Tag Archives: Religion

Footnote 37 – Missionary Work

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FOOTNOTE 37 — Charles Randall Paul, Converting the Saints: A Study of Religious Rivalry in America (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2018), p. 168.

Franklin Spencer Spalding, raised in Denver and educated at Princeton University, became an Episcopal “missionary bishop” in Utah, attempting to convert Mormons to the Episcopal version of Christianity from 1905 until his death in 1914.

“A visiting banker from an Eastern city asked the bishop, ‘What difference does it make what the Mormons believe? What harm does it do if they love Joseph Smith and his teaching? What business is it of ours?’ Spalding replied, ‘Well, I must feel about their acceptance and teaching of what is intellectually and morally untrue, just as I suppose you would feel if you knew a group of people were coining and passing counterfeit money.’”

Michigan and the Parsonage Allowance

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via Michigan and the Parsonage Allowance

Gaylor V. Mnuchin – 7th Circuit Oral Arguments

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Gaylor v. Mnuchin – Oral Arguments

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals sits at Chicago, occupying the 27th Floor of the Everett Dirksen Federal Building in the Federal Plaza downtown. On October 24th, I attended the oral arguments presented before the Court regarding Case # 18-1277, Gaylor v. Mnuchin, about which I wrote a bit last week. It is a reprise of a case brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation which was dismissed in 2013 for lack of “standing” by the plaintiffs. After making some adjustments in their case, FFRF is back again.
Judge Michael Brennan presiding, joined by Senior Judge Daniel Manion, and Senior Judge William J. Bauer (nominated by Presidents Trump, Reagan, and Ford, respectively, and confirmed by the Senate).

I’m not an attorney, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night – so take these “laymen’s” impressions with grains of salt.

FFRF has called this a David vs. Goliath campaign, imagining Goliath as the various religious bodies whose ministers would be effected by the elimination of tax-exempt housing allowances. But the real giant in the room, and the bigger challenge for them, may be that they are suing the US government itself – specifically the Secretary of the Treasury.
Representing the government today was an array of attorneys, led by Jesse Panuccio, Associate Attorney General of the US (the third highest ranking official at the Department of Justice, who oversees virtually all non-criminal matters). He was joined by 4 other attorneys at a table laden with documents and surrounded by document cases and still more attorneys seated near the table.

The chambers were “comfortably full” – each of the rows of spectator benches might have had room for one or two more persons if everyone move to the center.
Also arguing an amicus brief was Luke Goodrich, VP and Senior Counsel of Becket Law – a firm which argues religious liberty cases on behalf of believers in many religious communities, “Christian” and otherwise. They are representing a coalition of Chicago churches (ranging from Holy Cross Anglican Church to the Chicago Embassy Church, to the Chicago Diocese, Russian Orthodox Church), arguing specifically that the elimination of the IRC 107(2) would discriminate against poorer religious groups which cannot afford to provide a parsonage as allowed in Section 107(1).

Seated at the opposite table were two attorneys who argued that the ministerial housing allowance permitted under Internal Revenue Code Section 107(2) is unconstitutional. Speaking first was Adam Chodorow, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University brief filed by a coalition of tax professors. I thought he made the strongest and clearest case possible that IRC 107(2) is should be declared unconstitutional simply by singling out a special class (ministers) to receive a benefit not available to other citizens. Agree with the arguments or not, he made his case clearly and fielded effectively the questions asked him by the Justices.

Richard Bolton, who I believe is a general-practice attorney in Madison, WI where FFRF is located, spoke last, representing Annie Gaylor and Dan Barker, co-presidents of FFRF. My impression is that FFRF was not particularly well served by his presentation, which to my ears sounded rambling, disjointed, repetitive, and unclear. Agree or not, the other attorneys presented their cases clearly and concisely, supported by relevant court decisions and logic. Bolton, who seemed flustered by questions from the justices, also sounded exasperated at times that the simple assertion of the rightness of his case was not accepted as obvious. One man’s opinion. Presumably, such cases are decided on the merits of conflicting claims presented in the briefs, not so much on the eloquence and personality of the presenters.

