Pasadena Parish "Won't be Bullied…"
10/11/05 | Permalink
Pasadena Parish "Won't be Bullied..." Thursday Nov. 10: The Rev. Dr. George Regas, in a letter to the L.A. Times editorial section on Wednesday, Nov. 9, said an IRS audit "will not diminish the prophetic ministry of All Saints Church," or prevent other churches from speaking out against the war in Iraq.
Regas was responding to news reports earlier this week that All Saints, where he served as rector from 1967 to 1995, might be audited because an antiwar sermon he preached Oct. 31, 2004, the day before the presidential election, "might have constituted an impermissible intervention into a political campaign under the Internal Revenue Code.
"I took great care to say that I did not want to tell people how to vote, but that I was challenging them to go into the voting booth on Tuesday taking with them all that they knew about Jesus, the peacemaker. To take all that Jesus meant to them and then vote their deepest values," Regas said in the letter to the Times editorial section.
"No one from the IRS attended my sermon, to my knowledge. The agency apparently saw an article about it in The Times the following day. The Times described it as "an indictment of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq" and noted that I had criticized the drive to develop more nuclear weapons and described tax cuts that benefited the rich as "inimical to the values of Jesus." Based on that, the IRS made a subjective determination that the sermon implicitly opposed one candidate and endorsed another," Regas said.
The Rev. J. Edwin Bacon, All Saints' current rector, in a press release issued earlier this week, denied any wrongdoing by the parish.
"We've broken no rules," Bacon said. "The IRS's concerns are unsupported by the facts. They also infringe on religious freedom and freedom of speech, and threaten core values which the congregations holds dear. The sermon explicitly ended with "when you go into the voting booth on Tuesday, take with you all that you know about Jesus, the peacemaker. Take all that Jesus means to you. Then vote your deepest values."
--The Episcopal News Service contributed to this report. For the full text of the All Saints, Pasadena press release, visit www.episcopalchurch.org/ens
Regas was responding to news reports earlier this week that All Saints, where he served as rector from 1967 to 1995, might be audited because an antiwar sermon he preached Oct. 31, 2004, the day before the presidential election, "might have constituted an impermissible intervention into a political campaign under the Internal Revenue Code.
"I took great care to say that I did not want to tell people how to vote, but that I was challenging them to go into the voting booth on Tuesday taking with them all that they knew about Jesus, the peacemaker. To take all that Jesus meant to them and then vote their deepest values," Regas said in the letter to the Times editorial section.
"No one from the IRS attended my sermon, to my knowledge. The agency apparently saw an article about it in The Times the following day. The Times described it as "an indictment of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq" and noted that I had criticized the drive to develop more nuclear weapons and described tax cuts that benefited the rich as "inimical to the values of Jesus." Based on that, the IRS made a subjective determination that the sermon implicitly opposed one candidate and endorsed another," Regas said.
The Rev. J. Edwin Bacon, All Saints' current rector, in a press release issued earlier this week, denied any wrongdoing by the parish.
"We've broken no rules," Bacon said. "The IRS's concerns are unsupported by the facts. They also infringe on religious freedom and freedom of speech, and threaten core values which the congregations holds dear. The sermon explicitly ended with "when you go into the voting booth on Tuesday, take with you all that you know about Jesus, the peacemaker. Take all that Jesus means to you. Then vote your deepest values."
--The Episcopal News Service contributed to this report. For the full text of the All Saints, Pasadena press release, visit www.episcopalchurch.org/ens