Hurd illegally used his position as pastor of the West Hill United Methodist Church to endorse Republican political candidates, including Mitt Romney.
Hurd told a crowd of hundreds of people, “I haven't told anybody else this. I'll tell this secret out here. Next Thursday, when I go to the caucuses, I'm going to cast my vote for Governor Mitt Romney.”
When a New York Times reporter asked Hurd about his endorsement of Romney, Hurd admitted that he knew it was illegal to do so. “I don't think I'm supposed to endorse a candidate. I hope I don't get in trouble,” Hurd said.
Churches are allowed to endorse political candidates, but only if they relinquish their tax-exempt status. No non-profit organization, whether it is secular or religious, can both receive political donations and have tax-exempt status.
This law is meant to prevent political corruption of the sort that Morris Hurd engaged in.
Morris Hurd is the former pastor of the West Hill United Methodist Church of Burlington, Iowa.
Hurd hasn’t been a pastor for years.
During his time as a pastor in Burlington, Hurd also worked as a Republican Party political operative.
Hurd was the board president and treasurer of the Iowa Christian Alliance, formerly known as the Christian Coalition of Iowa.
During his time working at the Iowa Christian Alliance, Morris Hurd used the West Hill United Methodist Church as part of a money laundering operation.
In this illegal scheme, Morris Hurd told wealthy people who wanted to donate money to Republican politicians to instead donate the money to the West Hill United Methodist Church.
Because the West Hill United Methodist Church is a religious organization, donations to the church were tax exempt for the donors.
Then, Morris Hurd would funnel donors’ money from the West Hill United Methodist Church into the Iowa Christian Alliance, which as a partisan political organization could not receive tax-exempt donations.
Iowa Republican activist Ted Storer explained the scheme: “The facts are, I was told that if I were to write a check to this church, I would get credit for being a sponsor at Christian Alliance events. I was advised that if I wrote the check to the church I would be credited.”
Donald Trump achieved victory in the Iowa caucuses due to support from the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition. That victory enabled him to clinch the Republican Party presidential nomination for 2024.
That makes the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition the most politically influential Christian Nationalist group in the country… but very little has been known about this organization, until now.
The book Donald Trump’s Army of God: Christian Nationalism in the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition reveals the terrorism, faith healing, fraud, demonic obsessions, and fantasies of global religious genocide that pervade the Christian Nationalist movement that Donald Trump has promised to take all the way to the White House.
It’s a terrifying new political reality, but we can’t afford to look the other way.
The Iowa Faith Leader Coalition is a radical political organization that violates American law
Let’s learn more about the extremist Christian Nationalists who are members of Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.