IRS ensnared in politics of pulpit

LOS ANGELES — The IRS is increasingly being asked to referee disputes over whether churches are improperly engaging in partisan politicking from the pulpit. And some fear the trend could endanger the taxman's neutrality.

Months before November's midterm elections, the Internal Revenue Service warned that it would be scrutinizing churches to make sure they do not violate their tax-exempt status. Groups both liberal and conservative have responded by lodging numerous complaints against churches with the IRS.

"Any citizen can form a group and spy on all these churches and report the results," said Ed McCaffery, dean of the University of Southern California School of Law and a tax law expert. "This entanglement of church and state vis-a-vis the tax laws is deeply out of control."

Churches can be important political forums during election season. Under federal tax law, churches can discuss politics, but if they endorse candidates or parties, they can be stripped of their tax-exempt status.

The IRS saw a spike in complaints of partisan politicking in 2004, the last national elections.

More recently, a group of pastors in Ohio filed a complaint with the IRS against two megachurch pastors they accused of actively supporting Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican running for governor.

And the IRS was in the spotlight last week when the liberal All Saints Church, an Episcopal congregation in Pasadena, refused to cooperate with an investigation into an anti-war sermon a guest pastor delivered two days before the 2004 presidential election.

William Murray, who started the Web site www.ratoutachurch.org in 2004, predicts the number of IRS complaints about politics in the pulpit will increase in two years as Republicans and Democrats hone their tactics.

Murray said he collected more than 30 complaints against liberal, mostly black, churches on his Web site during the latest presidential contest. He referred several cases to the IRS, he said, and has received two more during this year's midterm contests.

"I actually believe that what I'm doing with this is wrong, but I'm doing it in a defensive nature," said Murray, executive director of the Religious Freedom Action Coalition. "Somebody has to defend the conservative churches and the only way to protect them is to attack the liberal churches."

Some of those familiar with the IRS say recent changes in how the agency handles such cases could make it more vulnerable to political manipulation.