I’m shocked, shocked, to find that partisan political activity is going on in the Falwell religious empire.
Today’s Lynchburg News & Advance reports that Joe McCain, Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s brother, will be leading a public rally at Liberty University tomorrow. The candidate’s sibling will also be speaking at the university’s morning convocation, the newspaper said.
Is the appearance a violation of federal tax law? Jerry Falwell Jr., the school’s chancellor says it isn’t, even though he announced the event to students at the university convocation yesterday.
Reports the newspaper, “Falwell said that once plans for the campaign stop were finalized, the college also invited Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to hold an event at the school. That campaign declined, he said.”
Jerry Jr., of course, is on record in support of McCain, and so is his brother Jonathan, who assumed his late father’s mantle as pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Like dear old Dad, both men are deeply partisan and fervently opposed to church-state separation. And both seem willing to play a little fast and loose with the provisions of the IRS Code.
Jonathan told Baptist Press in June that the Religious Right is close to achieving his dad’s dream of control over the Supreme Court. Jonathan told the Southern Baptist Convention’s press service that “we are one vote away from a court that would be a strict constructionist court” that would overturn Roe v Wade and other decisions the Religious Right doesn’t like.
“So, for people — even conservatives — to say that Sen. McCain is not the perfect candidates and therefore we’re just going to stay home, that’s not a wise move and I don’t think Dad would support that move,” Jonathan said. “Dad would say, ‘It’s far better to have somebody who’s 90 percent your friend than to have somebody who’s 100 percent your enemy…. Sen. McCain has said he’s going to put strict constructionist judges on the court, and he went as far as to say like Alito and like Roberts. I can guarantee you that Sen. Obama … is not going to put judges on our court like Alito and like Roberts.”
Jonathan was identified in the article as senior pastor of Thomas Road, and he didn’t say he was speaking as an individual rather than as pastor of a tax-exempt congregation. If he did, Baptist Press didn’t report it.
Last December, Americans United filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service when Jerry Jr. endorsed then GOP hopeful Mike Huckabee in an e-mail under the auspices of his tax-exempt university.
Maybe that made him a little more alert to the nuances of the IRS Code. He told the News & Advance this week that he has publicly stated his personal support for McCain, but reiterated that it is a personal decision and not one that represents the university. He said the campus-wide voter registration drive he is promoting will be strictly non-partisan.
The Falwell family has a long history of skirting tax law provisions. Jerry Sr.’s TV ministry, the Old Time Gospel Hour, lost its tax-exempt status retroactively for the years 1986 and 1987 after a four-year IRS audit determined that the ministry had diverted money to a political action committee. The ministry agreed to pay the IRS $50,000 for those years and to change its organizational structure so that no future political campaign intervention activities would occur.
It would be nice to think the Falwells are finally learning their lesson and gaining some respect for the law. But somehow I doubt it. The situation bears close scrutiny.
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