Many of the issues raised in oral arguments were discussed in my post last week, reporting on a Loyola Law School seminar regarding this case. Some of them included whether the housing allowance passes the 3-prong “Lemon” test (including whether the law has “secular intent” – Judge Manion posed several questions about the secular effect, not merely the secular intent, of the law); whether “Lemon” provisions should take precedence over historical considerations in the legislative history, adjudicating such issues on a practical basis involves government entanglement in the usage of either parsonage or house exempted under the allowance, and much more. “We’ll see.”

A decision is expected sometime in the next two months. The oral arguments became available this afternoon online at the 7th Circuit’s page: media.ca7.uscourts.gov/sound/external/ds.18-12771280.18-1277_10_24_2018.mp3

Loyola University Seminar on Gaylor v. Mnuchin case

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Gaylor v. Mnuchin

I attended a very stimulating seminar Wednesday, October 17th, at the Loyola University School of Law, regarding an upcoming hearing (next Wednesday) in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding a lower-court decision concerning the tax-exempt housing allowances often granted to ministers in lieu of living in a “parsonage.”

The seminar was organized by Samuel D. Brunson, professor at Loyola who has taken an interest in the case, and whose recent book, The IRS and Religion: Accommodating Religious Practice in U.S. Tax Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018) I’m currently reading on my Kindle – it’s an excellent read. He was joined by another Chicago law professor, Anthony M. Kreis of Chicago-Kent College of Law. The questions from lawyers, law-school students, and other law professors was stimulating.

Some of his lecture today came straight out of chapter 5 (“Housing Clergy”) in the book. It concerns a lawsuit, brought originally in 2013 by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Wisconsin, which was decided in their favor by Federal judge Barbara Crabb (a Carter appointee who gained some notoriety a few years ago for another decision upholding gay marriage in Wisconsin), but was then reversed and dismissed on appeal by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals a few years ago. FFRF made some changes regarding their standing to sue as suggested by the 7th Circuit, and again prevailed in Judge Crabb’s court, so here they are again, back at the appellate level. However decided this time, the issue seems likely to rise to the Supreme Court at some point.

The Constitutional issues are complex, and probably will take a boxcar of lawyers to sort out, but here is one layman’s understanding of some of the issues. Basically, the question concerns whether allowing ministers, but not other citizens generally, to exempt a designated portion of their compensation from taxation violates the religion clauses of First Amendment to the US Constitution (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”

Some of the relevant issues which surfaced in the session include:
— The “standing” issue (whether FFRF has suffered damages or otherwise has “standing” to sue the IRS) is probably not significant this time since FFRF seems to have made the changes suggested by the 7th Circuit in the original case. Whether these would be recognized by SCOTUS if the case rises to that level is another question.

–Legislative history (see Chapter 5 and of professor Brunson’s book for details): while the history of how the housing allowance came to be and has been amended in ad hoc fashion almost from the beginning of the IRS itself is fascinating, the speakers seemed to feel that legislative history is less relevant in recent court decisions and may not play a significant role in the decision. “But we’ll see” was also a repetitive phrase during the presentations. The comments of Rep. Peter Mack in introducing HR 4275 are relevant in revealing an anti-discriminatory motive behind the legislation, but also portrayed the feelings of many in the 1950’s regarding the role of religion in anti-communist crusades. Prof. Brunson has blogged about this and other related issues at https://bycommonconsent.com/…/when-religious-tax-accommoda…/

–The “Lemon” test: Derived from a landmark 1971 SCOTUS decision (Lemon v. Kurtzman), creating a triple-pronged set of criteria to adjudicate “separation of church and state.” A statute (1) must have a secular legislative intent, (2) must neither advance nor inhibit religion, (3) must not involve “excessive government entanglement” with religion. If any of the “prongs” are violated, the statute can be declared unconstitutional. Often considered vague and cumbersome — what’s “excessive?” plus most good lawyers can probably find some secular (or religious) “intent” in many statutes. The sense of the room seemed to be that Gaylor v. Mnuchin might be the case that allows SCOTUS to replace Lemon with something more viable, or maybe just scrap it.

