With Election Day just a few weeks away, longtime church members Lucky Hartunian and Janie Booth sat outside the Revival Christian Fellowship’s sanctuary in Menifee, California, inviting congregants to register to vote.
The women urged those streaming into the evangelical church’s Saturday morning civic engagement event to “make their voices heard as Christians.” After mail-in ballots go out statewide, Booth and Hartunian will be among church volunteers collecting completed, sealed ballots and dropping them off at the county office the next day.
It’s a practice known as ballot gathering - or ballot harvesting — that’s been a source of national controversy over the years.
Robert Tyler, a California-based attorney who represents conservative churches and pastors, said he still believes “ballot harvesting and universal vote by mail creates opportunities for fraud.”
“But the rules of the game have changed,” he said. “Until the law changes, we have to get out and gather ballots like they are doing.”
We really need to start taking away tax exemption for churches
that pull political stunts.
Fixed.
I’ve said it before I’ll say it again, churches shouldn’t automatically be tax exempt, if they want tax exempt status they should have to register as a 501c3 or similar like any other organization and follow the same rules. Automatically qualifying for tax exempt status allows them to get away with so much shit.
Churches are tax exempt for 2 reasons. Neither of which are being fulfilled today.
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They are supposed to remain apolitical. I’ve read dozens of accounts of people lamenting the loss of the ONE place they had that was about just how to exist and the joy of being and outside political maneuvering. Even tho I don’t attend a service I can be sympathic to their loss.
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Churches are supposed to provide for the poor, shit, this is even the main narrative used to reject any government services/welfare. Yo, there’s more poor people now then I’ve ever seen in my entire life, wtf are these churches doing?
For context; christianity’s foundation are in the teachings of Jesus, the Torah and what the ancient Israelites yoinked from Zarathustra (like the concept of Satan). What does Jesus teach? Tolerance, forgiveness, charity, acts without passing judgement and without expecting payment, love thy neighbor like thy love thineself, treat travellers or foreigner’s better than you treat your own family, that giving is a holy expression of gods love - that the act is akin to communion with the holy spirit, that as children of God we can all overcome our shortcomings and learn to live holy, that bankers and interest rates are evil and beyond reproach (literally the only time he gets mad in the book), to live under the law of your local government but eschew mixing with it - Jesus told us to live our lives outside of and away from government - that the answer is always love, acceptance and humility, that faith is an action and it means giving your last of anything away and having faith that when you’re in need, God will provide. It is life on the absolute edge of desolation/death. Have you ever even experienced faith? Most people have not.
THAT religion sounds beautiful. I’ve met maybe 3 actual Christians in my entire life and they are bright lights in a sea of darkness. Wonderful, amazing people. I can see why a religion would spring from Jesus’ teachings. Heaven probably only has like 300 people in it. But they are literally the best 300 people ever. After meeting them, you wouldn’t miss anyone not there…
