Follow-up on Absurdity of Pluralism
I’m not trying to make this a political blog, but I thought some of you might be interested in this. Below is a link to some articles reviewing the discussion of the Supreme Court as they considered the Christian-oriented organization case I wrote about last week. In brief, a Christian-oriented college group wanted to limit membership and officer status to those that would profess Christianity and that would not take part in overtly “unChristian” activities (such as openly homosexual lifestyles). The discussion is very enlightening. I especially like the part where Alito asks about a scenario where 10 Muslims form a group and 50 Muslim-haters place membership. If the Muslim group can’t deny a person membership based on ideology, then they can’t prevent the 50 Muslim-haters from joining the group, voting themselves into leadership, and making the group anti-Muslim. The lawyer for the University just said that in such a scenario, the people being taken over should leave and start a new group! Alito wondered aloud about what the courts should tell them when they form “Group 2″ and the same thing happens!! Pluralism is a strange business and has no place in the Lord’s church.
Court splits sharply on campus Christian argument
Supreme Court weighs case of Christian group that bars gays
Can Christian Student Group Exclude Gays, and Still Get School Funding? Supreme Court Deliberates…
Miscellaneous Articles | Benjamin Williams | 20 April 2010 |
1 Comment
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By Robert Baty, April 21, 2010 @ 11:03 pm
While you are on the subject, you might want to give some consideration to discussing the developing story regarding the recently filed Freedom From Relgiion Foundation (FFRF) suit challenging the income tax free ministerial housing allowance.
The FFRF filed a brief yesterday, in anticipation of a May 10, 2010 hearing, supporting its standing to have the suit heard on its merits and in support of the unconstitutional nature of the ministerial housing allowance.
One aspect of the case of particular interest to me is found on pages 63 and 64 as follows:
——————————-
Begin quote—
The IRS is regularly required to make these purely religious determinations in administering §107.
The difficulty of resolving these religious questions, and the
potential for inconsistent conclusions, give rise to far more entanglement than the purely secular inquiries under §119.
For example, another difficult religious determination that the IRS must make is whether a Christian college is an “integral agency of a church.”
This is the subject of many private rulings by the IRS, prompting one commentator to note that “the Service has consistently ruled that ordained ministers who teach at schools that are integrally related to churches are performing services within the exercise of their
ministry, no matter what they teach.”
Newman, On Section 107’s Worst Feature: The Teacher-Preacher, 93 TNT 260-20 (emphasis added).
College administrators, and even basketball coaches, as well as teachers, can thus qualify for the benefits of §107 if they happen to be ordained ministers.
It is often difficult, however, to determine whether the criteria for “integral part of a church” are satisfied. The IRS uses the criteria listed in Rev. Rul. 72-606 and Rev. Rul. 70-549, in making these determinations.
Typical rulings in this area emphasize the intrusiveness of the determination. See LTR 9608027, 96 TNT 39-49; LTR 200002040, 2000 TNT 11-24; and LTR 200925001, 2009 TNT 117-28.
—-end quote
—————————–
—————————–
As you may be aware, private schools operated by members of the churches of Christ (e.g., Pepperdine, ACU, etc) are responsible for the ruling 70-549 mentioned above by which the government recognizes such schools as “integral agencies of the churches of Christ” so that its basketball coaches and similar employees can register as ministers and claim the allowance.
It could be that that could be come just one important case study as to why the ministerial housing allowance will not stand up to constitutional scrutiny and, as a minimum, needs to be overhauled to eliminate its abuses by such as the millionaire televangelists and basketball ministers.