Posted on 05/09/2005 6:53:16 AM PDT by ILurkedIRegisteredIPosted
WAYNESVILLE, N.C. -- A pastor who led a charge to kick out nine church members who refused to support President Bush was the talk of the town Saturday in this mountain hamlet, with ousted congregants considering hiring a lawyer.
Pastor Chan Chandler greeted people at the door of tiny East Waynesville Baptist Church on Saturday evening as the choir practiced and welcomed them to attend services Sunday -- if there's room. He would not talk with reporters about his mixing of religion and politics.
Members of the congregation said Chandler told them during last year's presidential campaign that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry needed to leave the church.
Longtime member Selma Morris, who was treasurer at the church, said Chandler's sermons remained political after Bush won. This past week, his comments turned to politics again at a church gathering that ended with nine members voted out.
Morris said some of the ousted members planned to meet with an attorney on Monday.
It's just a matter of time before the IRS begins to crack down on churches that make their political views known.
If you get your tax exemption taken away, no one is going to donate to you. And there'll be a lot of very angry parishioners if it comes April, and the IRS says that all that money you contributed to the church last year can't be deducted.
There's a new bill regarding this where you can talk politics in church and still get your tax exemption. I'll try to find more info on it. Has something to do with FREEDOM OF SPEECH!
People who are tithing for tax deductions are people who don't take their church seriously...
Very true. But people who tithe still want the tax deduction, and will likely move to a church where they can get it.
Very good point. :-)
The pastor is an absolute idiot, but he could not take such action without the active or passive support of most of his parishioners.
The church has an absolute right to decide who it will accept or reject as members. It's called the First Amendment.
Those who go after people for supporting Kerry should go after Bush's supporters because Bush has proved himself in the past five years to be no better of a man or president than Kerry.
Not passed yet, though. My pastor walks pretty close to the line, and I am a lawyer, so I've been concerned about this. Did a little legal research on the matter. There is a case that came down in the Clinton Administration. Some VA (or was it NC?) pastor had his church stripped of its exemption because he put his name on a newpaper advertisement telling people not to vote for Clinton.
That's the only case I've heard of so far where a church's exemption was disallowed. The obvious question is this: If the IRS is going to go after these guys, then doesn't it need to go after the liberal black churches first? Apparently not. This guy made the argument that the law was being enforced in a discriminatory way, and lost.
I suspect that Bush will not make this an issue, but if Hillary becomes President, she's going to go after these guys. You watch.
Selective churches.
To have waited so long to "oust" them is IMO a little pointless. There has to be more to this story than the AP or anyother wire picked up.
My PCA church is very conservative, but for some reason finds little service to God in directing political activity. Maybe it's the calvinist theology of the pastors, but they're quicker to read us Romans 1 and apply it to the US than say we're the "greatest on Earth" or that "Bush is such a wonderful president." They're just interested in the politics of the Kingdom of God, not America I guess you could say.
All of that is fine with me. I go to Church to hear the Gospel and worship Christ rather than hear a political lecture. IMO any "church" that spends a lot of time on politics is really not particularly interested in the Gospel since that is the ONLY thing that can begin a change in America.
I would likely move to a church that had relinquished its tax exempt status in favor of free speech, including free political speech. This business of refusing to speak the truth because the church might lose its tax exempt status is cowardly. If you think about it very long, you will see that the system which prohibits political speech from the pulpit is nothing less than extortion.
Just how is it that Democrat politicians can go to black churches and make all the political speech that they desire, including outright lies, and not a word is said against them? Seems to me that there is a double standard here.
LOST, FTAA, Medicare expansion, the increase in the NEA's budget, No Child Left Behind, his immigration policy, his personal attacks on the minutemen, the RealID Act, most of the "homeland security legislation," his signing McCain-Feingold, get the idea? Kerry would have supported all of those, all of which are major losses of freedom and sovereignty.
If I really wanted to be unpopular I'd just post Vox Day's latest article...
But then again, from many of the comments I have seen I think the pro-Bush camp is starting to quickly find itself in the minority here.
It is a shame freedom of speech requires a bill. You would think a Constitutional Right was a right.
I just find it troublesome that because you are in church, you aren't supposed to discuss politics. What is the point of that law anyway? And the only thing I could radily find about this bill was here.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.00235:
This is beyond freedom of speech. He is barring the door to a building that holds a tax exemption, because of political views.
Advocating for a specific candidate is inappropriate in church, IMO. But if you do, you must not REQUIRE those in the congregation to agree with you. This is what this pastor is doing.
My question is, how would anyone know who you voted for anyway?
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