The IRS Works in Mysterious Ways

Pastor William Turner Jr. is a robust man with an unshakable set of beliefs, and he’s never been shy about sharing them with the congregation of his New Revelation Missionary Baptist Church in Pasadena.

He has preached against same-sex marriage, stem cell research and abortion. And he has proudly boasted to President Bush about converting 80% of his congregation from Democrat to Republican.

“I salute and support you President Bush and will work untiringly for your reelection,” Turner wrote to the president in February 2004, telling him he had done the same for former California Gov. Pete Wilson. Turner also wrote to fellow African American clergymen in support of Bush in 2004, saying that “any gay, homosexual, lesbian and/or immoral act is an abomination against God.”

Roughly two miles away from Turner’s church is All Saints Episcopal Church, which has a radically different political bent. The same year Turner took up Bush’s cause, the Rev. George Regas delivered a guest sermon at All Saints involving a mock debate between Bush, John Kerry and Jesus. In the debate, Jesus said that Bush’s preemptive strike on Iraq “has led to disaster.”

So which of these two churches is under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for taking sides in political contests?

The latter. Your precious tax dollars are paying for an inquisition of All Saints by the Internal Revenue Service, which has demanded church records and ordered rector Ed Bacon to testify at a hearing next month.

Look, All Saints’ politics are pretty clear, and it’s not hard to guess which presidential candidate Regas might have been more sympathetic to. But it’s hard to believe that the IRS wouldn’t have better things to do and bigger fish to fry. The tale of these two churches proves just how arbitrary, fickle and goofy the federal agency’s actions can be.

“This is completely ridiculous, what the IRS is doing” to All Saints, says USC Law School Dean Ed McCaffery, a specialist in tax law. He said the IRS has every right to make sure nonprofits abide by the rules, but he doesn’t believe the sermon in question comes anywhere near the legal definition of picking sides.

So is this investigation politically motivated?

The IRS makes it impossible to find out. Conservative and liberal churches have both been targeted, but the tax agency won’t say which churches it’s investigating or why.

The only reason we know All Saints is being investigated is that the church went public.

After a portion of the 2004 sermon was quoted in The Times, the IRS sent All Saints a letter describing Regas’ words as a “searing indictment of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.” The letter also raised an issue with the reverend’s calling tax cuts for the wealthy “inimical to the values of Jesus.”

It’s possible that All Saints’ politics got the attention of someone up the ladder in the IRS, said McCaffery. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if senior officials in the U.S. Treasury Department or the White House had given the green light to continue pressing the case against All Saints.

All Saints, which could not possibly have bought better publicity, pondered its next move last week while supporters rallied to its cause. On Thursday, Bacon announced to cheers that the church would defy the IRS.

He cited an obligation to Episcopal faith, which “calls us to speak to the issues of war and poverty, bigotry, torture and all forms of terrorism ... always stopping short of supporting or opposing political parties or candidates for political office.” It was imperative, he said, to “defend the freedom of pulpits in faith communities throughout the land.”

Given the church’s liberal politics, Bacon has an unlikely ally.

“I don’t know why the IRS is singling them out,” said Pastor Turner, who told me he was praying for his brothers at All Saints.

He said he thought the use of Jesus in a mock debate bordered on mockery, but he said he doesn’t have a problem beyond that.

If the IRS is going after All Saints, I told Turner, shouldn’t they be knocking down his door?

Turner said he’s never promoted a candidate directly from the pulpit, and he thought the distinction put him in the clear. It’s a notion that McCaffery later discounted outright, saying the law recognizes no such distinction between what is said from the pulpit versus the desk of the pastor.

I told Turner that I believe he ought to have a right to tell his flock whatever he wants to, and I feel the same way about Regas and Bacon. I’m just not sure I want to pay for them to have that privilege, but that’s essentially what we’re all doing given their tax-exempt status.

That’s a fair question for debate, McCaffery said, but it presents a problem: If religious institutions didn’t enjoy tax-exempt status, people would get no deduction for their charitable contributions. It could mean that some religious institutions would go under, and we’d lose all the social services they provide.

As an agnostic, I’m happy to have the debate. Especially since religious fervor cuts both ways and has done a world of harm as well as a world of good.

I’d also like to have someone explain why a church can support a ballot initiative but not a candidate, and why the federal government thinks it’s OK for one minister to call homosexuality an abomination but unacceptable for another to ask if Jesus would be pro-war.

Turner argued that on social issues, he speaks not for any political cause, but for Jesus and the Bible.

Wasn’t Regas doing the same?

McCaffery guessed that if the IRS dropped in on 10 churches, it would find nine that are politicking one way or another. What Congress ought to do, he said, is revisit the subject and clarify exactly what tax-exempt institutions can and can’t say or do.

Until then, the IRS’ finest should forget about the Prince of Peace sermon, roll up their sleeves and go after tax dodgers, deadbeats and cheats.

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez