Tax exemptions and endorsing candidates from the pulpit

This post is inspired from the following article:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/july/irs-to-atheists-okay-well-investigate-pulpit-freedom-sunday.html

For those that follow religious news closely, one of the stories you will hear a lot about in the next several months is the possible decision by the IRS to examine churches more closely.

Without going into too much detail, the current tax code in our country keeps churches and religious organizations tax exempt so long as they do not engage in overt political activities. The most clear of these would be for a pastor or church leader to endorse a specific candidate from the pulpit. The tax code is 501(c)(3), which does not allow overt electioneering.

This comes after the previous IRS scandal with the Obama administration, where they had audited non-profit political groups to see if they were in violation of the above mentioned tax code. The scandal was that the Obama administration had specifically targeted conservative groups at the expense of liberal groups. Like most scandals today, there is plenty of outrage and excuse making on both sides, followed up by stories of lost emails, refusing to testify, and other insider political football that generally causes my eyes to roll back in my head. This will certainly fall somewhere within the spectrum of legitimate IRS action that became a little too partisan to devious plan by the administration to destroy grassroots conservative organizations. Your final position, if not apathy, will probably depend on what you already think of the Obama administration.

That said, this new situation is quite different. The general tradeoff of tax exemption for not engaging in electioneering seems to have been the status quo for some time. However, since the time leading up to the election in 2008, more than 1,600 churches have deliberately breaking the law by endorsing specific candidates, with more similar activities planned for the run up to the midterms this year. For more context, check out this article:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2012/october/record-setting-1500-pastors-deliberately-break-law-yet.html

What is interesting from that article, however, is that according to surveys only around 10% of pastors think it is a good idea to endorse candidates from the pulpit. And despite the CNN report that endorsing candidates “could hold more sway than previous years” I suspect that the candidate endorsed by most pastors probably didn’t win.

It does seem that endorsing candidates is a direct challenge by the pastors to provoke a response by the IRS that would threaten the tax exempt status of churches and religious institutions. The next move then, supported by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), would be to challenge the law (of no electioneering for tax exempt organizations) for the right to endorse candidates, among other political activities.

It seems that the IRS, even though they were not shy in investigating non-profit political organizations, were not willing to take the step of accepting the bait of the ADF without prompting. However, it seems that an atheist legal group, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), had sued a religious organization for electioneering activities in 2012. This organization has agreed to drop this lawsuit after it came to an agreement with the IRS in which the IRS will no look into the political activities of these churches that have endorsed political candidates from the pulpit.

So this is where we are at. A small number of churches have challenged a pretty set status quo by overtly endorsing candidates from the pulpit. The IRS had refused to respond until a lawsuit by an atheist organization has pretty much forced their hand. Over the next few months leading up to the midterms we will see continued coverage, followed by some sort of action by the IRS. If they take action against the churches and religious institutions, there will be a lawsuit by the ADF. If they don’t take action, I suspect that the FFRF will bring another lawsuit. Either way, more fun with lawsuits.

Can’t say I’m a fan of the actions of the pastors and the ADF. I generally see the no overt electioneering for tax exempt status to be a reasonable situation, but this goes far beyond this. Hard to see this as anything but a lose-lose as far as the church is concerned. At stake is the tax exempt status. That is a nice thing for churches and probably pretty close to necessary for many of them to survive. To give that up for the right to publicly endorse candidates strikes me as a disaster. And even if the ADF “wins” and keeps the tax exempt status while still able to publically endorse candidates, then that doesn’t seem like much of a gain either.

Politics out of the pulpit is always a tricky business. I am not naïve enough to expect no politics from the pulpit, but I would like to think of that as pushing specific policy positions rather than pushing a specific candidate or a specific political party. The reason for this is simple, Christ is available to all people, whether they are Republican or Democrat, whether they might have preferred Obama or Romney. For a church to endorse one party or candidate, they risk alienating a significant portion of the congregation, or, perhaps more importantly, a significant portion of their potential congregation.

I do realize with certain denominations and certain locations this is not as much of a concern. Heck, endorsing a political candidate or party might be a wise business plan, but for the church as a whole it is a disaster. It leads to kingdom splitting, not kingdom building. It does nothing to lead people to Christ, but does much to set up a barrier and to reinforce stereotypes that are not true. Reinforce the stereotype that to be a Christian requires a specific set of political beliefs rather than accepting the invitation that is given to us of new life in Christ. That, more than anything, is why pushing the envelope on overt electioneering is a lose-lose for the church.

I will be watching this closely, but I suspect it does not end well for the church, no matter what the outcome is.

Hobby Lobby revisited

For today’s post, I want to look at an article that belies one of the points that was made when I took a closer look at the Hobby Lobby decision a couple of weeks ago.

Here is the link that post:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/some-thoughts-on-hobby-lobby-decision.html

I generally had two thoughts that would summarize the point I was trying to make as what the Hobby Lobby decision might mean going forward.

First, that the decision will potentially be rendered moot if the government becomes more involved in health care and covers the birth control methods that were in question.

The second, which I quote from my post, is as follows:

All this brings me to the final point, which is the idea of religious freedom. For people that are cheering for this decision, that is what they most cite. The first thing to notice is that this decision gives “closely-held” corporations (corporations where 5 or fewer people own 50% or more of shares) now count as people when considering religious freedom. While this was a narrow decision in the present, it could lead to further issues down the line. What if corporations use religious beliefs to discriminate against classes of people? What about other health care procedures that are not allowed by religious faiths (ie blood transfusions with Christian Scientists or vaccinations)? What might happen when the Supreme Court has a much more liberal bent and uses this decision as a method of destroying protections currently seen by religious institutions? I fear the main ramifications of this decision will be seen down the line. To avoid making these decisions is to imply that concerns about birth control are “legitimate” religious concerns, while the other concerns such as opposition to vaccinations, blood transfusions, certain types of medicine, etc. are not “legitimate” religious concerns, and that is a dangerous position for the Supreme Court to go.

My thought is that different groups would start to take advantage of this ruling, and it would not be hard to imagine various court across the country with different political sensibilities to make rulings with results that would not be seen quite as favorably by people who were cheering for the initial Hobby Lobby decision.

This brings me to an article I saw today from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/satanists-troll-the-hobby-lobby-decision/375268/

This article concerns a court case brought The Satanic Temple, a group of Satanists. The details of the actual lawsuit are quite fantastical, which is probably why it ended up in The Atlantic. Basically, this group brought suit that it is seeking an exemption from “informed consent” laws which require doctors to provide certain information to women that are seeking abortions. The group claims that the information is are scientifically unfounded and medically invalid and therefore it would be an affront to their religious beliefs to be exposed to them.

Now, reading the article, it seems clear that there probably is little legal standing for The Satanic Temple on this issue, mostly because the legal claims don’t stand up and it is unclear how these beliefs regarding not hearing the information interfere with the practice of their religion. There is more depth in the article, and I encourage you to read if you are interested in that.

The point I want to make is that while this specific lawsuit is fantastical, it is not hard to see the potential problems that may soon arise with the Hobby Lobby ruling. At the crux of it is how does the court differentiate between religious beliefs and political beliefs. While I do not question the sincerity of Hobby Lobby and their beliefs on contraception, perhaps it is also possible they just don’t want to pay for that specific medicine. What is going to stop other organizations from making the same decisions on a whole variety of similar claims?

Religious liberty is a great thing in individual consciences, but holding that corporations have religious liberty opens up all sorts of opportunity for abuse and corruption.

As I speculated in my previous post, I don’t expect much expansion from the current Supreme Court, but it will not always have the same makeup. And organizations that are not quite as extreme as The Satanic Temple will look to exploit that.

Here is a quote from the article that sums it up:

But as much as anything, the Satanic Temple is trying to make a point: The Supreme Court has accepted the earnestness of one group's politically controversial religious views, leaving an open question about what qualifies as a sincerely held religious belief. The ruling in Hobby Lobby was made "in the context of a familiar religious tradition, rather than one outside of the mainstream," Peñalver said. "We’re a religiously diverse country."

