Every Christmas season, it seems that the “war on Christmas” begins afresh and with renewed vigor.  For some, the season that proclaims “peace on earth” seems to be anything but, with demands to remove any and all religious references to the celebration of Christmas. And this year is no exception.

For instance, Western Piedmont College in North Carolina recently replaced the word “Christmas” with the word “holiday” in a student club’s announcement of a Christmas tree sale designed to raise money for charity.  It was only after attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to the college that it reversed its decision and reinstated “Christmas.”

In another case, a Little Rock, Arkansas, school was threatened with a lawsuit if it allowed its students to view a play based on the television special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

There isn’t enough space here to tell all of the stories of attempts to sanitize religious words from traditional Christmas carols, remove nativity scenes, ban religious references on Christmas ornaments, replace the word “Christmas,” or in some other way to secularize any public celebration of Christmas.

In cases like these, it is easy to become misinformed, or perhaps to begin to accept the mantra that the Constitution requires a purely secular celebration of Christmas in the public square.  But this is not the case, and churches can (and should) do a lot to regain a proper focus in society on the celebration of Christmas.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys have created a resource for churches called Seasonal Religious Expression that explains the law regarding celebrations of Christmas both publicly and privately.  Here are some highlights that are of particular interest to churches:

• Churches may erect and maintain Christmas displays on their own private property.

• Churches can encourage their city or county to display religious symbols of the Christmas season on public property as long as they are displayed amongst other secular symbols of Christmas.

• Churches may sponsor a private display of religious symbols of Christmas on public property in places where the government allows for displays to be erected by private groups.

As your church celebrates the Christmas season this year, there is no reason to be intimidated by secularist groups bent on removing Christianity from Christmas.  The Constitution does not require such a radical removal of faith from public view.

Alliance Defending Freedom is here to help, and we urge you to take advantage of our Christmas resource.  And if you become aware of attempts to remove religious Christmas displays from public view, contact us so we can help restore sanity to Christmas celebrations.

Standing together we can “go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born!”

It seemed like a simple enough idea: when Canadian pastor Stephen Boissoin learned that some of the schools in his community were using materials designed to promote homosexual behavior, he wrote a letter to the editor of his local paper.  Someone took exception with his remarks and filed a formal complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, which fined Boissoin $5,000 and ordered him never to say anything critical of homosexual behavior or same-sex unions for the rest of his life.

That was 10 years ago.  Last month, by the grace of God, Alliance Defending Freedom Allied Attorney Gerald Chipeur won Pastor Boissoin’s case on an appeal to the Alberta Court of Appeal, Alberta’s highest court, which reversed the Commission’s earlier ruling.  Upon hearing the decision, Mr. Chipeur wrote to the pastor:

It is unlikely that [the Human Rights Commission statute used to penalize you] will ever be enforced again.

It has been a pleasure to work with you to advance freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

To which Pastor Boissoin replied:

For a long time I have been humbled by this entire ordeal.  After reading this, it caused tears to well up in my eyes.  I had to close my office door and just sit and spend a moment thanking God while I pulled myself together.  I can only say thank-you. Beyond the amazing victory that we won, you have no idea how thankful I am that God brought the right people together to battle this case for principle sake and also for my defence [sic] as the little guy.  Again, from the bottom of my heart, my family and I thank-you beyond what I can express in words.

Sincerely,

Stephen Boissoin

The author of Hebrews extols all Christians to “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.”  In America, we are so blessed that, so far, most of our people have not yet had to make the kind of sacrifice Pastor Boissoin has made in defense of freedom and the truth of the Gospel. In this week of Thanksgiving, let us give praise to God for those who have stood – who continue to stand – for His truth with humility and courage, and let us ask Him to show us what greater sacrifices He might yet ask of us to bring glory and thanks to His name.  May He give us His grace for those challenges.

Thank you for standing faithfully for the Truth.