–Internal Revenue Code Section 107 (1) and 107 (2) – one of the most interesting features of this case is that, as I understand it, the suit challenges only IRC Section (2) which exempts a minister’s housing allowance from taxation. Section 107 (1) which allows a parsonage owned by a church and provided for the minister’s housing is not challenged in the present case (though it could be in the future if a group with standing were to bring such a challenge). Does this raise the possibility that churches (which for their convenience have largely divested themselves of parsonages in recent decades) might get back into the “parsonage business” again? “We’ll see”

— Churches of Christ and this issue (or, “Robert Baty, George HW Bush, Omar Burleson, and Pepperdine University’s ‘Basketball ministers’”). Though this did not arise in the seminar, the “backstory” to this case is intriguing. About 20 years ago, I became acquainted online with a fellow Christian, Robert Baty, who had taken an intense interest in these issues. An IRS Appeals officer (now retired), Robert was disturbed at some of the arguments made in support of legislation and/or IRS ruling 70-549 created at the behest of then-Congressman George HW Bush of Houston, and fellow Congressman Omar Burleson of Abilene, to allow colleges such as Abilene Christian University and Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA, to allow staff personnel (including athletic coaches) to claim tax-exempt housing allowances since the colleges portrayed themselves as “integral agencies of the church” – as several religious colleges do. Attempting to find Rep. Burleson’s papers for enlightenment on the issue, we discovered that they had been donated to ACU (where Burleson was an alum) but were sealed or embargoed until well into the 21st century. For more information, see the Forbes blogs of Peter J. Reilly, who has also turned a spotlight on these issues (see, for example, https://www.forbes.com/…/john-oliver-should-not-blame-irs…/… ).

(Full disclosure: like most ministers, I have taken advantage of the legal provisions for housing allowance, and in my work with one church, occupied a church-owned house. My arrangements, including years as a bi-vocational minister have survived IRS scrutiny through two audits. The case may possibly have future implications as well for other similar arrangements (university presidents and deans who are often provided housing, military housing, housing arrangements for US citizens living abroad, and other cases which may be similar though not exactly parallel).

This is an interesting case about which legal minds can reasonably disagree (as with many decisions which often have multiple dissenting opinions). I plan to be at the Dirksen Federal Building next week to hear the oral arguments before the 7th Circuit. Stay tuned.

Don’t end up just banging dustbins

Don’t end up just banging dustbins

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Worth a few moments of your time …

Stephen Kneale's avatarBuilding Jerusalem

It is amazing how certain comments stick in the mind. It is hard to know whether it is the context in which they are spoken or the sheer simplicity with which the comment nails its intended target, but nonetheless some things remain with you. I am regularly reminded of one of the funniest, and yet searingly clear, comments I received whilst engaged in mission work.

The context was my regular pilgrimage to the Holy Land; or, Llandudno as it is more commonly known. I was co-leading a week of mission. Much of the work involved cold-contact evangelism; approaching folk on the promenade and trying to generate conversation. The aim would be to share something of Christ and perhaps leave them with a Christian book or piece of literature to read in their own time. Sometimes conversations take off – often in ways you wouldn’t expect – and excellent theological discussion can…

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Pharaoh’s chariot wheels and other things that won’t float — Examining the claims of the late Ron Wyatt

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https://ferrelljenkins.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/pharaohs-chariot-wheels-and-other-things-that-wont-float-%E2%80%94-examining-the-claims-of-the-late-ron-wyatt/

Traveling Music (ReMix)

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Here is yet another iteration of a “re-run” post from a different venue several years ago, engendered this time by scanning old iPod tracks on the ever-more-repetitious journey down I-65 from Chicago to Indianapolis.  It is likely just babel/babble to anyone but me.  FWIW.

