Jerry rigged!

Can churches evade the Internal Revenue Service ban on partisan politicking and give backdoor endorsements to candidates for public office?

Jerry Falwell thinks he's come up with just the scheme to do so. And he's already put it into action.

Writing in his June 13 Falwell Fax, a confidential newsletter for fundamentalist clergy and other friends of Falwell, the Lynchburg, Va., preacher excitedly boasted about a recent political victory in Virginia.

According to Falwell, he and his allies executed a plan that helped Religious Right favorite Mark Earley nail down the Republican nomination for attorney general in the GOP primary.

The Rev. George Sweet, a Virginia Beach pastor and graduate of Falwell's Liberty University, sent a letter of support to 2,000 fundamentalist clergy around the state. Noting that Earley is a personal friend and a Sunday school teacher at Sweet's 4,000-member Atlantic Shores Baptist Church, Sweet said the candidate "is best able to represent our values in the public square."

"I am asking you to join me in not only voting for Mark Earley on June 10th, but to also join me in sharing with your congregation how you personally plan to vote," continued Sweet, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress himself as a Republican in 1994. "I have talked to many pastors throughout the State of Virginia who are supporting Mark, including my good friend Dr. Jerry Falwell."

He urged pastors to share their "personal endorsement of Mark Earley" with their flocks on the Sunday before the election. To make the process as easy as possible, Sweet enclosed a sample personal endorsement announcement" that identified Earley as"our true pro-life, pro-family standard-bearer."

Sweet, who serves on Liberty University's board of directors, assured the preachers that IRS rules allow clergy to say who they're voting for as long as they don't "dictate to your congregation how they should vote."

The project was closely coordinated with the Earley campaign. The Sweet letter and sample script noted that both were authorized by Friends of Mark Earley '97, the candidate's campaign committee, and the documents were apparently mailed by the committee.

Nobody knows for sure how many pastors around the state acted on Sweet's suggestion, but Earley won the June 10 primary, drawing 36 percent of the vote. He defeated three other candidates who spent far more on television advertising in the low-turnout event.

Falwell boasted of his triumph. In his Falwell Fax report (headlined "The Power of the Local Church"), he called the Earley win "an incredible thing" and insisted the personal endorsement tactic could be used by clergy across the country.

"I am more convinced than ever," gushed Falwell, "that conservative Christians can accomplish similar victories across our nation by conducting similar campaigns....I am very excited about Mark Earley's campaign to become our state attorney general in November. And I am very excited to see this style of campaign work for other, conservative candidates across America!"

Critics of church-based political machines were less impressed with Falwell's attempt to evade IRS rules. As they saw it, tax-exempt houses of worship were allowing their top employees (the pastors) to use their tax-exempt pulpits to promote a candidate for public office. And all this electioneering was being done in close coordination with the candidate's campaign office.

Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State promptly wrote to the IRS to charge Falwell and Sweet, who both used their own churches' pulpits to endorse Earley, with violations of federal tax law.

In his July 2 letter to theirs,lynn said Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church and Sweet's Atlantic Shores Baptist Church had transgressed IRS law. Wrote Lynn, "Falwell and Sweet attempt to portray their activities as falling within IRS guidelines governing political activity by churches. But I believe their actions clearly violate he prohibitions contained in the IRS Code, which imposes an absolute ban on participation in campaigns for politics office by exempt organizations."

In a press statement, Lynn observed, "If Falwell and his clergy allies want to play hardball politics in Virginia, they ought to form a political action committee. Otherwise, they are jeopardizing their own churches' tax-exempt status and the status of other churches whose pastors may follow their bad advice.

"Churches are supposed to be houses of prayer, not dens of political iniquity," Lynn continued. "Falwell says this tactic is a model that should be used across the country, but in fact, it is a model of bad legal advice and worse judgment."

Americans United in spring of 1996 began Project fair play, a special program designed to educate religious groups about the rules governing political activity and to report scofflaws to the IRS. The Sweet/Falwell turn-in is but the latest example. See "The Nehemiah Project," May 1996 Church & State and "Project Fair Play Update," December 1996 Church & State)

Sweet denied he had broken the law, telling the Virginia Beach Virginian-Pilot, "It was simply an effort to show my support for a good friend, who I believe will make a great attorney general." (Six weeks later, Sweet resigned as pastor of Atlantic Shores citing an undisclosed "tragic mistake" in his past.)

Falwell was incensed by the AU action, charging Lynn with "grandstanding in search of a headline." In a press statement, Falwell said, "Mr. Lynn knows very well that Jerry Falwell did not violate any tax laws in the Sen. Mark Earley campaign or any other campaign."

Writing in his National Liberty Journal newspaper a few days later, Falwell said he would not be intimidated by "liberals and persons with a personal vendetta against evangelical Christians." He called Lynn a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who uses a "'Reverend' title to deceive the American people."

Wrote Falwell, "I have yet to hear of Barry Lynn writing a letter to the IRS protesting Al Gore raising money in a Buddhist Temple for the 1996 Clinton/Gore campaign or Rev. Jesse Jackson raising money in Baptist churches for political campaigns."

Falwell was mistaken on all three counts. Americans United's Lynn is a duly ordained minister of the United Church of christ,as well as a veteran civil liberties attorney.

Furthermore, AU's first report to the IRS about church-based politicking came in 1988 when the group protested Jackson's plan to pass the collection plate in churches for his presidential campaign. Last year, AU also filed a formal complaint with the IRS about the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple fund-raiser for the Clinton-Gore campaign.

