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Loading ...Political pulpit challenge
09.09.2008 8:29am EDT
(Columbus, Ohio) A group of ministers filed a complaint Monday with the Internal Revenue Service to stop a conservative organization from encouraging pastors to endorse or oppose political candidates.
The group of 55 religious leaders from Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and other states said the actions by the Alliance Defense Fund jeopardize the constitutional separation of church and state.“The rightful place of religious leaders and communities of faith in American life is not in electoral politics,” said the Rev. Eric Williams, a minister with the liberal United Church of Christ.
The Phoenix-based conservative group has enlisted ministers around the country to invite investigations by the IRS by giving political sermons Sept. 28, a day the group has dubbed “Pulpit Freedom Sunday.” The alliance says it will represent any churches targeted by the IRS in lawsuits against the government.
“Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without any fear of punishment,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the alliance. “They shouldn’t be intimidated into giving up those constitutional rights.”
The defense fund says it’s looking for a lawsuit to challenge a 1954 IRS restriction that led to the prohibition against pastors endorsing candidates at the risk of losing their churches’ tax exempt status.
A message seeking comment was left Monday at the IRS.
The nonprofit alliance has about 40 staff attorneys and about 1,200 volunteer lawyers around the country who handle the group’s lawsuits pro bono.
Lawsuits filed by the group include challenges of California’s gay marriage law, supporting the right of an Illinois student to wear an anti-gay T-shirt, and in defense of allowing a portrait of Jesus in a Louisiana courthouse.
Three former IRS officials, including Mortimer Caplin, the agency’s commissioner under President Kennedy, also asked the IRS on Monday to investigate the Alliance Defense Fund’s initiative.
Marcus Owens, a former director of the IRS exempt organizations division, questioned the ethics of lawyers encouraging ministers to break the law.
“It is the role of attorneys to assist their clients in understanding the law,” Owens said. “It is not at all clear, under any set of ethical rules applicable to members of the bar, that one can actively aid, assist and encourage a violation of the law.”
According to defense fund’s promotional materials about its initiative, “Each pastor will prepare the sermon with the legal assistance of the ADF to ensure maximum effectiveness in challenging the IRS.”
Stanley said that information is being misinterpreted.
“What we’re doing here is working within the framework of American law that allows for these types of civil rights challenges, and allows an individual who believes their constitutional rights are violated to have their day in court,” he said.
Many of the ministers signing the complaint against the ADF are members of the liberal United Church of Christ.
The IRS investigated the denomination earlier this year over allegations it violated IRS rules when it hosted Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at its convention in Hartford, Conn., in 2007. The tax agency ultimately found no violations had occurred.
If religion is about the soul and getting into heaven in the after life, I think it should stay on a pure topic. They shoudl just preach to their choirs, and not mine.
Anyone or any organization which purports to be religious and does political maneuvering of any sort, is a POLITICAL organization, and NOT a religious one. If it demonstrates as a politically-minded group, then it should be regulated and taxed as such. They are trying to serve two masters, and that is just plainly wrong.
Of course, I think all organizations about “this religious mythology” of theirs should be regulated and perhaps muzzled unless they are in the temples of their gods. I sure do not want to hear them rattling on in public. They all are the same as that Phelps Klan in Westboro.
And lastly, properly-done science should trump religion in all cases.
I applaud anyone who is working to these same goals. Perhaps some of these organizations see their immediate demise if the religious nuts have it their way.
The separation of church and state runs both ways. The state keeps out of the churches and the churches keep out of the state affairs. Break down the wall and the interference runs both ways. Church finances then become public information and they become accountable to all laws like the rest of us. If I were a minister, I would think long and hard about whether or not I want that wall torn down.
Even a blind man can see that conservative churches function like a PAC, both in theory and practice. The question is not if they should be taxed and held accountable, but rather why they have not lost their tax-exempt status long before now.
“Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit … “ Where in the bible does it state which political candidates to endorse or oppose?
It’s one thing for churches to encourage it’s members to be active in the community and vote. But, they cross the line from religious freedom into politics when they tell parishioners which candidates and ballot measures to vote for and against.
This pure political action by religion and it’s actions and monetary activity should be reported as any other PAC.
“Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without any fear of punishment,”
Yeak, like you should put the victims of incest to death, and like you should deny communion to thedisabled, you should stone disobedient children, and don’t at lobster or shrimp ‘cuz it’s an abomination!!! (Well, at least according to the Bibl, anyway.)
How come I get the distinct feeling every time this issue rears its ugly head that it really only means the ‘right’ to proclaim queers are goin’ to hell?
How about the injunction against women speaking out in church? or the part about women being subservient to men? How do you reconcile a woman being in a position of authority over men when the bible says it wrong?
This is the next great battle – to end the right of churches to run defacto political campaigns to put their religious points of view as part of our laws.
And besides fixing this problem, we need a legal mechanism to hold churches responsible for using their parishioners and the general public as proxies who commit crimes, up to and including murder.
Preaching the “word of God” does not give one the right, no matter how carefully they twist their words, to provide the fodder that encourages serious crimes, eg murder, beatings, and discrimination and denigration of gay people, who are entitled to equality under the law.
I can just hear the Catholic and right wing protestant churches (of the likes Palin belongs to) screaming.
But they would be screaming a different tune if the Mosque down the street was telling their parishoniers that Christians were Infidels, that the Koran demanded their death, etc. Amazing how our right wing would change.
It proves that they are nothing but hypocrites, liars, and haters. A pox upon the human race.