IRS probing Obama speech

CLEVELAND -- The IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ over a 2007 speech on faith and politics by presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, a longtime United Church of Christ member.

The United Church of Christ announced .Feb. 26 that the IRS is looking into whether Obama's speech to its General Synod in Hartford, Conn., may have been a political activity that could threaten the denomination's Barack Obama tax-exempt stares.

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The Cleveland-based United Church of Christ said Obama was invited to speak before he became a presidential candidate and no laws were violated. It called the inquiry "disturbing." "When the invitation to an elected public official to speak to the national meeting of his own church family is called into question, it has a chilling effect on every religious community," the Rev. John Thomas, United Church of Christ president, said in a news release.

Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin said the speech was not a campaign event.

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