Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 8, 1995                   TAG: 9502080040
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                  LENGTH: Medium

IRS WARNS 5 CHURCHES ON POLITICS

In a letter to U.S. Rep. Owen Pickett, D-Virginia Beach, IRS Commissioner Margaret Milner Richardson said the churches - which were visited by several IRS agents last spring - were contacted in an ``informal and nonthreatening way.''

Richardson also acknowledged, however, that the agents' actions ``did not comply'' with IRS regulations. Those require that a high-ranking IRS official must ``reasonably believe'' a church is violating the tax code before any action is taken.

Churches and other tax-exempt organizations are forbidden from endorsing or working on behalf of particular political candidates.

While the names of the churches have not been released because of IRS privacy laws, congressional sources have said that all five were in Norfolk and have black congregations.

An internal IRS inquiry found ``no basis to suggest that the service has targeted black churches or has any sort of selected enforcement program directed towards them,'' Richardson said.

Pickett, who declined to be interviewed, previously has described the pastors as ``intimidated and afraid of saying anything about the issue.''

The Rev. Raymond Dean, pastor of the 1,700-member Mount Gilead Baptist Church, said an IRS agent approached him the week after former Gov. Douglas Wilder, former state Attorney General Mary Sue Terry and Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Newport News, attended a service at his church last spring.

``An agent came to my church and told me that she wasn't there to do anything but just to give me a slap on my wrist - to let me know that we stood to lose possibly our exemption status as a charitable organization,'' Dean said.

``I said, `Wait a minute, how can you say that about our church? When have you visited and asked Pat Robertson's church?' Had she visited the church of [the Rev. Jerry] Falwell, Liberty Baptist in Lynchburg? I said, `I don't understand how those guys are openly and boldly and publicly entertaining political people and you haven't visited them.'''

``I will never go against the IRS ruling as far as our tax-exempt status,'' Dean said, ``but any politician is welcome to Mount Gilead Baptist Church. But they won't be there politicking, soliciting votes.''