The Fellowship Foundation, sponsor of the National Prayer Breakfast, should be investigated by the IRS, argues a group of Ohio ministers calling themselves the Clergy VOICE.

 

The activist group wrote to the IRS commissioner claiming the Fellowship Foundation violated its tax-exempt status by accepting money in 2004 from the Missouri-based Islamic American Relief Agency. The Islamic organization was accused of supporting terrorists, raided by federal agents and eventually shut down.

 

Richard Carver, president of the Fellowship Foundation, said his group did receive two $25,000 checks and confirmed that the money was sent to former Rep. Mark D. Siljander (R-Michigan) to lobby the Senate to try to remove the Islamic American Relief Agency from the terrorist list.

 

The Foundation, which has an annual budget of $16 million, first staged the National Prayer Breakfast in 1953. Every president since then as attended the Breakfast at least once during his term of office.

 

Since 2004, the Foundation has sponsored trips abroad for seven members of Congress: Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama); Rep. Mike Doyle, (D.-Pennsylvania); Joe Pitts, (R-Pennsylvania); John Carter, (R.-Texas), former Rep. Frank Wolf, (R.-Virginia); Sen. Tom Coburn, (R.-Oklahoma), and Sen. John Ensign, (R.-Nevada).

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Religious Group Took Alleged Terrorist Money (by R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post)

Columbus Pastors File Complaint against Fellowship Foundation (by Joe Hallett and Meredith Heagney, Columbus Dispatch)

The Fellowship (Wikipedia)