As I said in my previous post, those that were cheering for Hobby Lobby might see the tables be turned on them, leading to decisions they will not like. It might happen even quicker than I thought.

ISIS and Iraq – Now this is persecution!

A story that had some traction last week but has since been buried under news from Israel and other places around the world was the fate of the Christian communities in Mosul, Iraq.

Last week, ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant), which I will talk about more below, occupied Mosul and the surrounding communities. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq and is home to one of the oldest continuous Christian settlements in the Middle East. Near the city are the ruins of Nineveh. Since occupation, ISIS has destroyed the shrine to Jonah (who is also a prophet in Islam), burned Christian churches, and burned another sight that is believed to contain the tomb of the Biblical prophet Seth.

There had also been preliminary plans to make Mosul the center of a region that would be a semi-autonomous area within Iraq, though not much progress had been made since the new government of Iraq came to power. Needless to say, this has been a devastating blow to the region and to its heritage. Beyond this damage, there has been a great impact to the people. Many people have died in the fighting, and there have been very specific consequences for the Christian population.

As ISIS took hold of these areas, they marked the homes of Christians with the Arabic letter “Nun” which stands for Nazarenes, a word used to describe Christians. They then gave the Christians three options:

1.     Convert to Islam

2.     Pay a yearly tax, called the jizya, and submit to various other restrictions

3.     Die

In response to this, those that were able fled the area, with hundreds of thousands leaving for Kurdistan or Turkey to the north. It is believed that around 15 families that were unable to flee (because of illness) converted to Islam, and thankfully there have been very accounts of killings as a result of this decree (not to be confused with the massive amount of death from the fighting, I’m speaking specifically about killings based on these decrees).

Now this is persecution! This is what Christians around the world potentially face on a daily basis. Persecution is not what Christians complain about in the United States, which protects religious freedom for all. Persecution is having to make the decision between conversion, losing all property, or dying. We should be thankful that there were areas that the people could flee to, but we must remember that they have now lost everything. And we must remember that this type of persecution is not going anywhere in that region of the world.

So how did we get here? I am going to deviate a little bit from a Christian centric view and get into some of the policy decisions that lead to this place, and try to present a little bit of understanding of the greater Middle East.

ISIS is a Sunni militia group. Sunni is one of the two main strains of Islam along with the Shia. The Sunni are best represented by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the rebels fighting Assad in Syria, the middle area of Iraq. It is also al Qaeda, and it was the religion of Saddam Hussein. It is by far the larger of the two groups, making up about 85% of Muslims in the Middle East.

Shia Muslims are best thought of as Assad in Syria, PLO, the larger (Southern) group in Iraq, and Iran. Needless to say this two branches of Islam are not exactly friendly and have been fighting the proxy wars we have been thinking of the past several decades, but in reality have been at war since the split in the late 600s. At various times there have been unification under empires and strong chieftains, but there has never been a true peace between the two groups.

An analogy I like to think of, because of my bent towards European History, is the split between the Catholics and Protestants in the 15^th-17^th centuries. While there were obvious religious differences, the religions were used more as a proxy to determine what bloc a region would be in, and there was constant fighting, with smaller regions serving as a proxy for the larger powers, most notably The Thirty Years War. It is not a perfect analogy by any sense, but I do like to think of the two blocs fighting each other in proxy conflicts

A big source of the current conflict can be traced back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the drawing of new maps after World War I. This video provides a quick primer:

http://slate.me/1nHJjpE

Iraq, specifically, was a classic example of what Britain did to maintain power in the region. Instead of keeping the different regions separate (ie a Sunni region and a Shia region as the Ottoman Empire had done), they combined them into a single region and gave power to the lesser population. In the case of Iraq, it is about 60% Shia, 20% Sunni, 20% Kurds. The British gave power to the Sunnis, who maintained rule with an iron fist of murder and intimidation – methods that were passed down to Saddam Hussein.

