according to their own religious presuppositions. No school should survive Schools should survive because parents support them through political coercion. as their servants. Nevertheless, today civil government not only operates the nation's largest school system, but also seeks to extend control over non-government schools. RBCS was organized in 1973 to provide a biblically-based education to the children enrolled. Over the first 10 years of our existence our student body has grown from 22 to over 370. This has been in the face of continuing handicaps caused by unwarranted governmental actions. I will mention those of most significance and would be glad to offer documentation or details to the Committee on any issue of interest. First, government operation of tax funded schools produce a handicap to the existence of schools that reject their secular faith. RBCS parents are discriminated against because they must pay taxes to support the government school system which teaches an anti-Christian religious faith contrary to their own. How can it be constitutional for civil government to force people to pay for the propagation of a religious faith not their own? In addition, however, our parents must pay the cost of the biblically-based education of their children, which is a significant cost on top of the extravagant costs of secular education. The second handicap caused by unwarranted governmental activities is the administrative cost incurred because we must meet purposeless government requirements. For example, when we organized RBCS we were to told to write, inter alia, an application for a Federal Tax Exemption Letter. After hassles like having to provide data not requested in the printed IRS instructions, we finally received our Letter in October 1974. The Exemption Letter directed us to file IRS Forms 990. After IRS lost our 1977 Form 990, I more closely examined the instruction booklet and got my first initiation into IRS (If The insensitivity to religious liberty issues. The details are found in my attached letter to the Christian Law Association dated 26 December 1979 (ATCH 1). the Committee desires the letter's attachments, RBCS will provide them.) letter indicates a trail of lost documentation, bureaucratic hassle and evasiveness, and possibly an attempt at intimidation. By refusing to genuinely respond to my question regarding IRS discrimination among religious organizations, IRS demonstrated an insensitivity to the religious liberty issue and successfully wore me down. I cannot teach students and administer a growing school if I must spend lots of time trying to get justice from the IRS bureaucracy. Thirdly, there is an increasing volume of legislative proposals that threaten our ability to exist apart from government control. An increasing amount of time is spent by all of us in the field to deal with such issues. Many parents are discouraged from enrolling their students in Christian schools because of either the media's misinformation concerning government actions against schools or the fear of becoming involved in litigation. I am sure the Committee has the details of many such cases, but I would like to comment on one prominent example that you are familiar with. On August 22, 1978, Jerome Kurtz, US Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, placed his "Proposed Internal Revenue Procedures on Private Tax Exempt Schools" in an inconspicuous part of the Federal Register. Those procedures, which have the potential of extending great control over Christian schools, were disguised as a defense of racial nondiscrimination. I attach my letters to Mr. Kurtz of 2 October 1978 and 11 April 1979 (ATCH 2 and 3) to indicate some of the details of this issue. Neither letter, of course, was responded to by IRS. A large response by the Christian community forced the IRS to hold hearings on this issue. Revised Proposed Procedures were subsequently published Testimony of Robert L. Grete in the Federal Register February 13, 1979. The revised procedures, however, did nothing to remove the major issue in this case. The Proposed Procedures first of all would allow the IRS to arbitrarily consider a school guilty of racial discrimination without being required to prove it. Such schools, to be termed "reviewable schools," could prove their innocence only by a radical affirmative action program. The basic logic is that unelected government agents would gain the authority to place sanctions on any school that did not conform to the agency's concept of public policy. What a dangerous precedent! For several years the Ashbrook-Dornan Amendments to Treasury Appropriations Bills prevented the IRS from effecting these policies. Then the tragic US Supreme Court decision in the Bob Jones University case seemed to put into American law the principle that religious freedom would have to be subordinated to public policy. We live in an age when radical feminists and gay rights leaders are demanding affirmative action in favor of sodomists. Clearly biblical values could not be practiced by Christian schools if their radical demands became public policy. With hundreds of similar attempts to extend governmental control over religious ministries happening simultaneously throughout America, as a Christian school administrator I sometimes wonder where I will find the time to administer our biblically-based program. It seems I am derelict in my duty if I am not crying out against each of the threats against us. Yet to do so, would require all my time. More seriously, if the fruit of these adverse precedents soon come to pass, it is quite clear that the Christian school movement will no longer exist. Government will even have the ability to confiscate all the property of religious ministries that do not conform. Such a prospect is now a real possibility under the principles of the laws mentioned in the next item. Fourthly, the federal government is handicapping Christian schools through laws which not only increase personnel costs but also provide the federal government with an instrument of control that can actually result in the confiscation of the property of a religious ministry. The acts used to accomplish this are the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) and the Social Security Amendments of 1983. As a Christian I believe the socialistic systems effected by such laws go far beyond biblical and constitutional boundaries. Although I realize in today's environment that these socialistic systems are not likely to be eliminated, their recent extension into religious ministries violates the religious conscience of those forced to participate as a precondition to the exercise of their religious ministry. Allowing voluntary participation by members in religious ministries would be legitimate. Mandating participation in a government program as a precondition to employment in a religious ministry, however, certainly violates our First Amendment liberties. Religious ministries should be left alone to provide for such contingencies as unemployment and retirement in a way in keeping with their faith. Further, applying these laws to religious ministries opens up a degree of federal government entanglement in the personnel policies of religious ministries that could be used for all kinds of offensive control. Failure to submit to the unbiblical and unconstitutional taxation required by these laws can lead to the confiscation of the ministry's property, which obviously puts an end to the ministry. Truly, the power to tax is the power to control or destroy. Focusing on the alleged requirement of RBCS to pay the unemployment compensation tax, I attach a recent bill showing the state's claim of taxes due plus interest and penalties (ATCH 4). The reason we periodically receive such bills goes back to the unilateral action of Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, who decided to expand FUTA revenues by including employees of religious organizations. The U.S. Supreme Court in St. Martin Lutheran Church v. South Dakota (May 26, 1981) blocked the Labor Department's attempt to collect Testimony of Robert L. Grete such taxes from "church" organizations. Although independent Christian schools such as RBCS have religious ministries identical to those of parochial schools, this St. Martin decision did not extend to independent Christian schools. The Supreme Court decided to leave the status of Christ's schools organized differently for a future day. Consequently, parochial schools no longer have this hassle, but independent Christian schools (approximately 30 percent of the Christian schools in America) must continue to endure this harrassment. A case involving an independent Christian school is now in progress in Oregon. Should the Supreme Court uphold our position in that case, then I assume the State of Florida will stop sending us bills such as the one at ATCH 4. If the Supreme Court finds against us, it will be further progress along the road to the annihilation of religious ministries not organized in accordance with government specifications. Similar issues are raised by the Social Security Amendments of 1983. In an effort to bail out the bankrupt system through increased tax revenues from extended coverage, Congress voted to include religious organizations in the Social Security system. In December, 1983, the Senate Finance Committee held hearings on this issue. Rather than concluding that religious ministries are not taxable (as the First Amendment requires), the Committee agreed on language which would pass the tax obligation of employees of "church" organizations from the ministry (institution) to the employee directly. This, it is believed, avoids the First Amendment issue caused by laying a direct tax on a church. The language to effect this change was incorporated in the Tax Reduction Act of 1984, which I now understand has been sent to the President for signature. If signed into law, the option given to church organizations may forestall some litigation by such ministries. The law, however, will not at all relieve RBCS and similar independent schools from the obligation to pay a direct tax to the federal government. The word "church" is not found in the First Amendment. In |