Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: The Family Research Council, a Very Powerful Right-Wing Lobbying Group, is Designated a Church? C'mon Man.
The Family Research Council “True Blue” Award received by Right-Wing Congresswoman (VA) Virginia Foxx. (Virginia Foxx)
August 23, 2022
By Bill Berkowitz
The Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council (FRC) is one of the nation’s most powerful conservative evangelical activist “family values” lobbying groups. Why has this highly partisan lobbying outfit been granted a special tax status as an “association of churches.”
That’s what forty members of Congress are trying to figure out. They recently asked the IRS and the Treasury “to investigate what the lawmakers termed an ‘alarming pattern’ of right-wing advocacy groups registering with the tax agency as churches, a move that allows the organizations to shield themselves from some financial reporting requirements and makes it easier to avoid audits.”
The FRC, founded in 1983 by right-wing religious leaders, “is one example of an alarming pattern in the last decade — right-wing advocacy groups self-identifying as ‘churches’ and applying for and receiving church status,” the representatives wrote.
Branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the FRC’s website claims it is “a nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-centered philosophy of public life,” noting that it provides “policy research and analysis for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government.” The organization actively lobbies against access to pornography, embryonic stem-cell research, abortion, divorce, and LGBTQ rights.
Under the longtime leadership of its president, Tony Perkins, a proud supporter of Donald Trump, the organization has thrived politically and financially. In 2019, Perkins was appointment as the chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, FRC is an anti-LGBTQ hate group with a history of “working against abortion and stem cell research, [and] fighting pornography and LGBTQ equality,” and an organization that “often makes false claims about the LGBTQ community based on discredited research and junk science.”
ProPublica reported that the organization “sought and received reclassification from a standard tax-exempt charity to an ‘association of churches’ in 2020.”
According to ProPublica, “In its application for church status, the organization said it met 11 of the 14 characteristics that the IRS uses to determine whether an organization is a church, including an established place of worship — a chapel in the organization’s Washington office building, at which it said it holds services attended by more than 65 people. (Someone who answered the phone at the office said the group doesn’t offer church services.) The organization said its association comprises nearly 40,000 ‘partner churches’ that must affirm a statement of faith to join; it did not offer the names of those partners on its form to the IRS or provide them to ProPublica.”
As Chrissy Stroop reported for Religion Dispatches, the FRC gambit is not a new development. “Beginning under Trump and continuing under Biden, organizations like the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Liberty Counsel, and the American Family Association have lined up to be granted church status, describing themselves as “associations of churches”—a designation that really only makes sense for denominations with member churches, which they are not.”
Stroop, an ex-evangelical writer, speaker, and advocate, and coeditor of the essay anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church, added: “If FRC can have ‘church’ status while exercising major influence on the government in a way that is directly harmful to citizens who are members of marginalized groups—women and queer folks in particular—then the entire American approach to nonprofit status needs to be overhauled root and branch. Unless and until that’s possible, church status shouldn’t grant tax exemption or freedom from government oversight of church financials.”
FRC Action will be holding it second annual Pray Vote Stand Summit in Atlanta, Georgia on September 14-16. According to its website, FRC Action “will equip and encourage believers as we discuss current cultural issues impacting faith, family, and freedom and evaluate these through the lens of a biblical worldview.” Among other activies will be a “Candidate and School Board Training,” and an “Ask Anything!” session – with “Free Pizza,” for college and high school students “can ask anything about today’s controversial issues.”
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