Dozens of Virginia churches have been donating cash to campaigns for years, despite law
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
Most of those donations are to one candidate in
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
However, Spruill's campaign reports list 45 "direct contributions" totaling
Spruill said no one questioned the payments in the past, and that his staff made a mistake by listing the church payments as contributions.
"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
Nonetheless, the
"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
Some pastors of local churches that were listed as donors to election campaigns told
"It wasn't a campaign donation," said Bishop
"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
Bishop
Spruill said he invites the churches to the dinners because they are part of his political base in the
"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
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
The most recent examples, other than those donations to Spruill, were three contributions totaling
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
Attorney
Alcorn said the
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
Several conservative Christian organizations and leaders who backed President
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
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
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