Obama’s Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Under IRS Investigation

It seems that the Pastor of Barack Hussein Obama is under investigation of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr and his Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. On Christmas day, Wright made a speech before his congregation during his Christmas services where he made comparisons between Obama and Jesus Christ.

From the Wall Street Journal:

On Christmas morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. compared presidential candidate Barack Obama’s impoverished childhood to Jesus Christ’s. “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” he then trumpeted. “Hillary [Clinton] can never know that.”

Mr. Wright wasn’t at a convention or a campaign stop. He was standing at the pulpit before the mostly African-American congregation of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, where Sen. Obama has worshiped for more than 20 years.

Mr. Wright, who will be ending his 36-year tenure as the church’s senior pastor in June, has previously been criticized for comments deriding President George Bush and lauding Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Now Mr. Wright’s and his successor’s repeated enthusiastic promotion of their famous parishioner may be running afoul of federal tax law, which says churches can endanger their tax-exempt status by endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

Again I must remind you that there are certain things that you can do and certain things you cannot do as a representative of a tax-exempt church. This is one of them.

You can advocate issues but you can’t tell people to vote for those issues. You can tell people to vote according to the teachings of the Church but you cannot tell people how to actually vote. For instance, you can remind your congregation that your church is pro-life and that they should consider Church teaching when voting. But you cannot say vote for or against a candidate.

The turds on the left always bring up the Catholic Church, John Cardinal O’Connor and saying that no Catholic can vote for a pro-choice candidate. BUT, what wasn’t said is that he never mentioned the candidates by name. Wright mentions Obama by name and in the same breath sacrilegiously compares him with the Lord Jesus Christ. Some Pastor especially of a church calling itself Trinity United Church of Christ.

Current IRS Investigations:

The IRS won’t disclose how many congregations it is currently investigating. Last July, the agency reported that it was reviewing complaints involving 44 churches and 56 other nonprofits related to the 2006 election cycle and had, at that point, found 26 cases of improper political activity. The agency examined 110 cases during the 2004 elections, issuing 69 advisories, akin to warning letters, and revoked the tax-exempt status of five nonprofits, none of them churches.

Churches That have Tax-Exempt Status Revoked:

Since Congress amended the tax law in 1954 to restrict campaign activity by nonprofits, only two churches have had their tax-exemptions revoked, according to the IRS. The most recent case involved Branch Ministries Inc., which ran a church in Binghamton, N.Y., and placed full-page ads in two newspapers in 1992 urging Christians not to vote for then-candidate Bill Clinton. The IRS decision was upheld on appeal.

Losing tax-exempt status would be a serious blow to any church. It likely would be subject to income taxes and not be able to solicit tax-deductible contributions. Any IRS investigation — even if it doesn’t lead to any action — can embroil a church in months, sometimes years, of costly legal battles.

Most churches know what they can and can’t say, what they can and can’t do, and the exceptions to the rules. They rarely stray too far into the weeds but Jeremiah Wright is in the tall grass up to his armpits.

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