Mumford and Sons – Babel – ROCKS!

But it also engenders reservations, similar to their first album, about which I posted the following on 21 January 2011.

In an earlier post I mentioned listening to the musical group, Mumford & Sons while driving near the end of long trip.  Due to some questions, I took it down, lest anyone think I condone the use of profanity on that CD (Sigh No More).  I do not.  Here’s a response of sorts to some of the questions:

Presumably most people understand that mentioning a group, person, or work of art does not imply endorsement of everything in, on, or about it.  The track Timshel, referencing Genesis 4 and resonating Steinbeck’s East of Eden, does not imply endorsement of Steinbeck or all that is in the book.  Quoting a commentary on Genesis 4 does not mean accepting or recommending everything in it.  This is, one hopes, elementary for anyone willing to think about it.

I’m a sucker for clever lyrics, especially those with religious implications – even cryptic ones (especially when married to great harmonious melodies).  Who could not like the opening lines of the first track: “Serve God, love me, and mend – this is not the end…Sigh no more, no more.  One foot in sea and  one on shore.  My heart was never pure – You know me.”   Or, “If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won” (from “I Gave You All”).

Or this:  “You told me that I would find a hole Within the fragile substance of my soul, And I have filled this void with things unreal And all the while my character it steals”  — followed by, “It seems all my bridges have been burned, But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works – It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart, But the welcome I receive with the restart” (Roll Away Your Stone).

However, admixed with admirable thoughts expressed with dexterity are others of a baser sort…of infidelity and betrayal, doubt and denial.  Of course, many people, even those of strong faith, have experienced such thoughts and possibly even behaviors, as we succumb to various temptations to one degree or another.

Most vexing and disturbing is the gratuitous use (in Little Lion Man, CD track 7) of a common vulgarism meant to describe one of the most divinely pleasurable of human experiences – made into a cheap swear-word.  That is, of course the nature of profanity – taking something which is a should be special or limited to particular circumstances and profaning it by making it common or ordinary.  As several before me have noticed, if one wished to express extreme displeasure, one could at least use something REALLY unpleasant, like “Audit you, buddy!”

I realize one can hear such vulgarities at the mall or at a high school sporting event (to say nothing or college or pro games).  But it pains me to spend money to download or rip such junk.  One man’s opinion.

Other issues raised by such questions include how those who find such things objectionable should react.  Bury head in sand and ignore?  Boycott?  Draw up the bridge and retreat behind the moat?  Or recognize and engage when possible?  Do we read only that which has no objectionable material?  Hard to come by.  Can we be “fans” only of athletes, teams, or artists without flaw?  Good luck.

Late night thoughts from a fried brain at the end of a long day. Anybody want to sound off on this?  No obligation.

(A closing thought:  It is sobering, when contemplating passing an 18-wheeler in snow, to hear lyrics like, “In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die…for you were made to meet your maker.”  Hmmmmm)

 

Jesus wants you to judge

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The Matt Walsh Blog's avatarThe Matt Walsh Blog

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the Ten Commandments. My favorites is the one that says “Thou shalt not judge.”

Oh, that one isn’t in there, you say?

Sorry, it’s easy to forget nowadays, especially in this country where many Christians carry on as though the entire Bible could be summed up by the phrase, “it’s all good, bro.”

In actual fact, there are a lot of urgent truths and important moral lessons in the Bible. Interestingly, almost all of them have fallen out of favor in modern American society. Here are just a few verses that aren’t particularly trendy or popular nowadays:

(WARNING: Politically incorrect truths ahead)

“Whoever harms one of these little ones that believes in me, it would be better for him if a millstone where tied around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the ocean.”

