Pastors Parsley, Johnson exploited pulpits to play politics, ministers\u2019 complaint alleges <\/b>
\nMonday, January 16, 2006
\nMike Harden and Joe Hallett
\nTHE COLUMBUS DISPATCH <\/p>\n
ADAM CAIRNS | DISPATCH
\nEric Williams, senior pastor of North Congregational United Church of Christ, tallies up petitions that ask the IRS to investigate political-campaign activities of two central Ohio churches. <\/p>\n
The complaint alleges churchsponsored events have
\nshowcased Republican gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell. <\/p>\n
The Rev. Rod Parsley, left, and the Rev. Russell Johnson have been accused of using their churches for partisan politics. <\/p>\n
More than 30 local pastors last night officially accused two evangelical megachurches of illegal political activities. <\/p>\n
In a rare and potentially explosive action, the moderate ministers signed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate World Harvest Church of Columbus and Fairfield Christian Church of Lancaster and determine if their tax-exempt status should be revoked. <\/p>\n
The grievance claims that the Rev. Rod Parsley of World Harvest Church and the Rev. Russell Johnson of Fairfield Christian Church improperly used their churches and affiliated entities \u2014 the Center for Moral Clarity, Ohio Restoration Project and Reformation Ohio \u2014 for partisan politics, including supporting the Republican gubernatorial candidacy of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. <\/p>\n
more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pastors Parsley, Johnson exploited pulpits to play politics, ministers\u2019 complaint alleges Monday, January 16, 2006 Mike Harden and Joe Hallett THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH ADAM CAIRNS | DISPATCH Eric Williams, senior pastor of North Congregational United Church of Christ, tallies up petitions that ask the IRS to investigate political-campaign activities of two central Ohio churches. The … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-in-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}