4um: Churches could face IRS probe (TV preacher Parlsey is one)

Title: Churches could face IRS probe (TV preacher Parlsey is one)
Source: Columbus Dispatch
URL Source: http://www.dispatch.com/news-story. ... 2006/01/16/20060116-A1-00.html
Published: Jan 16, 2006
Author: Mike Harden and Joe Hallett
Post Date: 2006-01-16 13:20:24 by Zipporah
Keywords: Churches, preacher, Parlsey
Views: 201
Comments: 15

More than 30 local pastors last night officially accused two evangelical megachurches of illegal political activities.

In a rare and potentially explosive action, the moderate ministers signed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate World Harvest Church of Columbus and Fairfield Christian Church of Lancaster and determine if their tax-exempt status should be revoked.

The grievance claims that the Rev. Rod Parsley of World Harvest Church and the Rev. Russell Johnson of Fairfield Christian Church improperly used their churches and affiliated entities — the Center for Moral Clarity, Ohio Restoration Project and Reformation Ohio — for partisan politics, including supporting the Republican gubernatorial candidacy of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

The complaint asks the IRS to seek a court injunction "if these churches’ flagrant political campaign activities do not cease immediately." It was signed by 31 pastors from nine denominations during a meeting last night at the North Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus and was to be faxed late last night to IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson.

"For me, it’s church and state, not church in state and I really feel there are some churches in central Ohio crossing that line," said Eric Williams, senior pastor of the host church. "The law allows church involvement in issues. This goes beyond issue-involvement to partisan politics and we’re simply asking the IRS to uphold the law."

Williams and the other signers stressed that they were acting individually and not on behalf of their congregations, whose affiliations include: The American Baptist Churches/USA; the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); the Episcopal Church in the USA; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Judaism; the United Church of Christ; the United Methodist Church; Presbyterian Church, USA; and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The complaint makes three main allegations:

• That church-sponsored events conducted by Parsley and Johnson have showcased a single gubernatorial candidate — Blackwell.

• That Parsley and Johnson have launched a "partisan-oriented" voter-registration campaign "with the goal of registering 400,000 voters to support Blackwell’s candidacy."

• That Parsley and Johnson have been behind efforts to distribute "biased voter education" materials aimed at solidifying voter support for Blackwell.

Johnson said last night that his church and its affiliate, the Ohio Restoration Project, do not support candidates and he was disappointed to learn about the complaint.

"It’s sad to see the religious left and the secular left forge an unholy alliance against people of faith," Johnson said. "We have invited people to pray, to serve and to engage, and candidly, we will not be intimidated or bullied by these folks."

In a statement e-mailed to The Dispatch last night, Mark Youngkin, spokesman for Parsley, did not directly address the allegations. But he said the World Harvest Church, Center for Moral Clarity and Reformation Ohio are separate nonprofit ministries "who are committed to full compliance with all applicable federal tax laws governing" the organizations.

"Voter registration has been encouraged — without regard to political affiliation — from diverse communities, including predominantly urban neighborhoods in Toledo and the Miami Valley," he said.

The IRS complaint, launched by members of mainline Judeo-Christian denominations, represents a deepening concern that leaders of the evangelical religious right are mounting an assault on the separation of church and state.

John Green, a University of Akron authority on religion and politics, said the complaint is extraordinary because it was filed by pastors rather than watchdog groups that routinely monitor church and state issues.

"This complaint is detailed and complex enough that I think the IRS is going to say, ‘We better look into this,’ " said Green, author of Religion and the Culture Wars.

Jack Seville, Ohio conference minister of the United Church of Christ, was among those asking the IRS to investigate.

"I would raise a question about any church, be it of the left or the right, that would endorse a candidate or ask its members to vote only for a specific candidate on the basis of its religious or moral values," Seville said.

"There were a number of people within my denomination who were framers of the Constitution. That’s why alarm bells go off when I see churches becoming directorial instead of letting the individual church member make up his or her own mind."

Rabbi Harold Berman of the Columbus synagogue Tifereth Israel, who also signed the complaint, said: "There are some Jewish groups that cross the lines of church and state, and I’ve spoken out about that as well. It’s a violation of the law if we want to be tax exempt."