“Before I formed you in…

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The Meat Market at Corinth

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Continuing discussion regarding Corinthian archaeology — from Ferrell Jenkins

Ferrell Jenkins's avatarFerrell's Travel Blog

Paul taught the saints at Corinth to,

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. (1 Corinthians 10:25 ESV)

The Greek word used here for “meat market” is makellon. Archaeological discoveries at Corinth include inscriptions mentioning the meat market and the fish market.

Henry J. Cadbury writes about visiting the Corinth excavations in July, 1933. He says he especially wanted to see “first hand the Erastus inscription….” Some of his comments in the article are still interesting today.

But what was particularly unexpected by me was to note among the inscribed fragments of marble in the new museum one containing quite clearly MACELLV.

As the piece has only seven other letters and these quite unintelligible the discovery of this single word is extremely tantalizing. But since the fragment in question was found in 1898, now thirty-five years ago, while so…

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FlightPaths: The Tablecloth — by Dene Ward

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FlightPaths: The Tablecloth — by Dene Ward

FlightPaths: The Tablecloth — Dene Ward — Posted 8-15-2013

http://flightpaths.weebly.com/2/post/2013/08/the-tablecloth.html

My grandmother crocheted a lace tablecloth for me many years ago.  She was quite a lady, my grandmother.  She was widowed in her forties, left behind with two of her five children still at home.  She met the bills by doing seasonal work in the citrus packing sheds of central Florida, standing on her feet 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week in season, and then working in a drugstore, a job she walked to and from for nearly thirty years.  She delivered prescriptions, worked the check-out, even made sodas at the fountain.

It was a small town and once, a woman whom my grandmother knew was not
married, came in looking for some form of birth control. My grandmother told her, “No!  Go home and behave yourself like a decent woman should.”  No, she did not lose her job over that.  She merely said what every other person there wished they had the nerve to say back in those days.  She lived long enough to see the shame of our society that no one thinks it needs saying any more.

As to my tablecloth, most people would look at it and think it was imperfect.  She crocheted with what was labeled “ivory” thread, but she could never afford to buy enough at once to do the whole piece.  So after she cashed her paycheck, she went to the store and bought as much as her budget would allow that week and worked on it.  The next week, she went back and did the same, always buying the same brand labeled “ivory.”  Funny thing about those companies, though—when the lot changes, sometimes the color does too, sometimes only a little, but sometimes “ivory” becomes more of a vanilla or even crème caramel.  The intricately crocheted squares in my tablecloth are not all the same color, even though the thread company said they were.

Some people probably look at it and wonder what went wrong. All they see is mismatched colors. What I see is a grandmother’s love, a grandmother who had very little, but who wanted to do something special for her oldest grandchild.  I revel in those mismatched squares because I know my grandmother thought of me every week for a long time, spent the precious little she had to try to do something nice, and, as far as I am concerned, succeeded far beyond her wildest dreams.

If it were your grandmother, you would think the same I am sure.  So why is it we think Almighty God cannot take our imperfections and make us into great men and women of faith?  Why is it we beat ourselves to death when we make a mistake, even one we repent of and do our best to correct?  Do we not yet understand grace?  Are we so arrogant that we think we don’t have to forgive ourselves even though God does? Yes we should understand the enormity of our sin, repenting in godly sorrow, over and over, even as David did, but prolonged groveling in the pit of unworthiness can be more about self-pity and lacking faith in God to do what he promised than it is about humility.  The longer we indulge in it, the less we are doing for the Lord, and Satan is just as pleased as if we had gone on sinning. Either way helps him out.

The next time you look into a mirror and see only your faults, remember my tablecloth.  When you give God all you have, he can make you into something beautiful too.

And God is able to make all grace abound unto you, that you, always having all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work,    2 Cor 9:8.  

Dene Ward

Read more at:  http://flightpaths.weebly.com/2/post/2013/08/the-tablecloth.html