As it happens, both the churches I attend are in the news for political reasons. The LDS Church is still most politically notable for its support of Proposition 8 (i.e., opposition to same-sex marriage) in California. More recently in Utah, the LDS Church has publicly opposed a medical marijuana bill and a hate crimes bill. The Episcopal Diocese of Utah (or its Bishop, not sure of the formalities here) supports the hate crimes bill in question, and is also notable recently for support of Medicaid expansion in Utah, and opposition to gun violence. (To be clear, I do not represent either organization, and if I have misstated anyone's position, that's my mistake.)
Recently, I've seen a lot of complaints about the LDS influence in politics, with suggestions that the LDS church should stay out of politics entirely, or should lose its tax-exempt status for its political involvement. I don't see the same complaints about Episcopalians in politics, but maybe there's a different crowd of people complaining about that.
What Should a Church Do?
My view is this: I think it's wholly appropriate for a church to be politically involved. It's a pretty poor church that concerns itself only with the next world; it's better to do some good in this world. Whatever good your church wants to do may well involve lobbying legislators or encouraging voters. A church can do a lot of good on its own (e.g., by feeding the poor), and can also magnify that good by political involvement (e.g., by supporting state programs to feed the poor). I appreciate churches' neutrality as to parties or candidates, so as not to exert undue influence on voters, but I'm glad to see churches get involved in political issues like caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, or protecting the vulnerable.
What I don't like is the oversized influence of the LDS Church on Utah politics. I don't think condoms or birth control pills should be illegal in any predominantly Catholic country, just on the Catholic church's say-so, and I don't think certain hate crimes should be legal in Utah just on the LDS Church's say-so. I'm a lot more comfortable with the merits of the latest Episcopal positions than the latest LDS positions, but in a free country, some churches are going to support things I don't. However, I'm also more comfortable with recent Episcopal political efforts than with LDS efforts, because I hope that the Episcopal positions will be carefully considered, but I fear that the LDS positions will be uncritically obeyed.
What to do, though? If the people primarily believe what one religion tells them, than you might get the same political result without a church's explicit political involvement. Maybe the citizens of a predominantly Catholic country don't want contraception to be legal, even if the Catholic church itself isn't lobbying legislators. I don't honestly have a good solution here, other than to say that maybe the churches that are giants should be particularly careful to tread lightly. Still, if a church considers it a religious duty to exert its influence on a particular matter (e.g., to oppose something regarded as a serious sin), I don't imagine that me saying "please tread lightly" is going to carry much weight -- why would any organization voluntarily surrender its influence on something that really matters? (What we really need to do is convince the LDS Church that Utah's air quality is a serious sin in need of extensive political action.)
One thing I hope we can all agree on, though, is that church is better when all are welcome. Whatever your church does politically, you should be free to disagree like adults, without feeling like you don't belong. I don't know what it's like to be a politically conservative Episcopalian -- I hope they feel welcome. I do know what its like to be a politically liberal Mormon: it frequently feels unsafe to express any opinion to other church members. You may well be accused of being insufficiently faithful, or not actually believing the fundamental tenet of the LDS Church, that God speaks to modern prophets. You may well be accused of being a wolf in sheep's clothing. When Joseph Smith was asked how he governed so many people, his answer was "I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves." The key part of that, though, is that you have to actually trust people to govern themselves, even when they don't do what you want.
Taxation
A final note on taxation: It turns out I don't actually have a very strong preference when it comes to taxation. It doesn't seem to me like the tax exemption for churches is a fundamental component of religious freedom. I mean, I give money to churches for various purposes, and I'd like to see that money used for those purposes and not for taxation. I've already paid my taxes, so my preference would naturally be for that money not to be taxed again. But taxation isn't the end of the world, as long as it's fairly done.
(Okay, maybe if I itemized deductions, my donations would be deducted from my income, so that the donated money would actually be untaxed. As it happens, the standard deduction has always been larger than what I could itemize, so my donations have never affected my tax liability. Still, the point of making donations tax-deductible is that you can donate more if you're spending untaxed money; there's little point to doing that if the state turns around and taxes the church. I'm not saying that the tax deduction is a fundamental component of religious freedom either, though.)
In the end, legislatures can appropriately judge whether to tax churches, or to tax people on the income they donate to churches. Of course, I'd like my donations to go further by being tax free on both ends, but I really only care that there are fair rules, and that they are fairly applied. If a church complies with the rules, but still engages in some undesirable behavior, maybe start by looking at the rules, not at the church. For example, if the rule is just that a church has to have a primarily non-political purpose, large churches can do more politicking, since they also do more non-political stuff. Maybe that's appropriate, since large churches have more people, but maybe it lets large churches concentrate the effort of worldwide members to affect an issue in a much smaller place. A different rule might be better, depending on whether or not you think it's good for a large church to influence a local issue.
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