Before the Second Gulf War, we were bombarded with stories of the atrocities committed by Saddam against his people. These were undoubtedly true, as this was the traditional way that the Sunnis kept power within the country even though they only accounted for about 20% of the population. The upshot was that there was more or less internal stability in the country, but there were generations of people ready to get revenge when the opportunity presented itself.

Enter the US and the Coalition of the Willing. Once our forces overthrew Saddam it unleashed the hell that had been bottled up for said generations. Our soldiers would get caught in the middle of it, but more accurately it would be right to think of the years immediately following the invasion as a time to settle scores and to ethnically cleanse the areas that had become somewhat mixed.

Without going into too much more detail, what followed was elections that brought in a Shia leader with hopes of bringing in other members into government from the Sunni and Kurds. This did not happen, as the Shia leader, Maliki, used his power to render the Sunni members of government impotent and to do some ethnic cleansing of his own. This was eventually met with response from ISIS, who invaded Iraq from the fighting they were doing in Syria and quickly drove back the pro-government forces from the Sunni lands in Iraq. Government soldiers, who were primarily Shia, were not willing to fight to hold Sunni lands for their government, but they did stiffen resistance as they entered Shia lands (with the help of some Shia militias as well).

So that is more or less the standoff now. As the government forces of Iraq abandoned the Sunni areas, this included Mosul, which opened up the power vacuum that was filled by ISIS, an especially barbaric strain of Sunni Islam, leading to the persecution of all who were not Sunni Muslims. There is some hope that ISIS has pushed too far, and there is now some pushback from the Sunni civilians, but what happens from there is anyone’s guess. Here is another article on that possibility:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/07/24/is_isis_showing_signs_of_strain.html

I think overall this was inevitable. ISIS would be strong until they approached Shia lands, and once they were responsible for actually caring for people in their territory, there would be pushback. Unfortunately it appears it will be too late to make much difference for the Christians that were in Mosul.

So where does this leave us? As mentioned above, many of the refugees were able to flee into Kurdistan and Turkey and find sanctuary. These are strong regions and they will be safe and hopefully able to rebuild the lives of those that fled. Perhaps, when ISIS is eventually ousted and a more moderate (to use it somewhat loosely) group takes control of the Sunni region of Iraq, they will be able to return home.

So what is the US responsibility in all of this? That is a good question. I think it has been clear that since the initial invasion in 2003 that many of these concerns were not strongly considered when the decision to take Saddam out was made. There should be no tears for Saddam being gone, but the idea that a democracy could be planted and the US could get out quickly was a fantasy. The choice was between a long term occupation (50 or so years), or a descent into chaos. Neither of those options are all that appealing, and we chose the latter, with the consequences being a huge power vacuum, lots of violence, and innocent people such as the Christian community of Mosul being caught in the crossfire. I’m not sure that, even with all of this, it would ever make sense to send US soldiers back in.

In my mind, the only hope for some long term peace is going to be a re-drawing of the map in this region, with countries that better represent the people within. This will be the final response to the decision of the British a century ago, with much blood shed, and so much that is lost forever.

POSTSCRIPT: All this, and I mentioned barely anything about Syria and nothing about Libya and Israel, where these types of fights are still being waged, and probably will be for years and decades going forward.

The Vanishing Middle Class Clergy

So as a follow up to my blog post of saving the Seminary:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/save-our-seminaries.html

I came across this article in The Atlantic about the vanishing middle class of clergy.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/higher-calling-lower-wages-the-collapse-of-the-middle-class-clergy/374786/

Much of this article hit very close to home and has really made me think about what the future of my ministry life might look like, and what the future of professional clergy in general might look like.

As I reflect on my Seminary career, I certainly don’t regret the experience and all that I learned, but it has certainly lead to frustrations, both in the amount of debt that I took on for the degree and the lack of options that followed it for a stable, decent paying job. I have seen some articles like this in the past, but I thought this particular article did the best job of articulating what exactly is happening to Seminary grads, with perhaps some unspoken assumptions of what it might mean for the church going forward.