Marcus Owens, a Washington, D.C., tax attorney and director of the IRS tax-exempt division from 1990 to 2000, said that IRS investigations of churches typically involve theft, but examinations of churches for playing politics are becoming more common.

Owens, who helped the clergy draft the IRS petition, said they had extensively documented the alleged political activities of Parsley and Johnson and their affiliated organizations.

"You have a number of churches and charities involved with a number of road trips for Mr. Blackwell, all of which seem to be aimed at gaining him visibility for his political campaign," Owens said.

Blackwell, who often carries a Bible to GOP events, has actively courted Christian right voters and became a champion for many of them by leading the successful campaign to ban same-sex marriages through a ballot issue in the November 2004 election.

The complaint cites nine instances when Blackwell was featured at events by the churches or their entities. During an October gathering at the Ohio Statehouse orchestrated by Reformation Ohio and led by Parsley, the televangelist called upon supporters of his $38.5 milliona-year church and affiliated operations to sign up 400,000 voters statewide. Blackwell shared the dais with Parsley.

"Man your battle stations," Parsley commanded attendees, who had been bused Downtown from his World Harvest Church. "Ready your weapons. Lock and load. Let the reformation begin."

The University of Akron’s Green said the "most problematic allegation" in the IRS complaint involves preferential treatment accorded Blackwell by Parsley, Johnson and their affiliated organizations.

Marci A. Hamilton, a professor of constitutional law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City and an expert on the separation of church and state, said she was surprised by the pastors’ complaint.

"There are very few instances where anybody’s ever been turned in on this," she said. "Even though the laws are on the books, it’s rare that the law is enforced."

During the last 15 years or so, Hamilton added, churches have had "a tacit agreement" to look the other way and not criticize each other for political activities. But, she said, that appears to be changing as televangelists and conservative evangelical churches flex their muscles in the political arena.

"Those who have been in favor of separation of church and state have been pretty quiet, and it may be because they couldn’t get hold of the microphone. The agenda has been set by the religious right for so long."

Owens, who is representing a pacifist California church being audited because its former pastor delivered an anti-war sermon, said the number of investigations has grown dramatically of late, particularly under the Bush presidency.

"I think historically there were about 20 audits a year, and the number now is up to 50 or 100," he recalled from his 25-year tenure at the IRS, including 10 as head of its tax-exempt arm.

Owens said the jump in the number of church investigations has occurred because, since 2004, audits no longer require high-level approval in the IRS, and can be initiated by revenue agents or their subordinates.

"It is like doing away with the grand jury and giving authority to the cop on the beat," he said. "On its face, it really smells and suggests that there is something very wrong with how the IRS selects cases for review."

Supporters of Owens’ client church, All Saints Episcopal, of Pasadena, say that the IRS singled out the church for preaching against President Bush’s prosecution of the war in Iraq.

mharden@dispatch.com

jhallett@dispatch.com

The IRS complaint, launched by members of mainline Judeo- Christiandenominations, represents a deepening concern that leaders of the evangelical religious right are mounting an assault on the separation of church and state.

The New Testament Gospels reveal an intense conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, one of the two principal Judean religious sects (see Matthew chapter 3, verse 7; Matthew chapter 5, verse 20; Matthew chapter 23, verses 13-15, 23- 29; Mark chapter 8, verse 15; Luke chapter 11, verse 39). Much of this controversy was centred on what was later to become the foundation and highest authority of Judaism, the Talmud. In the time of Jesus Christ, this bore the name of "The Tradition of the Elders" (see Matthew chapter 15, verses 1-9).

The Judean historian Josephus wrote: "What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses . . ."

While the Pharisees recognized the laws of Moses, they also claimed that there was a great body of oral tradition which was of at least equal authority with the written Law - and many claimed that the Tradition was of greater authority. By their tradition, they undertook to explain and elaborate upon the Law. This was the "Tradition of the Elders", to which the name of Talmud was later given. It had its beginning in Babylon, during the Babylon captivity of the people of Judah, where it developed in the form of the commentaries of various rabbis, undertaking to explain and apply the Law. This was the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.

This Judaism was very different from the religion of the ancient Israelites. The late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United States, expressed this conclusively when he said: "The return from Babylon, and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud, marks the end of Hebrewism, and the beginning of Judaism." The Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that the Talmud is actually "the product of the Palestinian and Babylonian schools" and is generally referred to as "the Babylonian Talmud".

