Dispatches from the Land of Hypocrisy
In N.C., GOP Requests Church Directories
The North Carolina Republican Party asked its members this week to send their church directories to the party, drawing furious protests from local and national religious leaders…. “Such a request is completely beyond the pale of what is acceptable,” said the Rev. Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
There’s a reason that churches are tax-exempt organizations. It’s because they’re not supposed to engage in activities of a partisan political nature. The idea is that their purpose is of a more prosaic and altruistic nature, and since most churches operate on a not-for-profit basis, making them tax-exempt makes sense. It’s appears that some Republicans, though, really do seem to think that “GOP” stands for “God’s Official Party” and that God really does vote Republican.
Republicans playing to their strength among Evangelical Christians is not exactly news, but when they go to churches seeking their membership directories, THAT is far beyond the pale. Churches that comply with these requests not only compromise the privacy of their members, they also risk losing their tax-exempt status.
You might be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. Well, consider this example: during the 2004 Presidential election campaign, the GOP send mass mailings to the faithful in West Virginia and Arkansas contending that Democrats were out to ban the Bible. Nothing quite like putting the fear of God into the faithful, eh? Facts are for losers when there’s an election on the line.
I’ve always found it amazing and somewhat galling how so many Evangelical Christians can honestly and wholeheartedly believe that God is a Republican. What arrogance must it take to assume Divine support for your political beliefs? Of course, this would explain things like the Crusades, eh? Apparently, this trend is hardly a new phenomenon.
During the 2004 presidential race, the Bush-Cheney campaign sent a similar request to Republican activists across the country. It asked churchgoers not only to furnish church directories to the campaign, but also to use their churches as a base for political organizing.
The tactic was roundly condemned by religious leaders across the political spectrum, including conservative evangelical Christians. Ten professors of ethics at major seminaries and universities wrote a letter to President Bush in August 2004 asking him to “repudiate the actions of your re-election campaign,” and calling on both parties to “respect the integrity of all houses of worship.”
Officials of the Republican National Committee maintained that the tactic did not violate federal tax laws that prohibit churches from endorsing or opposing candidates for office, and they never formally renounced it. But Land said he thought the GOP had backed down.
How does engaging in what can easily be construed as partisan political activity not jeopardize a church’s tax-exempt status? By providing their membership directory to the GOP, not only does it open itself up to potential legal liability issues for violating the privacy of their members, they are engaging in de facto party-building activities. That is indeed grounds for revoking a church’s tax-exempt status, and if GOP leaders don’t realize this, they’re even more ignorant and craven than I’d suspected.
[T]he Greensboro News & Record reported that the North Carolina Republican Party was collecting church directories, and it quoted two local pastors as objecting to the practice. The Rev. Richard Byrd Jr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro said anyone who sent in a directory “would be betraying the trust of the membership,” and the Rev. Ken Massey of the city’s First Baptist Church said the request was “encroaching on sacred territory.”
Chris Mears, the state party’s political director, made the request in a Feb. 15 memo titled “The pew and the ballot box” that was sent by e-mail to “Registered Republicans in North Carolina.”
Mears said the “Republican National Committee has completed a study on grass-roots activity that reveals that people who regularly attend church usually vote Republican when they vote.”
Well…duh…. It’s not called “God’s Official Party” for nothing, is it??
“In light of this study’s findings, it is imperative that we register, educate and get these potential voters from the pew to the ballot box. To do this we must know who these people are,” the memo continued.
Indeed. It’s difficult to adequately and effectively propagandize people if you have no idea who and where they are, eh?
“I am requesting that you collect as many church directories as you can and send them to me in an effort to fully register, educate and energize North Carolina’s congregations to vote in the 2006 elections,” it said.
Yes, we must fully educate the good, God-fearing White folks, so that the evil, Godless Democrats are kept from power. For only when God and politics are inseparable will the Righteous truly rule.
Y’all go right ahead…but don’t be surprised when someone files suit to have a church’s tax-exempt status yanked. If y’all are going to engage in partisan political activities, which is exactly what you are proposing, you need to pay taxes like any other organization. At the poiint where you give your church’s directory over to he GOP, you have ceased being merely a church. You are now a political organization, and as such you have no business being tax-exempt.
Of course, there’s also the issue of this effort being of possibly questionable legality, not to mention immoral and unethical in the extreme. Then again, when you work for “God’s Official Party”, you probably don’t much care. After all, you have the backing of the Almighty. What could possibly go wrong?
