Dozens of Virginia churches have been donating cash to campaigns for years, despite law

Feb. 01--For years, national Christian conservative activists have argued that churches or other houses of worship should be allowed to endorse or donate money to candidates running for elected office.

Such support is prohibited if a religious organization wants to keep its tax-exempt status. A church opposed to abortion rights, for example, cannot donate to a candidate that backs their point of view.

But in Virginia, dozens of churches have been donating cash to campaigns for several years -- and often to liberal Democrats, according to an analysis of campaign reports compiled by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

Most of those donations are to one candidate in Hampton Roads, state Sen. Lionell Spruill Sr., a Chesapeake Democrat. Spruill received almost two-thirds of the $31,500 that churches have given to Virginia candidates in the past two decades.

Spruill acknowledged the money was paid but argues the checks weren't campaign contributions. The churches were buying tickets for their members at a reduced price to his annual campaign fundraising dinner, he said.

"I don't receive donations from churches. No. No," Spruill said in a recent phone interview from Richmond, where the General Assembly is in session. "I don't think we should get donations from churches."

However, Spruill's campaign reports list 45 "direct contributions" totaling $19,400 from churches to his campaign funds over the past 17 years.

Spruill said no one questioned the payments in the past, and that his staff made a mistake by listing the church payments as contributions.

Arielle Schneider, a policy analyst for the state Department of Elections, said there's no other way for a campaign to report the church payments other than as a campaign donation.

"It's really unfortunate for the church," said Schneider, who is a lawyer. "It's legally a campaign contribution."

The church payments are a relatively small portion of donations to Spruill. The legislator, who served 22 years in the House before being elected to the Senate in 2016, has received more than $1 million in campaign donations since 1996.

Nonetheless, the Virginia church donations to Spruill and others are striking, said Rob Boston, interim director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

"We've been following this issue pretty closely since 1988, and in all that time, I can only think of a couple of examples where we've encountered houses of worship actually donating money to campaign coffers," Boston said.

"It is unusual because it's such a blatant violation of the law. The more normal thing we encounter is a pastor endorsing a candidate from the pulpit, putting a statement on a church website, having a candidate come in and speak and it turns into a rally in the church," he said.

Religious organizations can qualify as 501(c)(3) organizations -- named for a section of the federal tax code -- that are exempt from taxes but are "absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office," according to the Internal Revenue Service website.

Some pastors of local churches that were listed as donors to election campaigns told The Virginian-Pilot they didn't know their payments had been filed as political contributions when they bought tickets to fundraisers.

"It wasn't a campaign donation," said Bishop Anthony Rodgers of First Baptist Church Crestwood. The Chesapeake church paid a total of $3,970 to Spruill's campaign from 2007 to 2017.

"We purchase a table. We go there to listen to what they have to say and stuff and kind of keep abreast of what's going on in the political realm," Rodgers said. "We look forward to going to that every year to eat."

Spruill said Rodgers' church contribution of $520 on Oct. 2, 2017, was to pay for 10 seats at a fundraiser that was being held three days later at the Delta Hotel in Chesapeake.

Susan Rowland, Spruill's campaign treasurer, said most people attending paid $125 each or $2,500 to sponsor a table at the event, which featured then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe as the main speaker.

Bishop Wesley Hardy of Cathedral of Faith Church of God in Christ in Chesapeake said his church, which paid $2,250 to Spruill's campaign from 2009 to 2014, was also only buying seats for annual dinners. Those payments were never meant to be a political donation, Hardy said.

Spruill said he invites the churches to the dinners because they are part of his political base in the 5th Senate District, which includes parts of Chesapeake and Norfolk. The congregants can hear the speakers and come back stage to meet them -- as they did with McAuliffe in October, he said.

"My base is the black vote. You know that," Spruill said. "There's no way in the world that I would expect a church to pay the same thing as those down front that give me $2,500 for a table of 10."

Spruill said he can't afford to let the church members come to the dinner for free.

Campaign reports filed by seven other candidates also listed contributions from churches, but most were considerably smaller. The largest was $4,000 in contributions reported between 1997 and 2007 by the campaign of the late state Sen. Yvonne Miller, a Norfolk Democrat. Miller, who died in 2012, also had represented the 5th Senate District.

The most recent examples, other than those donations to Spruill, were three contributions totaling $200 from 2014 to 2016 from New Beech Grove Baptist Church to the campaign of the late state Sen. John Miller, a Newport News Democrat. Miller, who represented the 1st Senate District, died in April 2016.

Willard Maxwell, the Baptist church's pastor, said the money was for tickets to Miller's campaign dinners.

Maxwell and other pastors contacted by The Pilot said they were well aware of their restrictions regarding campaign contributions and would not have bought tickets had they known the legislators would report them as donations.

"With our 501(c)(3) status, I try to make sure we don't do anything to jeopardize that," Rodgers said. "If I had known it was going to be for that, I wouldn't do that. I try to avoid situations like that because I don't like to jeopardize the church."

Rowland, who has been filing Spruill's reports for a dozen years, said she'll take responsibility for listing the church payments as campaign contributions but said there is no other way to list the payments on state forms.

Spruill said campaign reporting laws should be changed.

There appears to be little effort in Virginia to crack down on such donations.

Attorney John Alcorn, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said candidates don't face legal problems from accepting campaign donations from houses of worship, but religious organization can risk having their federal tax-exempt status challenged.

Alcorn said the IRS is responsible for enforcement of an organization's tax-exempt status.

IRS spokesperson Patricia Russomagno said the agency cannot comment on specific churches or other tax-exempt organizations. She noted in an email that the agency has a formal procedure for the public to file written complaints about possible violations.

The agency's guide for 501(c)(3) groups warns that a religious group found donating to political campaigns can be forced to pay an excise tax on the contributions and risks having its tax-exempt status revoked.

The ban on church campaign contributions was put in place with a 1954 change in the federal tax code known as the Johnson Amendment, which was championed by U.S. Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who would later become president.

Several conservative Christian organizations and leaders who backed President Donald Trump in his successful 2016 campaign have pressed legislators to abolish the amendment. Among them were Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, and Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Lynchburg. They argued the restriction, which also prohibits pastors from endorsing candidates from the pulpit, stifles religious freedom.

But support for the change isn't universal among church leaders. Christianity Today reported in December that 90 percent of the board of directors for the National Association of Evangelicals opposed churches backing candidates.

Bishop Rodgers of First Baptist Church Crestwood said the ban shouldn't be lifted because it might lead to government encroachment on churches.

With Trump's support, a proposal to abolish the Johnson Amendment was included in a House-approved version of the tax overhaul bill last year but was removed during final negotiations with the Senate.

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