According to the AP, the IRS has ordered All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA to turn over their financial records.
The inquiry supposedly came about after a guest pastor preached a 2004 sermon entitled If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush, which apparently condemned "the Iraq war and Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive warfare."
According to tax law, the IRS can only get involved in the affairs of a non-profit entity (like a charity or a church) if it has reason to believe that the entity is using a significant amount of its income to support openly partisan political causes.
There must be a lot more going on at All Saints Episcopal than one controversial guest sermon, or else the IRS wouldn't be interested.
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Related: Via a link a Stones Cry Out, here is a story about Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr., who apparently filmed his latest campaign commercial in a church.
ADDED 10-1-06: Mark D. Roberts has an excellent series on church and state, using the All Saints episode as a starting point for discussing how Christians should speak "truth to power."
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