Buckeye backlash: Ohio clergy ask IRS to derail religious right's church-based political machine.

The more he heard and read about the involvement of two central Ohio pastors in the state's 2006 political campaigns, the more the Rev. Eric Williams, pastor of a Columbus church, became concerned over meddling by influential religious leaders in politics.

Since early last year, national and statewide media have noted the efforts of evangelical pastors Russell Johnson and Rod Parsley to rally like-minded religious leaders throughout the state to elect as governor Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, an avid supporter of the Religious Right agenda.

"All of the public activities of both groups have highlighted one candidate," Williams told Church & State. "There is a clear pattern of electioneering activities that are greatly compelling and raising our concerns that these churches are not behaving as churches."

Ohio and national media have reported that Johnson and Parsley are staunchly behind Blackwell, a vehement supporter of a successful 2004 ballot initiative to amend Ohio's Constitution to ban gay marriage and a long-time supporter of laws restricting reproductive rights. (See "Armageddon in Ohio," Church & State, June 2005.)

Williams' concern regarding the pastors' activities on behalf of Blackwell spurred his involvement in the filing of a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service.

In a 14-page complaint to the IRS, Williams and 30 other religious leaders accused Johnson and Parsley of inappropriately intervening in the gubernatorial campaign on behalf of Blackwell and said their actions should prompt an investigation into whether their churches' tax-exempt statuses should be revoked.

"Over the past two years," the Jan. 15 complaint states, "the foregoing entities (collectively, the 'Churches') have sponsored, hosted and funded a variety of activities that appear to be designed to promote one particular political party and one specific candidate for statewide office.

"The activity [of Johnson and Parsley] rises to the level of three types of tax law violations," the complaint continues "(i) endorsing a gubernatorial candidate at Church events, (ii) conducting voter registration drives designed to promote one party and a specific candidate; and (iii) coordinating and funding the distribution of biased voter education guides."

The group, led by Williams of the North Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus, includes rabbis and Christian leaders of an array of denominations including, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal and Lutheran.

Their complaint to the IRS details the actions of Johnson and Parsley through their respective churches and affiliated entities. The complaint notes that time and again the pastors have promoted Blackwell's campaign for governor. Blackwell is facing State Attorney General Jim Petro, and according to the complaint, Petro has never been included in events sponsored by Johnson and Parsley.

Johnson and Parsley are also using their houses of worship and affiliated groups to conduct voter registration campaigns and distribute "biased voter 'education' materials to solidity support for Blackwell," states the religious leaders' IRS complaint.

In a Jan. 22 editorial by the Akron Beacon Journal, titled "Their one and only," Johnson and Parsley are blasted for using their churches and affiliates that "feature one candidate in the race for Ohio governor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, the secretary of state."

The editorial also criticized Blackwell for being "too willing to ride the religious wave to the governor's office."

Williams, in an interview with Church & State, said that he had become particularly concerned about the political rhetoric employed by Johnson and Parsley during the 2004 general elections. Those concerns, he said, have heightened with the pastors' efforts in the new campaign season.

Williams added that he appreciates the role houses of worship can play in public policy debates especially around issues.

But he said the actions of Johnson and Parsley are turning their houses of worship into political operations.

"We want to compel churches to be churches," he said. "I believe the melding of government and religion is taking place here, which hurts our country's system of the separation of church and state. I think the church and state have been served well by that system."

Rabbi Harold J. Berman told The New York Times that he signed on to the IRS complaint because "government is clearly impaired when churches get too actively involved in government, and I think religion gets impaired when government acts in religious affairs."

The IRS prohibits houses of worship and other 501(c)(3) organizations from using their resources to advance or oppose a candidate's bid for public office. Churches and other non-profit groups, however, are allowed to engage in issue advocacy. Such status provides houses of worship and other non-profits exemption from income taxation and donations to those entities are tax deductible. Political organizations, however, do not receive such tax breaks. The IRS can revoke non-profits' tax-exempt status or levy fines against them if they are found to have engaged improperly in campaigns for public office.

The efforts of Johnson and Parsley have received support from Religious Right leaders, such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and TV preachers Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Not long after the Ohio clergy's complaint to the IRS became public, Robertson's son, Gordon, the co-host of the "700 Club," derided the action by the Ohio clergy and repeated a Religious Right canard that the First Amendment does not provide for a separation of church and state.