Dr. Boaz Cohen in Everyman's Talmud states the Talmud is the work of "numerous Jewish scholars over a period of some 700 years, roughly speaking, between 200 [B.C.] and 500 [A.D.]."

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein in Volume 1 of The Pharisees, the Sociological Background of their Faith says, "Pharisaism became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes of name, inevitable adaption of custom, and adjustment of Law, the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered."

According to The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, (1942) p.474 : "The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees. Their leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud is the largest and most important single member of that literature."

Moshe Menuhim explains that the Babylonian Talmud embodied all the laws and legends, all the history and 'science,' all the theology and folklore, of all the past ages in Jewish life -- a monumental work of consolidation. In the Talmud, Jewish scholarship and idealism found their exclusive outlet and preoccupation all through the ages, all the way up to the era of Enlightenment. It became the principal guide to life and object of study, and it gave Judaism unity, cohesion and resilience throughout the dark ages.

The Talmud, more than any other literature, so defined Judaism that Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser admitted, <.u<"Judaism is not the religion of the Bible." (Judaism and the Christian Predicament, 1966, p.159) It is the Talmud that guides the life and spirit of the Jewish people.

"The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs, or ceremonies we [Jews] observe -- whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists -- we follow the Talmud. ****It is our common law." (A History of the Jews, Solomon Grayzel).

Both Jewish and Christian scholars agree that it was Jesus Christ's flagrant rejection of this "Tradition of the Elders" and his open confrontation with the powerful Pharisees that created the climate that led to his death. Historically, Christian thinkers argued that the Talmud was directly responsible for the rejection of Christ.

In their view these "traditions" blinded the eyes of the people to a true understanding of the prophecies which related to the coming of the Messiah...."

Read Galatians 3 through 5:1. They have been trying to drag us back to Babylon with them for 2,000 years. And they have just about succeeded. Search Cornwallis to George Washington [who was a monarchist, related to the royals, who themselves were infiltrated by the Jews through marriage, if in fact, were not "Jewish" from the beginning.]: In Legions of Satan..... A holy war will now begin against America....in 200 years, her churches will be teaching the Jews' religion.... It has been a holy war since long before that. The Plymouth Colony moved in and began trying to take over from the colony that planted the cross and dedicated the country to Jesus Christ and the spreading of the gospel. PBS has a documentary on the churches in America, and the wolf churches dressed like the sheep churches to as not to arouse suspicion. As I posted last week, the Virginia Colony caught on, saw that the Plymouth Colony was trying to set up the golden calf, and tried to confiscate their goods and banish them from the Kingdom, as they were mandated by the law of the First Charter of 1606.

The US is STILL a British Colony [search]. All the rest has been an illusion/delusion [Rev. 20:7-10]. Maybe it's time to go back to the law of the First Charter of Virginia. [Micah 4, Psalm 2]

I wish People would wake up to the fact that the CHURCH is the ISRAEL OF GOD, built upon Jesus Christ, the apostles, and the prophets. Furthermore Jesus is the same God who led the Israelites out of Egypt the first time. Did you know the "NWO" refers to America as New Egypt? It seems they know something our pastors are blind to. Genesis 15:13-14; Galatians 3:16-29. It does not refer to the Israelites who were NOT afflicted under Joseph, who lived to be 110, and was buried in Egypt. It does not refer to those who came out and worshipped the golden calf.

As far as the "churches" crossing the line, I have four words: KOSHER TAX - NOAHIDE LAW.

"We are obliged to conceal our own particular character and mode of life so that we will be allowed to continue our existence as a parasite among the nations. Our success in this line has gone so far that many believe that the Jews among them are genuine Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or Italians, or Germans who just happen to belong to a religious denomination which is different from that prevailing in these countries. Especially in circles concerned with government, where the officials have only a minimum of historical sense, we are able to impose our infamous deception with comparative ease. Therefore, there is never the slightest suspicion that we Jews form a distinct nationand are not merely the adherents of a 'confession.' Though one glance at the press which we control ought to furnish sufficient evidence to the contrary, even for those who possess only the smallest degree of intelligence."

The above is an exact quote of Harold Wallace Rosenthal, former top Administrative Aide to the then Senator Jacob Javits, who was since defeated in the 1980 election. ....."