A church-state group has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate another church for appearing to endorse a presidential candidate this election season.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the IRS to investigate Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Miami for hosting a rally with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, in a worship service Oct. 10.
The service featured Kerry as well as African-American Democratic leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
A possible endorsement
Introducing Kerry, the church’s pastor, Gaston Smith, called Kerry “the next president of the United States” and said to the congregations, “To bring our country out of despair, despondency and disgust, God has a John Kerry.”
Tax-exempt nonprofit groups such as churches, organized under Section 501 ©(3) of the federal tax codes are not allowed to endorse political candidate or parties.
Barry Lynn, Americans United’s executive director, told IRS officials the church appeared to have breached the law.
“This appears to have been a clear case of a church hosting a partisan political rally,” Lynn said, in a letter to the agency.
“I believe the obvious aim of this event was to endorse Kerry’s candidacy and spur congregants to vote for him. As such, the church has run afoul of federal tax law,” he wrote.
The letter marks the eighth time this year that Americans United has complaints about the pastor of a conservative Southern Baptist church in Arkansas appearing to endorse the re-election of President Bush, and an African Methodist Episcopal church in Massachusetts appearing to endorse Kerry.
(ABP)
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