By Bryan Schwartzman
A Washington D.C.-based group that advocates the separation of church and state is asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Rev. Floyd Flake for allegedly violating the federal tax code by endorsing Al Gore for president at his Allen AME Church last week.
Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Flake knowingly violated federal law during Gore's visit to the St. Albans church on Feb. 13. The law prohibits any non-profit organization from supporting a candidate for office.
“I don't do endorsements from across the pulpit because I never know who's out there watching the types of laws that govern separation of church and state,” Flake told the congregation following Gore's address.
“But I will say to you this morning and you read it well, this should be the next president of the United States,” said Flake, a former congressman who gave up his seat in 1998 to devote all his attention to the Allen AME Church.
Chris London, a spokeswoman for Flake, said his statement was not an endorsement and reporting of it as such by several daily newspapers and local news broadcasts was inaccurate.
“He was a U.S. congressman for 12 years,”London said. “Don't you think he knows the law?”
Flake, who could not be reached for comment, addressed the issue in his weekly political column for the New York Post. Flake said he did not intend for his words to be interpreted as a political endorsement.
“This occurred in spite of the fact that I consciously and purposely announced that I would not 'use' the pulpit to offer a political endorsement,” Flake wrote.
Flake went on to endorse Gore in the column, writing that it was his first public endorsement of the candidate.
But Lynn said Flake's words were a violation of the spirit and letter of federal laws governing the separation of church and state.
“In fact, he seemed to revel in flouting federal tax law,” Lynn said in a press release. “This type of brazen challenge to our nation's laws cannot and should not be ignored.”
The IRS is under no obligation to adhere to the group's request, said Americans United spokesman Robert Boston. He described the organization, which was formed in 1947, as a non-partisan group that traditionally has battled government funding of religion, prayer in public schools, and the teaching of creationist theory in science classrooms.
Boston said the group realized in the early 1990s that religious organizations, both conservative and liberal, were increasingly participating in partisan politics. He said since then it has asked the IRS to investigate about 20 incidents across the nation.
In 1995, the IRS revoked the tax exemption status of a Binghamton, N.Y. area church that took out advertisements in national publications that claimed voting for Bill Clinton for president was tantamount to sinning.
Boston said if non-profit organizations were allowed to give endorsements, politicians would use sham non-profit groups instead of political action committees to fund campaigns. Political Action Committees are required to divulge the source of their funding, he said.
Religion has played a prominent role in this election season and has surfaced in the U.S. Senate race in New York and the Republican presidential primaries.
Tempers flared when Mayor Rudy Giuliani sent a letter to Democratic senatorialcandidate Hillary Clinton, charging that she is insensitive to America's religious traditions. Clinton later responded that she is a person of faith and a devout Methodist.
Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush said during a debate that Jesus was his favorite political philosopher and has also taken heat for speaking at Bob Jones University, aconservative Christian school in South Carolina.
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley, who visited Flake's church one week prior to Gore, has been the only major presidential candidate who has not elaborated on the topic of religion.
