Politicking from the pulpit

Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

Congress in 1954 searched for ways to prevent federally tax-exempt nonprofit organizations from funneling money and other resources to candidates for public office, so it amended tax law to ban charities from doing so.

Over the years the law has been interpreted by the Internal Revenue Service to also mean that nonprofit groups that receive the tax exemptions cannot endorse political candidates. Individual members of nonprofit groups, including religious organizations, have the right to support whichever candidate they please as long as they do not do so in the name of those organizations.

The New York Times reported last week, though, that 33 ministers nationwide had planned to endorse a presidential candidate from their pulpits today in defiance of the law. The ministers were to have banded together for what has been called Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an effort sponsored by conservative Christian lawyers who belong to the Alliance Defense Fund.

The churches and their supporters should take their fight to Congress if they believe the law ought to be changed. It so happens that organizers of Pulpit Freedom Sunday are treating it as a protest and hope it will prompt a federal court to overturn the law.

But Robert Tuttle, a professor at George Washington University Law School, told the Times it was unlikely a court would overturn the law.

“It’s settled law,” Tuttle said. “People can unsettle law that’s settled, but I think that it is very, very unlikely that a lower federal court would reach any other conclusion except that religious organizations have no constitutional right to engage in political speech while accepting deductible contributions.”

From our perspective the law makes sense because a person who gives money to or otherwise supports a charity has every reason to believe the donations will be used to improve the organization or support its good deeds, not political candidates. If donors want to support a candidate, they should do so directly.