All Saints Episcopal Church seems to embody staid, moneyed old Pasadena. Facing City Hall, the 80-year-old Gothic Revival church has glowing stained-glass windows by Tiffany and the local Judson Studios.
But though the medieval-looking church exudes serenity and other-worldliness, the 3,500-member congregation has been speaking out on controversial issues since an All Saints rector protested the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. That tradition continues, with the recent disclosure that the IRS is threatening the church's tax-exempt status because of an antiwar sermon there last year.
The possible government action, announced from the pulpit last Sunday, has rallied new supporters who wonder if the activist church is being targeted because of its generally liberal politics -- which the IRS denies. And the investigation has focused new attention on a congregation that regards fighting for peace and justice as central to its mission, a stance that both attracts many to the church and repels some who wonder if conservatives are truly welcome there.
"This is an unusual place," said Zelda Kennedy, a Bahamian-born Episcopal priest and graduate of Yale Divinity School. As head of pastoral care at All Saints, she takes the Eucharist to the bedridden, and she recently launched a knitting ministry whose knitters pray as they make shawls for the ill and the bereaved.
"A church like All Saints is called to be God's presence in this world, to be God's hands and feet and voice," she said. "There are so many churches that are satisfied with the status quo. All Saints is not."
The sermon that prompted the Internal Revenue Service investigation was delivered by former Rector George Regas two days before the 2004 presidential election.
An imaginary dialogue between Jesus and candidates Sen. John F. Kerry and President Bush, the sermon had Jesus chiding both for supporting the war in Iraq and speaking so little about the poor.
"President Bush, you have not made dramatically clear what have been the human consequences of the war in Iraq," Regas said.
The IRS has said the sermon may have crossed the line from protected free speech and religious expression to intervention in a political campaign, which the tax code prohibits for nonprofit organizations. The church says it did not break the tax rules and plans a vigorous defense.
All Saints Rector J. Edwin Bacon said he will preach about the IRS inquiry from the pulpit this morning.
