The AG of Guam has invited ICE to come and ply their trade there…

There was an attempt, way back when, to revoke the tax exempt status of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA because the priest there was openly critical of the Bush administration. The argument was that, by criticizing Bush he was endorsing a Democratic candidate and churches at the time were not allowed to endorse political candidates. Of course, Trump changed that (and, possibly, his only legal leg to stand on in regards to this threat). Unless there’s an amendment that makes space for “not hurting Twumpy’s widdle feewings” then, yeah, I don’t think there’s much he can do to pick on particular denominations, etc. But with Trump, nothing is assured.

EDIT: I see on the original post that Trump’s statement that he removed the clause forbidding churches from endorsing candidates is actually false. Welp.

Someone knows their clergy tax code! I agree with your idea of expansion. That’s something I’d not considered and think it makes a lot of sense.

As we predicted! I’m a priest in the Episcopal Church and at our recent clergy conference we were made aware of a letter being issued by a large number of our bishops, to be published in one of the big papers, denouncing ICE (it was distributed to us this past Saturday, but I have no idea if it’s shown up in one of the papers or not). We discussed the possibility of Trump getting mad and revoking our tax exempt status because of it. Dude is quite predictable lol.

I always love the assumption that the money taxed on churches will go and do the work that churches would do and not build bombs. My parishioners are already taxed to help kill people, I really don’t need their faithful contributions to be taxed again so that the US can kill more people. Maybe fix the way taxes are spent and I’ll support taxing my church. But for now, I really don’t want to see the money people give out of their sense of faithfulness to be used to pay for an extra bullet that’s going to kill someone standing in ICE’s way.

My congregation is pretty small. I know the assumption is huge megachurches and all that (and yeah, maybe those folks should be taxed because they use the religious exemptions as a loophole for some really unsavory stuff). But the 40-ish people that give what they do do so to help in what little ways they can.

More like Turning the Channel Point USA, amirite?

I’m here all week, folks!

WOW!

This makes me think of the band Everclear. Every song of theirs is exactly the same. Dun dun dun dun dun da du-un Yeah! dun dun dun dun dun da du-un Oh yeah! Insert lyrics about gardens or daddy issues. However, speed that same song up and call it “Amphetamine” and it kinda slaps.

Coldplay is a band where I can recognize that there is talent, but I just cannot like them. The songs “Clocks,” “Yellow,” and “Viva la Vida” are good. Outside of those, I just don’t like them.