Recently, an IRS official was quoted as saying that the IRS had suspended auditing churches.  Does this mean that the IRS has thrown up its hands and given up on enforcing the tax code against churches?  The answer is “no,” the IRS has not given up and the tax code still applies to churches.

The IRS official was Russell Renwicks with the Tax-Exempt and Government Entities division. He said that the IRS had received some complaints about potential violations of the tax code by churches this election cycle.  But he stated, “We are holding any potential church audits in abeyance.”  What did he mean by this?

Mr. Renwick’s statement stems from a 2009 court ruling involving the IRS’ regulations related to church audits.  These regulations began in 1984 when Congress passed the Church Audit Procedures Act (CAPA).  CAPA instituted several rules the IRS was required to follow when auditing any churches, and was passed to protect the constitutional rights of churches.

One of the requirements of CAPA is that an IRS official at the level of Regional Commissioner or above approve any church audits prior to the IRS contacting the church.  The IRS followed this requirement until 1998 when Congress reorganized the IRS.  After 1998, the IRS was no longer organized by regions of the country.  Instead, it became organized by the constituency it served.  So, until 1998, the IRS had regions like the Midwest region or the Northeast region.  After 1998, the IRS has divisions such as the small business division and the exempt organizations division.

One consequence of Congress reorganizing the IRS was that the position of Regional Commissioner no longer existed because there were no “regions” in need of a commissioner.  So the IRS designated the Director of Examinations in the Exempt Organizations division of the IRS to fulfill the requirement in CAPA previously fulfilled by the Regional Commissioners.

In 2009, a church in Minnesota was being audited by the IRS and challenged the audit.  The argument raised by the church was that the IRS was not complying with CAPA because it did not have a sufficiently high level official approving church audits.  A federal district court agreed and stopped the IRS’ audit of the church.

After this ruling, the IRS, to the best of our knowledge, shut down all of the church audits that it had ongoing, including one church audit handled by Alliance Defending Freedom.  The IRS stated that it was closing the church audit “because of a pending issue regarding the procedure used to initiate the inquiry.”  The “pending issue” was the Minnesota court’s ruling that the IRS was not in compliance with CAPA.

Since that time, the IRS has not been auditing any churches to the best of our knowledge.  It has proposed new regulations to designate a higher official in the ranks of the IRS to approve all church audits but it has never finalized those regulations.  No one really knows what the delay is, but we believe that the IRS will finalize its regulations at some point and will once again begin auditing churches.

In addition, the IRS still believes it has the authority to audit churches.  Its website discusses the requirements for instituting a church audit.  And that website was updated as late as November, 2012.

So when Mr. Renwicks said that the IRS was holding church audits in abeyance, he did not mean that the IRS was giving up and saying that it will never audit churches again.  All Mr. Renwicks said was that it was holding church audits in abeyance until it finalized its new regulations.  And we should remember that the IRS has the ability to go back in time and audit churches that it believes has violated the tax code during this time that it is not auditing churches.

And the IRS later came out and explicitly disavowed that Mr. Renwicks’ statement should be interpreted in a way to suggest that the IRS has given up on enforcing the tax code against churches.  The news story on this issue stated:

In response to queries from NBC News, the IRS disavowed comments by a regional official of its division overseeing tax-exempt organizations, who said last month that the agency was “holding any potential church audits in abeyance” while it revises its regulations in light of the 2009 ruling.

Dean Patterson, a spokesman for the IRS, said the official “misspoke,” adding: “The IRS continues to run a balanced program that follows up on potential non-compliance, while ensuring the appropriate oversight and review to determine that compliance activities are necessary and appropriate.”

The important point for churches to remember is that the IRS has not given up on enforcing the tax code against churches.  Churches must still be aware of the IRS regulations.  We have great resources on our website about those regulations to help churches understand their rights.