I’m going to take some select quotes from the article and add a few comments to them.

Barringer’s story is becoming increasingly typical as Protestant churches nationwide cut back on full-time, salaried positions. Consequently, many new pastors either ask friends and family for donations (a time-honored clerical tradition) or take on other jobs. Working two jobs has become so common for clergy members, in fact, that churches and seminaries have a euphemistic term for it: bi-vocational ministry.

This paragraph does an excellent job of speaking on some of the options that are now available for those that are called into ministry. The amount of positions that are available are shrinking, while there is at least a holding pattern, if not increase, in the number of Seminary grads in the aggregate.

The options that are listed are to either ask for donations, in a sense to be a missionary within the church, are to work a second job while being a pastor, bi-vocational ministry, or what we also like to refer to as tent-making ministry (an allusion to Paul in Acts supporting his ministry by working in a trade). This are certainly worthwhile options, but would, in my mind, change the very nature of the church, which is something I will touch on in a second.

When I graduated Seminary in 2011 the job placement of Bethel said that it was the worst job market they had seen in over 50 years. I know that this has somewhat loosened, but I do have a theory as to what happened. For starters, churches saw a massive decrease in giving. The article states the following:

Not only is church attendance in long-term decline, but financial giving by church members is at Depression-era lows.

So there is two factors going on, church attendance and membership are decreasing (for all the reasons I have written before), while giving by those members is on the decline. This is not a huge surprise, as giving often mirrors society at large, and 2008-9 was the start of the worst recession since the Great Depression, it would make sense that churches would be impacted by that. Church budgets, in my experience, seem to lag the economy by about two years. They attempt first to make due with what is given, then adjust finally two budget periods after the economic reality.

So, this meant that 2011 church budgets finally felt the full brunt of the recession that started in 2008/2009. Add to this two other factors – pastors did not retire at the same rate. The recession and stock market dip hit them and their retirement plans, so they did not leave as expected. Also, like most advanced degrees, Seminary degrees so something of a bubble in the 2000s (as all jobs were a little harder to come by), so there was an excess of labor supply heading into the market. So, to summarize, there was:

1.     A huge financial hit that caused churches to decrease (or at least dramatically slow the growth) church budgets. Jobs were cut, new jobs weren’t created, and jobs of pastors that left were not filled.

2.     Pastors that would normally retire (or move into another field) did not do so. This left countless jobs occupied that might have been open in normal times with a normal stock market.

3.     There was a excess of Seminary grads across the country relative to previous eras.

Doesn’t take much of an understanding of economics to see the problem here. Add to that the fact that, as the article mentions:

Meanwhile, seminary students are taking on ballooning debt for a career that may not exist by the time they graduate. This trend began before the Great Recession, and has only worsened since then.

And this is the recipe for a huge problem, one that I personally am in the midst of. This is why I get to be a stay at home dad, write this blog, and figure out a way to pay off Seminary debt that didn’t lead to a job that I had hoped for.

This is also leading to the crisis that I talked about before with the Seminary. The old model is now dead, no longer can students attend, take on way too much debt, and expect there to be a job on the other side. There needs to be a new model for the Seminary and for the church in general.

I strongly believe that there is still a need for Seminary educated members within congregations and within the church as a whole. But how are we going to pay for them? And what are the jobs that they will have when they are done? And how is this going to impact the church and the mission field? How is this all going to work together?

The era of the professional Christian might be nearer an end, but what will this mean for the church? While addressing all the problems that I have been talking about before, is it possible that we, as a church, might be missing one of the most fundamental issues that are right in front of our faces? Surely there will be several churches that will survive (and even thrive), but there will be many, many that do not. What is the kingdom impact of that?

I wonder if we are seeing the earliest stages of the church going full circle and returning back to the models of the first churches. Leaders that are not professional clergy, meeting in places that are not permanent buildings, and engaging in ways that are contrary to the establishment. The church always struck me as being strongest when it was an insurgent church instead of an established church. Maybe the models that we humans created and that are slowly being chipped away at, are once again leading us back there.