Southern Baptists drop support of church electioneering bill.U.S. Rep. Walter Jones's effort to allow churches to endorse candidates while keeping their tax exemption tax exemption, immunity from the requirement of paying taxes. Federal, state, and usually local law provide exemption from taxation for a wide variety of organizations, usually not-for-profit, such as churches, colleges, universities, health care providers, various has suffered a setback with the withdrawal of support from an influential backer. Richard Land Richard D. Land (born 1947) is the president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the public policy entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, a post he has held since 1988. , head of the Southern Baptist Noun 1. Southern Baptist - a member of the Southern Baptist Convention Southern Baptist Convention - an association of Southern Baptists Baptist - follower of Baptistic doctrines Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, announced in late April that the denominational agency could no longer support the latest version of Jones's bill. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. an article from Baptist Press News, the revised measure increases "the likelihood of government intervention in churches and other religious bodies." Jones, a North Carolina North Carolina, state in the SE United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), South Carolina and Georgia (S), Tennessee (W), and Virginia (N). Facts and Figures Area, 52,586 sq mi (136,198 sq km). Pop. Republican, has pushed a bill in several sessions of Congress that would do away with the federal tax law's ban on church electioneering. Pursuant to the Internal Revenue Service Code, both secular and religious nonprofits are prohibited from endorsing candidates for public office or using their resources to intervene in a political campaign. (Nonprofits are permitted to engage in issue advocacy.) In 2002, the Jones proposal failed to pass on the floor of the House of Representatives. Since then his bill has never escaped committee. The newest version, H.R. 235, would allow church leaders to "express personal views on political matters or elections during religious services without violating campaign finance laws, as long as such views are not disseminated beyond the members and guests" at the services. Religious Right lobbyists, including the SBC's Land, have consistently called for the tax code to be stripped of its ban on political endorsements. The new Jones bill, as the SBC (1) (SBC Communications Inc., San Antonio, TX, www.sbc.com) A large, national telecommunications company that grew from a multitude of local and regional companies, including Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell, into a single, unified brand by 2002. sees it, not only fails to do that, but calls for greater government oversight of church activity. Land, in a statement reported in the BP News article, called the new bill a "grotesquely bad idea." "Under the new bill," Land argues, "the government would permit churches to endorse a candidate but then would allow government investigators to come in and determine when the church has exceeded the government's narrow parameters of permission. It gives the government foxes a hunting license to enter the churches' hen houses, and we all know what happens when foxes get into hen houses--hens get killed, and foxes get fat." H.R. 235 is pending in the House Committee on Ways and Means WAYS AND MEANS. In legislative assemblies there is usually appointed a committee whose duties are to inquire into, and propose to the house, the ways and means to be adopted to raise funds for the use of the government. This body is called the committee of ways and means. . |
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