On the Feb. 3 "700 Club" broadcast, Gordon P. Robertson ended a segment on the Ohio situation with a tirade of sorts on the First Amendment principle of church-state separation.

"It's incredible the brainwashing that's happened in America today," Robertson said. "Where a pastor can literally stand in front of a camera and say that any political action, whether it's against abortion or for traditional marriage, is somehow unconstitutional because the church has now violated the separation between church and state.

"It's absolutely incredible," he continued. "That is brainwashing. There's nothing in the Constitution, there's no phrase that talks about the separation of church and state."

Like his father, Gordon Robertson was long on rhetoric and short on facts. The Ohio clergy's complaint to the IRS did not claim that Johnson or Parsley had violated the First Amendment. The complaint charged that the pastors had endangered their organizations' privileged tax status. The complaint also did not accuse the churches of speaking out on issues but for pushing a candidate.

The rift in Ohio over religion and politics is the latest among several similar controversies that have caught media attention in other parts of the country.

In Pasadena, Calif., and Miami, churches have also been questioned over their involvement in political campaigns.

Late last fall, the IRS announced an investigation into a speech given by the former pastor of Pasadena's All Saints Episcopal Church only a couple days before the 2004 presidential election. The church's former rector, the Rev. George Regas, gave a homily called "If Jesus Debated Sen. Kerry and President Bush," in which Bush was lambasted on a number of fronts. Coming only days before the election, the sermon could be seen as an endorsement of Kerry's campaign.

Contacted by reporters, Americans United noted that clergy of all political persuasions must understand and abide by federal tax law.

"Non-profit status is a privilege, not a right," said the Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "Turning our nation's churches into cogs in a political machine violates the integrity of religion and undercuts the fairness of the democratic process."

In Miami, an attorney for Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, told reporters that the IRS has indicated that it will not punish the church for an event it conducted in October 2004 that appeared to be a pro-Kerry rally. Since federal law prohibits the IRS from commenting on an investigation or its outcome, however, it is impossible to verify the attorney's claim.

It might also be difficult to discover whether the IRS investigates and takes action on the complaint filed by the mainstream religious leaders in Ohio against pastors Johnson and Parsley. Both pastors, however, have defended their actions in light of the complaint and have shown no signs of altering their projects.

Johnson's Ohio Restoration Project (ORP), which was originally announced last summer via a letter posted on his Fairfield Christian Church's Web site, has been conducting sessions statewide before friendly congregations to train them how to register voters and spread the message of a nation in dire need of godly politicians. The ORP now has its own Web site, which details its aspirations for the 2006 statewide elections, including goading churches into providing forums for socially conservative candidates like Blackwell, advertising and distributing voter guides.

"Our nation was founded on godly principles," Johnson told a gathering of 500 clergy at a late summer ORP-sponsored conference in Kings Mill, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. "The warfare in our culture has been over the future of America's spiritual health. We must not sit on the sidelines. We must act."

Parsley is founder of an expansive evangelical ministry just outside Columbus, which includes a 12,000-member church, the World Harvest Church, whose Sunday services are broadcast worldwide, a religious elementary school and a Bible college.

The pastor has also created a Religious Right lobbying group, the Center for Moral Clarity (CMC), and late last year a group called Reformation Ohio with similar goals as Johnson's group, including the registering of 400,000 voters. The New York Times reported in January that Parsely incorporated Reformation Ohio as a church. Parsley has also appeared at and is supportive of Johnson's ORP.

At an Oct. 14 kick-off of Reformation Ohio at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Parsley was joined by two of Congress's most influential voices for the Religious Right, Sen. Sam Brown-back (R-Kan.) and Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), as well as Blackwell.

Before a gathering of about 1,000, Parsley, who The Plain Dealer, a Cleveland daily, has described as the "master of the military metaphor," sounded a message of urgency.

"This vision of our country's founding generation and the inspiration of our great reformers of the past are colliding with unprecedented moral decay and cultural decline." thundered Parsley. "Today we come to declare a new movement that is an answer to the crisis of our times."

The Akron Beacon Journal described Reformation Ohio, whose Web site contains brief, general details of the group's agenda and pictures from the Oct. 14 launch, as a "$30 million campaign to sign up souls for Christ and the voting booth."

