The UCC took great care to ensure that Senator Obama's appearance
met appropriate legal and moral standards. We are confident that, in the
end, the IRS investigation will confirm that no laws were violated.
However, in order to adequately defend ourselves as well as protect the
broader principle of the freedom of religious communities to entertain
questions of faith and public life, we will need to secure expert legal
counsel, and the cost of this defense, we are told, could approach or exceed
six figures. This is troubling news. That's why we are turning to you
- our members and supporters - to ask for your financial support to help
offset these unforeseen legal expenses.

Each year, generous UCC members contribute faithfully to "Our
Church's Wider Mission," our shared fund for mission and ministry in
our conferences, nationally, and globally. We seek your contributions to
ensure that money given for mission will not be needed to pay legal bills,
instead of ministry needs. Thus the reason we've created a new UCC Legal
Fund to help keep to a minimum the impact of this investigation on
OCWM funds.

Will you make a contribution to the UCC Legal Fund today? If
you are interested, more information can be found online at
https://secure.ga3.org/03/ucc_legal_fund.
News of this IRS investigation is disturbing, because it has a chilling effect
on every religious community when an invitation to an elected public
official to speak to the national meeting of his own church family is
called into question.