Isn't It Interesting?

All of the congregations of the United Church of Christ were notified yesterday that the Internal Revenue Service has launched an investigation to determine if Barak Obama's address of United Church of Christ General Synod last July in Hartford, Connecticut, put the denomination's tax exempt status at risk. Something about this 'investigation' seems horribly, horribly wrong.

The United Church of Christ made it abundantly clear at the time of the General Synod that Obama's presence was as a member of the United Church of Christ addressing being a person of faith in a very public forum. Obama, by any and every standard, did an outstanding job of being a member of the United Church of Christ speaking to his own faith family. Period. Anyone is welcome to go to http://www.ucc.org/ and check out both the speech and the setting in which it was delivered. It was not a campaign speech, nor was it about influencing political directions. It was about being a person of faith in a very public, very intensely political, forum. All of the 't's were crossed and all the 'i's were dotted, legally, before the event ever got out of the planning stages. That said, oddly enough, now that Obama is emerging as the Democratic front-runner, the tax-exempt status of the United Church of Christ is coming into question. One might imagine that such an investigation is tacit confirmation of, both, his political status and the the UCC's perceived role in the faith he proclaims.

Maybe it is just the timing, maybe it is the manner in which such an investigation is launched, but it surely appears to this political lay-person that the Internal Revenue Service is acting, or being used, in a less than appropriate manner to question both the candidate and the denomination from which he hails. One has to wonder.

One also has to wonder why all of the candidates 'worshipping' in the various individual churches, with all of the back-slapping and obvious pandering for support, does not bring nearly every denomination, not to mention lots of local congregations, into similar question . . . or is that somehow different. Regardless of the impetus for this action, it smacks of election year politics, and it is a game of hardball that will cost a lot of people a lot of money with which to defend, what was from the very beginning, a homecoming for Obama with his own denominational family. If such appearances and speeches are no longer acceptable, all candidates best take heed.

The State is speaking - and if Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or anyone else thinks this is acceptable speech - or is cowered by the I.R.S. because of the weight they are capable of swinging about with such ease, then the United States has far deeper issues to address than a soft housing market. Yet, the good news is this: such was the very face of opposition that Jesus faced in His time and His is the example the Christian community follows.

One has to wonder whose agenda is being served in this action . . . but, as my Dad has often said when you are wondering what prompts people to behave the way they do, remember, "It all depends on whose ox has been gored." See where the blood is on the ground and you will likely see the source of the concern and fight. Isn't it interesting?

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Don