The MBASA has set the date for the first colloquium for Tuesday, March 18 at 7:00pm. Dr. O'Keefe will be the moderator and we invite all MBA students to voice their opinion on this blog on the following article which will be the topic of conversation:
http://www.ucc.org/news/obama-speech-in-2007-prompts-1.html
Monday, March 3, 2008
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2 comments:
I will not be able to attend the meeting tonight because another organization I'm President of is hosting "The People's Law School" at the public library. My comments are below:
This is an interesting situation reminiscent of biblical stories - The King (tax collector) vs the Church.
Obviously it is important for churches to avoid outright political activities. From a public policy perspective there is a strong public minority interest in the separation of church and state. From a tax perspective it is important to regulate political activities of tax free entities. Otherwise every organization would establish itself as a church and we would have the Church of the Republican Saviors, The United Church of Clinton, or the Holy Reformers to hypothesize a few.
If a current church is bordering on crossing that line into political activities it is important for the IRS to "fire a warning shot over the bow." I believe that is the intention here. After all of the litigation, appeals, etc. there will be a precedent established that future churches, tax advisers, and attorneys can reference. Unfortunately, it is expensive for both the government and the church.
I agreed and sympathized with what the Reverend was saying with the exception of this quote:
"Thomas said the IRS's investigation implies that Obama, a UCC member, is not free to speak openly to fellow UCC members about his faith."
Of course he is free to speak openly about his faith. He can go to any person's home, go to a non-church organized assembly of those who may share is faith; he can go wherever he wants to talk about his faith. The reverend himself is playing politics by deflecting attention on the church's political activities, to Obama's first amendment right of free speech. Classic smoke and mirror tactic.
Lastly, I think it is important to note that this investigation probably didn't stem from this one isolated incident; the UCC has been criticized in the past for borderline political activity.
It probably won't be a fun case to watch (none of the tax cases are) but the outcome and the aftermath will certainly be interesting.
I find this topic to be interesting for a couple of reasons. It does appear to be a warning (as suggested by Jordan) to the UCC and others for their involvement in politics. The other point is that recently there has been a lot of talk about the church's pastor (Wright) who retired last month and the political remarks that he has made about race and the US. It will be interesting to see how Obama handles this over time, because it will not be going away anytime soon.
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