Crossposted at The Beatitudes Blog.

“IRS DROPS THE CASE” proclaims the homepage of All Saints Church, announcing that the Pasadena, California church is free of an IRS investigation into a 2004 election-eve sermon – but not exactly cleared of wrongdoing. In short, the IRS has said that the church’s tax-exempt status is no longer endangered, but that sermon was still an illegal intervention in the 2004 election.*

All Saints, continuing its courageous stand for freedom of the pulpit, is not content to let bygones be bygones. The church is demanding that the Treasury Department investigate several legal and procedural errors that might indicate intervention—politically-motivated intervention (imagine that!) – by the Department of Justice.

In a press release posted on the church’s website the Church’s rector, the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon, Jr. said:

“While we are pleased that the IRS examination is finally over, the IRS has failed to explain its conclusion regarding the single sermon at issue. Synagogues, mosques, and churches across America have no more guidance about the IRS rules now than when we started this process over two long years ago. The impact of this letter leaves a chilling effect cast over the freedom of America’s pulpits to preach core moral values.”

It’s that chilling effect that worries me and should be worrying us all. Just last week, I used the word “Democrats” in a blog, and a colleague advised that I take it out, lest my words be construed as intervention into the 2008 elections.

We are looking over our shoulders because of the All Saints case. We are unclear about what constitutes illegal politicking, and it’s my experience that most folks in the pews (or the pulpits) think that any mention of politics in church constitutes “a violation of church and state.”

Whether or not the IRS gets clear in its explanation of the All Saints investigation, and the difference between issue advocacy and partisan electioneering, we who speak for justice and peace need to be loud and clear: it’s OK, and more than that, morally imperative, for Christian preachers to speak out for peace, and against war, to speak up for justice, and against the powers of domination. If we need to find the right (and yes, legal) words to back us up, all we need do is quote Mary and her radical Magnificat, or Jesus and his revolutionary Beatitudes, and let those who have ears hear.

The IRS might want to keep the waters murky enough to chill us to the bone, but we need to be crystal clear about our responsibility to the truth and our right to proclaim it.

As one of our colleagues (Maher Hathout of the Islamic Center of Southern California) said, in a quote picked up by today’s Los Angeles Times: “We need to work together to prevent intimidation.”

*If you don’t remember this whole saga, this sorry business started with a letter from the IRS that arrived at the church in June 2005, stating that the church’s tax-exempt status was in jeopardy because of a guest sermon preached shortly before election day 2004 by retired All Saints Rector George F. Regas. (BTW, as an “alum” of All Saints I am proud to say that Dr. Regas is one of my heroes and one of our nation’s greatest social justice preachers! In that sermon, Dr Regas imagined Jesus in a debate with both Bush and Kerry. He of course did not endorse either candidate, saying that “good people of profound faith will be for either George Bush or John Kerry for reasons deeply rooted in their faith.” But he criticized the war in Iraq. The IRS declared that this sermon was political intervention into the election.