to do so - especially in the context of political campaigns.

This country has a rich and welcomed history of turning to churches and houses of worship during the debates of the great moral issues of the day.

Why have we put the IRS - which is designed to collect revenue for the general treasury - in the position of being the speech police?

At the ACLJ, we have an important opportunity to correct the errors of the past. That's why the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act is so vital! But we must have your help.

Lend your name to our FREE SPEECH PETITION today. Your name will be added to tens of thousands of others in this nationwide campaign. With it, we will stand together and protect the rights given to us by our Founding Fathers.

I encourage you to forward this email on to family members, friends, and church members as well to get the word out on this issue!

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but there is no constitutional provision to provide any group of any sort tax exempt status. That churches have been afforded such status for a long period of time does not make it wise to accept it if it gets in the way of being a city set on a hill.

It is very much implied in the first Amendment. The power to tax is the power to regulate and destroy. By taxing Churches the government most definitely is effecting the establishment of religion. Tax exempt status for Churches goes all the way back to the Roman era and continued up until know. It was Lyndon Johnson who put the hook in and now the ACLU that is trying to reel it in. Once churches lose the tax exempt status their existant is completely in the hands of the government.

That is what Gene Scott did and he is highly disregarded here. He was smarter than all his critics bound together.

I've never heard of Gene Scott, so I did a google search on him and discovered his own webpage. On the front page of his website it states he talks about Atlantis and the pyramids. Without reading further I suspect any disrespect he receives has nothing to do with his church's tax status and more to do with a conspiracy theory bent. But that is based upon very little examination of both his teachings or the criticisms at this board.

Hummm....well, I think you have a valid point regarding an implied exemption in the First amendment, although clearly not everyone will agree. As far as what is historical dating back to Rome, if we're to be consistent with complaints regarding the Supreme Court looking to Europe for precedents, it would be equally wrong to look to Rome or any subsequent events external to the US for reason to apply a tax exempt status to Churches. I believe you are correct regarding LBJ being the initial culprit in setting the groundwork to undermine the current status, however I disagree that the churches will be under the control of the government were they to lose their tax exempt status. It seems to me that the most commonly used power to control the church has been the threat of losing their tax exempt status...if they renounce or lose it then that control is no longer in place and they would be free to speak truth to the nation. Of course the ACLU would seek other avenues to silence the Church, but they would have lost their current weapon.

This seems to be a move by the Democrats to silence the religious right. They seem to forget all the speeches made from the pulpits of black churches. Jesse Jackson, Sharpton and Bill Clinton do a lot political campaigning from the pulpit. The sword cuts both ways. If not, there is a dirt simple cause to bring action under the equal protection clause.

You are 100% correct...the democrats are royal hypocrites. What they fail to grasp is that if they try to control the churches too much they are going to begin renouncing their tax exempt status and begin to speak out AGAINST them. And it won't take all of the churches to do so. Picture the outcry that'll occur if even 10% of churches renounce their tax exempt status and those 10% of all pastors begin to speak out against the evil in our society...much of it the party platform of the democrat party. Before too long the democrats will be begging churches to take up the tax exempt status in an effort to shut them up...can you picture the backpedaling the ACLU would have to do at the beck and call of their democrat masters?

it would be equally wrong to look to Rome or any subsequent events external to the US for reason to apply a tax exempt status to Churches.

Just look at the US then. Look at all 50 states and see that all of them exempt churches from taxes including property tax. The US federal government has never taxed churches, but they are now using this registration issue to silence churches.

I do agree with you that the government is seeking to control churches. The democrats see the religious right as the backbone of the republican party and in their drive for power they'll do anything they can to hinder or break that backbone as they perceive it. If that means they attack Christianity they have no qualms about it.

My point is simply that the churches are already muzzled by submitting to the tax laws, even though the democrats are again hypocrites on this and regularly speak from pulpits of liberal churches. The problem for the Right is that to stop the democrats from doing so would be opening up an avenue of attack on all churches and not just the ones the hypocrite democrats are abusing. The democrats are money driven (they serve mammon)...they can not conceive in their wildest nightmares that churches would give up a tax exemption in order to speak out on the issues of the day and to denounce the democrats for their hypocrisy. As I mentioned earlier, if even 10% of conservative churches did so and began to speak forth on issues such a abortion, poverty, taxes and of course the gospel it might shock the nation. If I knew of a solid church that renouced their tax exempt status to free the pulpit from government control I'd attend there.

If I knew of a solid church that renouced their tax exempt status to free the pulpit from government control I'd attend there.

Well there are quite a few churches that elect not to apply for 501c3 status. Oddly, if you read the law and IRS publications, they make it fairly clear that churches are considered tax-exempt even without applying. Most churches apply for tax-exempt status because they think they must.

More of them should make their freedom from the IRS muzzle known. As for the tax-exempt thing in the code, I wasn't aware of that.

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