Political and Legislative Guidelines for Churches and Pastors
March 26, 2004
As reported by:
Family News
by Staff
Influencing Legislation
According to the Internal Revenue Code, pastors and churches may engage in activities designed to influence legislation, as long as the total sum of these activities do not reflect a "substantial part" of their church's overall activity in a given year.
While the IRS has not defined "substantial," court cases have applied percentage tests. Past rulings have held that expenditures of less than five percent of a 501(c)(3) organization's time and finances devoted toward activities intended to influence legislation were not "substantial," and, therefore, were permissible. Most churches are 501(c)(3) organizations.
Comments by John Rhinehart
Do you know that in the United States Churches did not start incorporating until 50 years ago? Pastors have been tricked into believing that they can not function without the legal blessing of the state. Our first-century brothers and sisters knew that there was a cost to the Church if they got license from Caesar. This is the reason why they never did. Did you know the Term Corporation started in Roman Civil Law, 250 years before the birth of Jesus? In the Roman society, corporations were legal entities used to maintain subservience and government conformance. The Corporation is in fact a child of the state. This then makes the state the lord of the corporation. So if the corporation is the states, this makes any church that is a Corporation a STATE CHURCH subject to the law of it’s lord, the state. The IRS exemption says that as a corporation you can only do as the state says.
There is no difference between this century’s corporation and those in Jesus’ time. Ask yourself this, “Would Jesus incorporate his ministry?” To be a corporate church {State church} would make Caesar lord over Jesus. The Church is an ‘organism’ not a ‘corporation.”
The IRS is dictating to the church, what we can and can not do. Read the fine print. According to the Supreme Court, tax exemption is a government subsidy (see the Bob Jones University case). Is it not clear that as long as we stay a state church we lose? In Russia under communist rule did not the state tell the church what they could and could not say? Where is freedom of speech? We sold it out for tax exemption! What a deal we got!
Here is a FYI: Did you know that in January 2001 IRS agent Melvin Blough testified in federal court “once a church obtains the status of 501c 3 under the IRS they are trapped. He further testified that, a church is automatically exempt under federal law without a 501c 3 designation. He also stated that, churches only request the status just to get the governments stamp of approval via exception.
This can also be seen on IRS Form 1023 in which it clearly states that ‘churches’ are already ‘tax exempt’ before they even apply for the so-called ‘tax exemption’ status by the IRS.
The truth is there. But do we want to see the truth? Apparently the majority of the churches don’t want to know or see the truth---‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.” As Jesus said, “Let the blind lead the blind.”
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