Chuck Grassley, a Republican Senator from Iowa, has been making waves in the conservative Christian community for investigating the actions of popular and wealthy Pentecostal preachers. Grassley wants to see their financial records to learn whether their ministries really are religious or if they are scams for personal gain. Grassley isn't just singling out Pentecostals — he's investigated other non-profits during his time on the Senate Finance Committee — but the Pentecostal leaders are fighting mad.

Kenneth Copeland, for example, has called for a "holy war" against Grassley. I think that he and others are shocked that a Republican would actually expect them to adhere to legal and moral standards of financial accountability, but I also suspect that they really don't want their financial records exposed to the light of day. Most interesting, though, is that they are trying to defend themselves on the basis of church/state separation.

In a Jan. 22 closed-circuit broadcast of his 2008 Ministers’ Conference obtained by Roll Call, Copeland pledges a holy war against “Brother Grassley” and the Senate for attempting to get a look at the controversial ministry’s finances. Grassley wrote a Nov. 6 letter to Copeland and five other prominent ministers requesting a variety of financial information. “You render unto the government what belongs to the government. And you render unto God what belongs to God,” Copeland loudly intones to approving murmurs from the crowd of 1,000 ministers and their guests.

After a searing attack on Grassley’s tactics — which Copeland says were designed to sully his image and pressure him via the media — Copeland says he will never provide information on his donors, even if he is ordered to do so by subpoena. “You can go get a subpoena, and I won’t give it to you!” Copeland storms. “It’s not yours, it’s God’s and you’re not going to get it and that’s something I’ll go to prison over. So, just get over it!” he tells Grassley, jamming his finger into the air. “And if there’s a death penalty that applies, well just go for it!”

Source: Roll Call, via Carpetbagger

The death penalty? That's just a wee bit over the top, don't you think? As a general rule, I don't want to see the government going over church financial records, but I also think that this is a reasonable response when the government has good reason to suspect wrongdoing. This is a dangerous power to have, but I see no evidence that it is being or has been abused.

In addition to not using non-profit donations for personal gain, churches also aren't supposed to use their non-profit status to support political candidates — but Copeland is skating on thin ice on that issue as well. According to the Trinity Foundation, Copeland raised a lot of money for Mike Huckabee recently:

Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee reached out to a questionable funding source this week. Texas televangelist Kenneth Copeland, one of the targets of a Senate Finance Committee investigation into the funding and governance of "prosperity gospel" ministries.

At Copeland's annual by-invitation-only Minister's Conference at his Newark, Texas, headquarters Jan. 23, Copeland received a call during the meeting from Huckabee requesting emergency financing. According Doug Wead, former Bush family evangelical adviser, Copeland and his supporters at the conference raised $111,000 in cash for Huckabee, with about a million dollars in pledged donations, after he temporarily adjourned the conference and then reconvened the group as a "private meeting."

Wead relayed a report in his blog from a source at the meeting that "Last night [Jan. 23] the Governor called his friend in the middle of a conference and Copeland, carefully observing all the laws governing non profits, as a private citizen, re-convened a private meeting, turned to his friends and raised a few million dollars for Huckabee." ...According to video clips of the conference obtained by Trinity Foundation, an investigative watchdog group in Dallas, Copeland revealed that Huckabee had pledged his total support to Copeland's ministry while dismissing the Senate investigation.

Source: Daily Kos

I think that ending the conference and then starting a "private meeting" was an attempt to fulfill the letter of the law when it comes to tax exempt religious organizations — but if fulfilling the letter of the law sufficient? Doesn't that sound like something which a conservative Christian would accuse a Pharisee of doing: upholding the letter of the law and denying the spirit?

It also sounds to me like Mike Huckabee is trying to strike back room deals with religious leaders in order to gain access to their money. The influence of these people over a sitting president (or vice-president) would be worse than the influence of corporate lobbyists, as far as I'm concerned.

Churches don't have to get tax exempt status, remember, and it's not a constitutional right. Being tax exempt is basically making a financial deal with the government: you won't tax us and we won't use our money for things like personal profit or political campaigns. If any churches don’t like this deal, then they can pay their fair share of taxes and thereby help out the entire community, not just a small congregation. Wouldn't that be a nice change?