A Conservative View: President Reagan's Political Director Takes Aim At UCC

AmSpecBlog writes:

As reported here in TAS last September, a complaint was filed with the IRS over an appearance by Senator Barack Obama at the United Church of Christ's bi-annual General Synod last June. Today comes the news from the UCC that the denomination has been formally notified by the IRS this week that it is now under investigation for allowing Obama-as-candidate to speak. The investigation poses a direct threat to the denomination's tax-free status. This is a separate issue entirely from the cloud of controversy surrounding Obama's individual church, Trinity UCC in Chicago, and Trinity's minister the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. This issue involves a decision by the denomination leadership under the Rev. John Thomas to go ahead with the invitation to Obama, a UCC member, which was extended before he announced his candidacy. This even after Obama was very much a declared candidate.

The obvious answer that would have avoided IRS scrutiny was to either disinvite Obama or extend the same opportunity to his fellow presidential candidates. The church refused to do either, quickly setting itself up for a complaint. Contrary to the claims of his campaign this morning that Obama's UCC speech was about his "personal spiritual journey," the speech was replete with suggestions of what Obama would do as president, a direct violation of IRS guidelines. Portions of redacted documents and photographs filed with the IRS and obtained by UCC Truths, a growing online gathering place for dissenters to the UCC's rigidly left-wing orthodoxy, charge a multiple series of violations of IRS guidelines.

What is also notable here is that these allegations were dismissed out of hand by the Rev. Barry Lynn when the complaint was filed. Lynn is the head of the famously insistent Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Lynn has made a career of going after alleged violations by conservative churches. "Complaints to the IRS are not lodged on a whim," said Lynn contemptuously at the time the complaint against the UCC was filed. Wonder of wonders, Lynn is a UCC minister. Once it was his own denomination having its ox gored, Lynn took an entirely different approach. You just can't make this stuff up.

Once again UCCtruths turns up as a front for conservative groups trying to undermine the ministries of the United Church of Christ. And Jeffery Lord, author of this post? The man who attacks the motives of Rev. Lynn? He was Ronald Reagan's political director at the White House. These are the people pushing an investigation of the UCC. They seek to silence the prophetic voice of churches that disagree with conservative voices on issues of war and peace, poverty and economic justice, and calls for human action to save the world from the effects of human-made global warming. Don't let them win.