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The Internal Revenue Service has notified the United Church of Christ that it has opened an investigation into possible “political activities” connected with Senator Barack Obama’s speech at the denomination’s national convention last year.

UCC president John H. Thomas termed the investigation “disturbing,” but said that church officials took great care to see that Obama’s appearance at the UCC General Synod meeting last June in Hartford, Connecticut, “met appropriate legal and moral standards.”

Wiley S. Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, who was notified last month by the IRS that it was investigating his endorsements of Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, has again urged his followers to pray that heavenly wrath should befall Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United blew the whistle last August on Drake’s backing of Huckabee on his church-affiliated radio show and in a press release distributed on church letterhead—acts that could result in loss of tax exemption.