And we also must not give up on challenging the constitutionality of the Johnson Amendment and the IRS’ enforcement of that law.  Alliance Defending Freedom believes that the Johnson Amendment is unconstitutional and the IRS’ attempts to censor a pastor’s sermon from the pulpit violate the First Amendment.  For more information on this legal challenge, visit www.pulpitfreedom.org.

Alliance Defending Freedom stands ready to protect and defend the rights of churches, especially in relation to the IRS.  It is important that churches know and act on the right information in this critical area. If you have any specific question regarding what your church can do, please contact us and one of our attorneys will help.

Expressing his religious views in a public forum plunged one Canadian pastor into a ten-year legal battle defending his right to freedom of expression against accusations of “hate speech.”

Pastor Stephen Boissoin wrote letters-to-the-editor of his local paper that expressed his Christian views on homosexual behavior. An offended University of Calgary professor, Dr. Darren Lund, reported the letters to the Alberta Human Rights Commission in 2002, accusing Pastor Boissoin of violating Alberta’s “hate speech” law.

The Commission ruled against Pastor Boissoin in 2008 and, unbelievably, ordered him to cease any further public expression of his views on homosexual behavior, instructed him to issue a public apology, and fined him $5,000.  Now remember that this was a pastor expressing biblically-based views on homosexual behavior.

But thankfully that wasn’t the end of the story for Pastor Boissoin.  In what appears to be final victory for the pastor, Alberta’s highest court affirmed earlier this month the right of Pastor Boissoin to publicly express his religious views. The court determined that the letters “constituted an expression of opinion” that “was not likely to expose homosexuals to hatred or contempt within the meaning of the Alberta statue.”

Significantly, the court also criticized Alberta’s “hate speech” law. “Of particular concern in the area of human rights law is the lack of clarity that will cast a chill on the exercise of the fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of expression and religion….”

The court got it exactly right on this point.  Public expression should not be censored simply because the views expressed are unpopular. “Christians and other people of faith should not be fined or jailed for expressing their political or religious beliefs. There is no place for thought control in a free and democratic society,” said Gerald Chipeur, an Alliance Defending Freedom allied attorney who served as counsel in the lawsuit.

This legal victory has great significance for religious expression. As American courts look more frequently to international jurisprudence for guidance, this victory for freedom of expression has important implications for preserving and promoting religious freedom in America.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State recently announced that it sent over 60,000 letters to churches across the country, warning them from becoming involved in “partisan politicking” during this election season.  The letter tries to intimidate churches by ominously warning “If the IRS determines that your house of worship has engaged in unlawful intervention, it can revoke the institution’s tax-exempt status or levy significant fines on the house of worship or its leaders.”

Letters like this are a favorite tactic of AU.  For years now, it has attempted to intimidate churches into silence during election season.  But here’s the problem.  AU is using an unconstitutional law to try and intimidate and scare churches.

The Johnson Amendment, upon which AU bases its letter, is blatantly unconstitutional.  Under the First Amendment, the pastor has the right to determine what is said from the pulpit, not the IRS.

It’s ironic that an organization committed to the “separation of church and state” is arguing for more governmental monitoring and control of churches and pastors.  AU wants the IRS to monitor a pastor’s sermon, and to censor that pastor if the IRS agent happens to think that the pastor crosses the line.  This is especially problematic because the line of what is prohibited under the Johnson Amendment is very fuzzy.  That makes it convenient for AU to argue that churches have crossed the line when in fact they have not.

It’s time to remove the Johnson Amendment from the hands of AU.  It has been used as a weapon of intimidation against churches for far too long.  That’s why Pulpit Freedom Sunday is so important.  Because the whole goal of Pulpit Freedom Sunday is to protect the sanctity of the pulpit and to prevent the IRS, or radical groups like AU, from intimidating churches.  If you are a pastor, go to www.pulpitfreedom.org and sign up to participate in Pulpit Freedom Sunday on October 7.

Read Alliance Defending Freedom’s response letter to the AU letter.