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By Robert Marus
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Barack Obama’s
denomination did nothing wrong in hearing a speech from the
Democratic presidential candidate, the Internal Revenue Service has
told officials of the United Church of Christ.
The denomination announced the move
on its website May 21, releasing a May 13 IRS letter that cleared
the church of violating the law for a speech the Illinois senator
delivered at the UCC’s biennial General Synod last June. It closed
an investigation that church officials first made public in
February.
The letter said the UCC’s response to
the investigation “established that the United Church of Christ had
verbally communicated to those in attendance that Sen. Obama was
there as a member of the church and not as a candidate for office,
that the audience should not attempt to engage in any political
activities, and that the church's legal counsel had advised Sen.
Obama's campaign on the ground rules for the speech.”
Churches and other non-profit groups
organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code are barred
from endorsing or opposing candidates and political parties. If they
do so, they risk losing their tax-exempt status. The prohibition
extends to activities that would appear to endorse a candidate,
including allowing the politician to speak in his or her capacity as
a candidate at a worship service or church meeting.
The UCC is generally considered the
nation’s most liberal large Protestant body. Obama, the front-runner
for the Democratic nomination, has been an active member of Trinity
United Church of Christ in Chicago for more than two decades.
Trinity is the UCC’s biggest congregation.
In February, UCC officials received a
letter from Marsha Ramirez, an official in the regional IRS office
in Cleveland, where the denomination is headquartered. The initial
letter informed the UCC that it was under investigation for
potential violations.
In it, Ramirez said the agency’s
concerns “are based on articles posted on several websites” that
described Obama’s June 23 appearance at the meeting, held in
Hartford, Conn. The senator -- by then an announced Democratic
candidate for president -- spoke to about 10,000 church members,
according to denomination and news accounts.
But UCC officials said they took
pains to ensure that the speech was not perceived as a campaign
event or an endorsement of the candidate.
Obama was invited “as one of 60
diverse speakers representing the arts, media, academia, science,
technology, business and government. Each was asked to reflect on
the intersection of their faith and their respective vocations or
fields of expertise,” a UCC news release issued at the time said. It
also said church officials invited Obama as a church member rather
than in his capacity as a candidate. In addition, it noted, they
first invited him to speak a year before he declared his intention
to run for higher office.
The exoneration letter, also signed
by Ramirez, appeared to vindicate those claims. “Based on your
response to the inquiry, we have determined that the activity about
which we had concern did not constitute an intervention or
participation in a political campaign … and that the United Church
of Christ continues to qualify as an organization described in
section 501(c)(3),” she wrote.
In their May 21 announcement, UCC
officials hailed the letter as a “complete vindication.”
“We are pleased that the IRS reviewed
the complaint quickly and determined, as we expected, that the
church took every necessary precaution and proactive step to ensure
that Sen. Obama’s appearance at General Synod was proper and legal,”
said John Thomas, the denomination’s chief executive. “This is very
good news.”
James Hutchins, a UCC member from
suburban Cleveland who is a frequent critic of the denomination’s
stances on secular politics via his blog (ucctruths.blogspot.com),
said May 21 that he could live with the ruling. But he said he still
contends that the denomination did break at least one IRS guideline
for church-related campaigning, because it mentioned Obama’s
candidacy in some of the promotional materials that led up to the
speech.
“Clearly, from the IRS response to
the UCC, these guidelines are not firm and it opens up the spectrum
of accepted political activity that churches may participate in and
still be compliant with the IRS,” he wrote, in a May 21 post.
However, he said, the exoneration
made more sense than the agency’s recent clearing of Southern
Baptist pastor and activist Wiley Drake. The IRS dropped its
investigation of him -- announced shortly before the UCC inquiry --
even though he had endorsed then-GOP presidential candidate Mike
Huckabee in a press release written on church letterhead and through
comments on a radio show that Drake said was conducted under the
auspices of his First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif.
“The offenses identified by the UCC
complaint to the IRS are arguably peripheral next to the complaint
against Drake, but that doesn't mean that the UCC didn't walk into a
gray area by identifying Obama as a presidential candidate in
promoting his General Synod speech on the UCC web site,” Hutchins
wrote.
“The only logical conclusion I can
make is that the IRS is giving churches great latitude in their
freedom of speech before threatening their tax-exempt status. That
may be the more prudent approach. As long as they are consistent, I
can live with it, although I think it should be clearly reflected in
their guidelines.”
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Read more:
IRS letter clearing UCC
Wiley Drake cleared in IRS probe, but vows further endorsement
(5/20)
IRS scrutiny of Obama’s denomination may signal political-speech
crackdown (3/17))
Obama speech to denomination spurs IRS investigation of UCC (2/28)
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