Ministers to Defy I.R.S. by Endorsing Candidates
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By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 25, 2008
Defying a federal tax law they consider unjust, 33 ministers across the country will take to their pulpits this Sunday and publicly endorse a candidate for president.

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They plan to then send copies of their sermons to the Internal Revenue Service, hoping to provoke a challenge to a law that bars religious organizations and other nonprofits that accept tax-deductible contributions from involvement in partisan political campaigns.

The protest, called Pulpit Freedom Sunday, was organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, a consortium of Christian lawyers that fights for conservative religious and social causes. When the fund first announced the protest this year, it said it planned to have 50 ministers taking part. As of Thursday it said it had hundreds of volunteers, but had selected only 33 who were fully aware of the risks and benefits.

The fund did not make the list of participants public, saying that it had received phone calls threatening to disrupt the sermons. One participant reached by telephone said he could not talk about it.

Another participant, the Rev. Luke Emrich of New Life Church, a small evangelical church in West Bend, Wis., demurred when asked which candidate he planned to endorse on Sunday.

"I would say endorsement is a strong word," he said. "I'm planning to make a recommendation. I'm going to evaluate each candidate's positions in light of Scripture and make a recommendation to my congregation as to which candidate aligns more so."

The fund provides legal support for religious conservatives who have long felt aggrieved at what they say are limits on their religious expression.

Organizers said they wanted a range of clergy of various faiths and political persuasions to join the protest, but acknowledged that the participants might be "weighted" toward the conservative end of the spectrum and more likely to support the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, than the Democrat, Senator Barack Obama.

Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said: "This is not something these churches want to do in secrecy and hiding. In fact, they don't believe they're doing anything wrong. They don't believe they're violating the law.

"What they're doing is talking to their congregations about biblical issues related to candidates and elections, and they believe they have the constitutional right to do that."

The protest is challenging an amendment to the tax code passed by Congress in 1954 saying that charitable organizations known as 501(c)(3)'s, which accept tax-deductible contributions, cannot intervene in political campaigns. The legislation was intended to prevent nonprofit organizations from funneling money and resources to political candidates.

Many members of the clergy support the ban on politicking from the pulpit. Nearly 30 clergy members, some leaders of denominations, signed a pledge recently vowing to refrain from endorsing candidates. The pledge was distributed by the Interfaith Alliance, a liberal religious advocacy group.

In the last decade, church politicking has drawn increasing scrutiny. Organizations like Americans United for Separation of Church and State have made a show of reporting churches to the I.R.S. to deter transgressors.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, of Americans United, said of the protest on Sunday: "They act like this is a massive act of civil disobedience, but this is not like sitting in at a lunch counter. This is trying to change the law to give certain conservative churches even more political clout."

A spokesman for the I.R.S. said that the agency was aware of Pulpit Freedom Sunday and "will monitor the situation and take action as appropriate."

Experts in tax law say it is more likely that the Alliance Defense Fund and its lawyers will face legal sanctions than the ministers, who may simply receive warnings to avoid politicking in the future.
(NYT)

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For two hundred years, we have lived under a system of law that recognizes the necessary separation between matters of the public weal, and matters of religious belief.

Our Constitution asserts there shall be no law in favor of a religious institution, and that there shall be no religious test for public office.

An effort to inject any dogmatic religious scripture into the political process is, by its nature, an effort to break this separation and to invest political power into the organs of religion.

THis is a deep and possibly fatal error. It returns us from post-Enlightenment thought into the gloomy doctrinaire mindset of the Middle Ages, but with much more powerful weapons and toys.

It discards progress and projects a humiliating abandonment of reason in favor of safe but misguided herd-form of thought, in which the unqualified use the unreal to control the thoughts of the unreasoning.

Let us hope this potential crisis in our national commitment to seek the best forms of secular life, independent of the baneful dictation of churches, will not break the back of the nation. Injecting imaginary playmates into the serious business of the nation is a huge mistake.



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