Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
(Exodus 20:16)
I did not think I would be writing about another of these instances of bearing false witness to promote a theistic agenda quite so soon but atheists and other readers have been sending me many examples and this one was too tempting to resist.
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Jerry Falwell Jr. is co-heir to the fundamentalist empire created by his father, the late Jerry Falwell Sr. (died 2007). His brother Jonathan got his father's Thomas Road Baptist Church and the TV ministry; Jerry Jr. got the chancellorship of the university (Liberty U.) Jerry Sr. founded.Our current story begins with the great media flap that occurred in May when Liberty University disenfranchised its College Democrats Club, saying, "We are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the principles held by Liberty University..." Now a university has the right, if it chooses, to promote partisan political positions and discriminate against clubs whose politics they don't like. There's just one small caveat: They can't do it on the taxpayer's dime. Liberty was founded as a religious school and, as such, it has tax-exempt status and must follow the same rules concerning political activities that other religious institutions do. It was for this reason that the religious liberty watchdog group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, filed a complaint against them with the IRS.
It isn't the first time AU has filed an IRS complaint against Liberty. In 2007, they filed one after Falwell Jr. used Liberty resources to endorse Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential candidate. The IRS has since stated that the complaint was "resolved without incident" though no details of the resolution were released. Jr.'s father also had run-ins with the IRS for playing partisan politics and his ministry's tax exempt status was revoked for the years 1986 and 1987. In 1993, Falwell Sr. had to pay the IRS $50,000 in back taxes when his tax-exempt Old Time Gospel Hour played favorites in some congressional elections.
This time though, Jr. decided to strike back and directed Liberty Counsel, the university's legal arm, to file an IRS complaint against the watchdog group, charging that AU engages in "politically partisan activity." Reverend Barry Lynn, the executive director of AU said, "Falwell knows full well that Americans United is rigorously non-partisan. He’s feeling the heat for a bad decision (disenfranchising the College Democrats club) and trying to shift the focus to Americans United."According to Lynn, the Liberty Counsel complaint is replete with distortions, innacuracies and outright falsehoods. One example is the assertion that Lynn attended Obama speeches at the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church and a national meeting of the United Church of Christ when, in fact, he didn't attend either of them. The Liberty Counsel's letter also claims that AU's activities are politically partisan. "AU has engaged in a consistant pattern of filing complaints against conservative churches and nonprofit organizations. Despite its knowledge of partisan activity carried on by liberal nonprofit organizations, AU remains silent." Lynn vehemently denied this, citing examples such as a 2008 complaint to the IRS against the Pentacostal Church of God in Christ (a congregation in Las Vegas) for hosting and endorsing then-candidate Barack Obama, as well as another that same year over the General Baptist State Convention having invited Michelle Obama to appear and give them a campaign speech at their meeting in North Carolina.
"This is a desperate diversionary tactic, and it will fail," said the Reverend Lynn. "Instead of launching baseless attacks against Americans United, Falwell needs to get his own house in order."
Photo Credits:
1) Darth Vader. "Luke, I am your father."
2) Jerry Falwell, Jr.
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Comments
LOL!!!!! Another group of people who have no idea what they are talking about, attacking a Falwell. Barry Lynn wouldn't have anything to do if he wasn't trying to find fault with something in Lynchburg.
For some reason, the author left out the fact that the Democratic club has been reinstated, (after the club sponsor admitted not being truthful in regards to the club activities and apologized) and that both the Democratic and Republican clubs share the exact same status on campus.
A fifth grader with a decent computer could have done better research.
Hello David B. You address things the article isn't about and don't address the things it is. I think that's worth a LOL myself. Remind me if I ever see an essay of yours to create a strawman argument against it for you too.
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