From The New York Times, April 16, 2018
“When Is a Church Not a Church?”
By Katherine Stewart, Opinion Contributor
Last fall…according to forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization that promotes socially conservative views on matters of public and family policy, declared itself a church.
Focus on the Family doesn’t have a congregation, doesn’t host weddings or funerals and doesn’t hold services. What it does do, with its nearly $90 million annual budget, is deliver radio and other programming that is often political to an estimated audience of 38 million listeners in the United States and beyond. It has funded ads against state legislators who support bills intended to prevent discrimination against L.G.B.T. people and it leads programs to combat what it calls “gay activism” in public schools.
Why would such a group want to call itself a church? Short answer: money. Churches can raise tax-deductible contributions more easily, and with fewer restrictions, than other nonprofits can. They also enjoy additional tax shelters, such as property tax exemptions for clergy members — or was that conservative radio personalities?
Next, churches can also enjoy the benefits of dark money. Unlike other groups, churches are required to disclose essentially nothing about who or what supplies them with their funds. And Focus on the Family, like a number of other groups on the religious right, may worry that its opposition to same-sex relationships will land it on the wrong side of anti-discrimination law. After all, the “moral behavior standards” in their employee guidelines prohibit “homosexual acts.”…
The way that Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council see it, the Bible offers specific information about how people ought to vote. Scripture, they say, opposes public assistance on principle (“God has charged believers to help the poor and widows and orphans,” the council’s culture impact team manual explains). Apparently, the Bible is also against gun control and supports privatization of schools through vouchers. It tells us that same-sex relationships are an abomination.
It does not want women to have access to comprehensive reproductive care. Environmentalism, according to the source the manual recommends to church groups, is a “litany of the Green Dragon” and “one of the greatest threats to society and the church today.” Other sources the manual recommends promote the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old.
There is no mystery about which political party the Bible supports, at least as these groups see it…Their claim that they are nonpartisan is laughable…
When challenged about their blatantly partisan activism, these groups invariably cry out that their religious liberty is under attack. It isn’t. They are welcome to their opinions and free to expose them to the sunlight of the public square. The real issue here is money and transparency…
Religion has long thrived in America because most religious leaders respected the separation of church and state, an arrangement that has served our country very well. Under our current law, religious groups are exempt from certain tax and reporting burdens. Political groups are not. Churches need to decide which one they are.
Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart) is the author of “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”
