Atheist Group Asks IRS to Investigate Church Where Pastor Told Congregation Not to Vote August 30, 2016

Atheist Group Asks IRS to Investigate Church Where Pastor Told Congregation Not to Vote

You remember Pastor Donnie Romero of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He’s the faithful, Jesus-loving guy who said shortly after the Pulse massacre in Orlando that he fully agreed with his Independent Fundamentalist Baptist colleague Pastor Roger Jimenez that the victims deserved to die and the Earth is a “better place” because of their murders. (Jimenez had said in a sermon that “the tragedy is that more of them didn’t die.”)

RomeroHateSpeech

I agree 100% with Pastor Roger Jimenez. These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now.

And I’ll take it a step further, because I heard on the news today, that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care. And I will pray to God like I did this morning, and I will do it tonight, I’ll pray that God will finish the job that that man started, and he will end their life, and by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell, just like the rest of them, so that they don’t get any more opportunity to go out and hurt little children.

This was the same guy who said in 2014 that all “dirty faggots” wanted to “snatch your children” to “hurt and rape them.”

Well, he has the freedom of speech to preach these hateful messages, but he may have gone too far when he told his congregation how to vote (or, rather, not vote) this coming election.

In a sermon from earlier this month, Romero made clear that True Christians™ shouldn’t vote for either candidate:

There is no biblical grounds that a Christian should ever vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. That’s a fact! Show me somewhere in the Bible — Show me one reason why these people should be elected. They’re wicked, ungodly, and evil demonic people.

And for Christians that wanna vote them in, the only reason why, well I just think, well that’s the problem. Is you’re thinking! And you should do less thinking and more reading and let God think for you. Because if you’re letting the Bible think for you, there wouldn’t even be a choice!

The lesser of two evils: what a stupid, stupid idea.

These people are super-duper evil and wicked people.

He’s basically telling his congregation what to do on Election Day, and that’s easily crossing the line when it comes to what non-profits are allowed to do within IRS guidelines.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which reached a settlement with the IRS on the enforcement of church politicking back in 2014, sent a letter to them this week informing them of what Romero did and asking them to take action by revoking his 501(c)(3) non-profit status:

Pastor Romero inappropriately used his position as a leader of this church to intervene in a political campaign by speaking out against the two major candidates for the U.S. presidency. His comments were opposition to these campaigns, because they were clearly meant to encourages congregants to not vote for either candidate. This opposition violated the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt rules, which prohibit electioneering.

FFRF respectfully requests that the IRS commence an immediate investigation of Stedfast Baptist Church. The IRS should take appropriate action to remedy this violation of 501(c)(3) regulations.

What is the IRS waiting for? This isn’t an ambiguous case. This is precisely the sort of activism the IRS rules were intended to prevent. By not doing anything, the IRS would be sending a signal to churches everywhere that pastors are welcome to endorse or speak out against any candidates they’d like. It’d be chaos — and they’d be doing it all while keeping their tax-exempt status.

(via Godless Engineer. Thanks to John for the link)

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