If the IRS launches an investigation of Falwell, it won't be the Moral Majority founder's first collision with the federal tax agency. In 1993 the IRS determined that funds from Falwell's Old Time Gospel Hour were illegally funneled to a political action committee. The action cost Falwell 50,000, and the Old Time Gospel Hour's tax-exempt status was pulled retroactively for 1986-87.

Falwell appears to be plunging back into national politics in a dramatic way. The fundamentalist firebrand shut down his Moral Majority in 1989 in the wake of the TV preacher scandals that rocked religious broadcasting.

But Falwell continued to do some politicking through his Liberty Alliance, a tax-exempt lobbying group. Last year, he formed the National Committee for the Restoration of the Judeo-Christian Ethic, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) group that receives tax-deductible contributions, and he is using it as his primary political pulpit.

In an August fund-raising letter for the National Committee, Falwell said he plans to "get back into the ring" and be a "spiritual George Foreman."

Vowed Falwell, "We have only just begun our crusade to reclaim America for Christ and the Judeo-Christian ethic." His announced plans include registering four million new voters, mobilizing 50,000 pastors for political action and doubling his appearances in the media.

Pleading for money, the Baptist preacher appeared desperate to get back into the national limelight. Arguing that "God called me to be a warrior," Falwell added, "I do not want to sound proud or boastful when I say what I am about to say. But, I believe God has given me the unique ability to debate the enemies of Christ and the opponents of Biblical values on their own platforms...and beat them almost every time."

Despite his protestations of modesty, Falwell may have exaggerated his role in the recent Virginia primary. Candidate Earley was supported by a broad cross section of Religious Right groups, and Falwell's preacher endorsement scheme was only one art.

Early's backers included Gary Bauer of the family research council, Walt Barbee of the Family Foundation, Karen Gounaud of Family Friendly Libraries, Joe Guarino of Citizens for Excellence in Education and state leaders with the American Family Association and Concerned Women for America.

TV preacher Pat Robertson contributed $30,000 to Earley's coffers, and more importantly, unleashed his Christian Coalition operation on Early's behalf.

Critics of the Coalition say the group regularly rigs its voter guides to favor Republicans and defame Democrats. In the Virginia race, however, the guide was used for intra-party warfare, touting Earley and bashing Ken Stolle, a Religious Right-oriented state senator who was vying with Earley for the evangelical Christian vote.

The guide depicted Stolle, who was elected to the legislature with Christian Coalition support, as pro-abortion, pro-gambling and against a child care tax credit for homemakers. In one case, a Stolle vote in the senate was characterized as favoring pari-mutuel wagering when the measure was actually a routine charter amendment that had nothing to do with gambling.

Stolle's friends, including Virginia Christian Coalition chapter director David Hummel, protested the hatchet job vigorously, but to no avail. Coalition spokesman Arne Owens insisted the guides were accurate and said 500,000 were prepared for distribution at churches around the state.

After Earley won, some Stolle supporters were bitter. In a letter to the editor published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Virginian-Pilot, Lloyd Dunnavant wrote, "For years I have trusted the Christian Coalition and helped to distribute its voter guides. But never again. I believe the Christian Coalition knowingly distributed a voter guide for this past primary election that distorted Ken Stolle's beliefs and record."

The Suffolk, Va., man continued, "Is it OK for Christian Coalition leadership to stomp on basic Christian values if it helps their candidate win? If the Coalition will smudge the record of a conservative Christian lawmaker like Senator Stolle, what is it doing to the liberals?

"My advice to friends in the Christian Coalition," he concluded, "is to spend less time thumping the Bible and more time reading it. A lie against your enemy is still a lie."

In an interview with Church & State, Dunnavant added, "I will never trust those guides again. It makes me sick to think I may have helped distribute guides in the past that did the same thing."

Reports from the Virginia Republican primary also produced other new evidence confirming that Coalition guides are barely disguised candidate endorsements. The Rev. Bob Lewis of Richmond's Lakeside Baptist Church said a Coalition activist left a voice mail on his answering machine asking to distribute the guides at his congregation.

"She called a week before the guides were to be distributed and asked if I wanted a batch," Lewis told Church & State. "She said something to the effect of, 'This will tell you the candidates we are supporting.'"

When Lewis returned the call, he challenged her comment and said the Federal Election Commission would no doubt be interested in it. The CC activist quickly backtracked and claimed the words were a misstatement on her part.

But Robertson himself admitted the Coalition's electoral bias toward Earley. According to materials handed out at a Washington, D.C., press conference the day after the Virginia primary, Robertson insisted the Christian Coalition's clout "could be seen as recently as yesterday, when a primary for attorney general in Virginia resulted in a record turnout of religious conservative voters and the victory of Mark Earley."

In other Project Fair Play developments:

* Americans United has asked the IRS to investigate an Edmond, Okla., church for partisan politicking. In a July 3 letter to the IRS, Au's Lynn said Metro-Church may have violated federal law by endorsing two candidates for city council in the church bulletin during an April election.

Pastor Jim Hylton praised candidates Gary Moore and Bob Huggins and noted that they agree with the church's drive for a zoning variance. The congregation wants to build a 157-foot cross on land along the interstate despite sign regulations that prohibit such large displays.

The church has established a pattern of political activity. During last fall's campaign, Republican Party representatives handed out Christian Coalition voter guides in the entry way of the church on the Sunday before the election. County Republican Chair Jay Mandraccia and others participated in the endeavor.