Why a former minister is challenging churches' tax privileges in US
When Dan Barker was a Pentecostal minister in California, he knew he could exclude his clergy housing allowance from his income tax returns, taking advantage of an IRS benefit that the federal government grants to “ministers of the Gospel” – though not to anyone else.
Back then, he didn’t give much thought to this special social benefit, which today gives American ministers a tax break worth some $800 million a year. Today, his efforts stand behind the ruling of a federal judge in Wisconsin who declared this benefit a violation of the separation of church and state.
In the 1970s, Mr. Barker was never that concerned about the nitty gritty of social policy. And he felt many of his fellow religious conservatives, who were getting involved in the emerging “religious right,” were too caught up with worldly concerns.
“I was a pure soul-winner,” Mr. Barker says. “I never preached about homosexuality or abortion or birth control or race or anything relevant to the so-called culture wars.”
By age 16, he was working for the televangelist Kathryn Kuhlman – a forerunner of what today is known as “the prosperity gospel.”
“I was the true believer, a Bible-believing fundamentalist,” says