The Reformation Ohio Web site proclaims that it is a "groundbreaking initiative determined to bring the Buckeye State what it needs most--the love of Jesus Christ."

According to the site, Reformation Ohio will seek to convert "at least 100,000" Ohioans by distributing more that a million Bibles to them, to help the poor "through acts of kindness and generosity" and to "increase the state's voter registration rolls by at least 400,000 persons."

Both Johnson and Parsley have also provided their respective churches for places promoting their restoration and reformation projects.

The opposition religious leaders' complaint to the IRS notes that Blackwell has been involved in or featured at seven events conducted at the evangelical pastors' churches or sponsored by their affiliated projects and that Blackwell is scheduled to appear at the groups' future events.

For example, Johnson's ORP sponsored luncheons in two cities last fall before large audiences of pastors where Blackwell was the featured speaker. And earlier this year Blackwell was the featured speaker at another ORP luncheon, which according to The Columbus Dispatch, was attended by 450 pastors.

In the spring, the ORP is planning on "Ohio for Jesus" advertising, which is to include 30-second radio spots highlighting Blackwell. Additionally Johnson's group is now raising money for an ORP rally to be held at a 20,000-seat stadium in Columbus, where national Religious Right leaders, such as Dobson and the Rev. Franklin Graham, are scheduled to speak. Blackwell is also to appear at the event.

Parsley's World Harvest Church has hosted prominent socially conservative firebrands, such as polemicist Ann Coulter and former senator Zell Miller, to extol Blackwell's candidacy. In the Ohio religious leaders' complaint to the IRS, they note that Blackwell attended an August service at World Harvest Church, where Miller, from the pulpit, proclaimed that Blackwell, seated in a front-row pew, was "the kind of leader this state--any state--needs."

Johnson, Parsley and Blackwell all reacted defensively and angrily to the publicity surrounding the IRS complaint.

Parsley, who according to The Columbus Dispatch and The Plain Dealer has contributed money to Blackwell's campaign, blasted the 31 pastors who signed the complaint and initially were anonymous as a "consortium of liberal clergy."

At a Jan. 20 World Harvest Church press briefing, Parsley dubbed the pastors the "anonymous 31" and said they were trying to muzzle his groups' work by "media manipulation and intimidation, and we simply will not be silenced by those tactics of fear."

Parsley, who has also attracted national media attention and has been described as an emerging televangelist in the mold of the TV preachers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, told the Associated Press that, "I am neither Republican nor Democrat-I'm a Christocrat."

Johnson at his ORP's Jan. 17 pastors' luncheon also maintained that the complaint would not intimidate his group, saying the complaining pastors were waging a "secular jihad against expression of faith." At that same event, Blackwell also sounded a defiant and rather shrill tone.

"You tell those 31 bullies," Blackwell blustered to the Religious Right audience, "that you aren't about to be whupped." The Columbus Dispatch reported Blackwell added that "political and social forces are trying to run God out of the public square."

Pro-separation pastor Williams told Church & State that the rhetoric emanating from Johnson, Parsley and Blackwell was "colorful and divisive" and primarily used to divert attention from the complaint to the IRS.

"I worry," Williams said, "that when they blend church and state, my religious liberties will be at risk.

"I mean, what is a Christocrat in a land of democracy?" Williams said referring to Parsley's description of himself. "Ultimately these groups want the entire state to subscribe to their religion."

At a Jan. 25 press conference at his church, Williams released the names of the pastors who signed the letter asking the IRS to investigate the actions of Johnson and Parsley. He also said that the group of concerned pastors had grown to 33.

Williams was joined at the press gathering by more than 20 of the pastors who signed the complaint. Several of them explained that they signed the letter as individuals, not as representatives of their denominations or congregations.

The Rev. Kim Keethler Ball, pastor of an American Baptist church, told the press that she, like Williams, was concerned that Johnson and Parsley were doing great damage to the principle of church-state separation.

"As American Baptists, one of our core values, like the other traditions here, is that we value separation of church and state," Ball said.

She added that when she told her congregation about her involvement in the complaint she received "a round of spontaneous applause."

Although he has received some negative e-mails, Williams told Church & State that by more than two-to-one the responses he has received have been supportive.

"I can say that the vast majority have been extremely positive," Williams said. "We have received positive feedback in our religious communities, from our colleagues and from the general public."