In a move to shine light on one of Washington’s most secretive and perhaps most powerful organizations, a group of Columbus pastors is challenging the tax-exempt status of a boardinghouse for Congress members known as the C Street Center.
The 13 pastors from mainstream Christian denominations plan to file a complaint today with the Internal Revenue Service contending that the center is not a church and that its tax classification as one “poses a threat to the integrity and legitimacy of all religious organizations in the United States.”
In their 10-page complaint, the pastors say they are concerned that “an exclusive residential club for powerful officials may be masquerading as a church.”
C Street’s activities, they say, “are shrouded in secrecy. Its powerful residents reportedly adhere to a code of silence. This lack of transparency shows a disdain for the political, legislative and economic accountability that define constitutional democracy.”
Full story: Columbus-area pastors try to lift veil on mysterious D.C. organization | Columbus Dispatch Politics