Rev. Barry W. Lynn: September 2008 Archives

Well, about 35 pastors, most with the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, have issued a challenge to the Internal Revenue Service's statutory authority to prohibit preachers from endorsing or opposing candidates from the pulpit using church resources. 

To hear some people tell it, this Sunday is one of the most important days in the history of the American church.  This is the day when the church pulpits of America will be freed from the bondage of the state.  This is the day the church will finally be free!

Wait a minute.  Isn't the church in America free now?  Isn't "pulpit freedom" what our forbears demanded?  Isn't this freedom what permits the late Reverends Jerry Falwell (on the right) and William Sloane Coffin (on the left) to speak from the pulpit about the moral issues of the day no matter how many people disapproved of their comments?  Isn't this the "pulpit freedom" that inspired the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and thousands of other bold, and sometimes wildly controversial, preachers to speak what they considered "truth to power"?

Well, yes.  However, a group called the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which raked in about $31 million last year, has decided that the pulpit is not free enough.  

They oppose a law passed in 1954 that  religious groups are prohibited by the Internal Revenue Code from using their resources--including preaching time on Saturday or Sunday--to "endorse or oppose candidates for public office."

Dale Schowengerdt, an ADF attorney working on the project, told the L.A. Times: "The bottom line is that churches and pastors have a right to speak freely from the pulpit.  They should not be intimidated into silence by unconstitutional IRS regulations or rules."

In other words, the one "limitation" on receipt of a tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code--the very valuable privilege of a tax exemption--is to not turn your church into a political committee to help any candidate in a partisan fashion.  This Sunday they want preachers to deliberately violate this prohibition.

To start this discussion, Jay, let me suggest three reasons why the Alliance Defense Fund ought to call off this stunt.  We both know its director Alan Sears.  Maybe we could offer to take him to church, lunch and a movie on Sunday instead of watching pastors at his direction preach sermons including pulpit endorsements and risk losing their tax exemptions?

First, they do not have the Constitution on their side.  Indeed, a congregation called the Church at Pierce Creek did have its tax exemption yanked in 1995 for expending $44,000 in church receipts on a full page ad in USA Today demanding that the public not vote for Bill Clinton.  They went to trial; they appealed to the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia and not one judge agreed they had a First Amendment case. 

In other words, they lost and had to start a new church.  Now, if churches were losing their exemptions every week and Christendom were threatened with extinction, the ADF might have a bit more credibility.  In fact, the IRS does take its responsibility seriously and does investigate and sanction some churches when they cross the line.  Frankly, I think they give too many churches "passes" they don't deserve.

Second, most pastors want nothing to do with this scheme.  A recent survey of evangelical leaders overwhelmingly showed that they do not want to endorse candidates in their official capacity nor divert collection plate receipts to their favored candidate. This deeply divides congregations when it occurs, and in one case from the last Presidential cycle, even caused a North Carolina congregation to fire its pastor. 

And most Americans don't want their churches to endorse political candidates, either. LifeWay Research conducted a poll asking whether "it is appropriate for churches to publicly endorse candidates for public office." Seventy-five percent said "no!"

Even more Americans (85 percent) disagreed with using church resources to campaign for candidates for public office.

Finally, were this law changed, it would create a giant loophole in campaign finance reform laws--allowing churches to collect money from anyone and then use it to influence voters.  Local churches in some areas have great power.  Mega-ministry television preachers like Pat Robertson have even greater power.  Use it to discuss issues; not endorse candidates.  

Jay, you are half right in discussing the reception (I'm not sure why you characterized it as a "celebration") to be given by 25 significant religious groups for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  He is, of course, a revolting figure in so many ways.  He is the puppet of the most extreme clerics in Iran.  His comments about the Holocaust, about gay people (who don't exist in Iran, he noted to an audience at Columbia University earlier this year), the death penalty for heretical religious views, and so many other topics should shock the conscience of any thinking persons.  It was a mistake to offer him the opportunity to give an address on any topic, including "religious contributions to peace", a subject about which he has a monumental level of ignorance.

Jay, I know you were at the annual Religion Newswriters Conference the other day and may have seen first-hand pollster John Green's startling-to-some news that after all the hyped up effort by Democratic Party officials to go after evangelicals, evangelicals are sticking with Republicans.  It appears that the numbers are virtually the same now for Obama as they were for Kerry at this time in the 2004 election cycle.  Apparently this is true even though the Washington Post informed us a day earlier that one Obama operative is trying to figure out how to use Christian music to get votes.

As I've said before, I don't do solicited advice for any candidates: I prefer to give them all unsolicited advice though. My thoughts for the Democrats: don't let the tail wag the dog on this religion issue.  One of the reasons about half of the electorate likes your candidates is because they often say that the agenda of the religious right is a bad one; they sometimes remind us that politicians aren't supposed to impose their religious views on everybody else.  That resonates with the real Constitutionalists that are so often a part of Democratic Party victories. On the other hand, people of faith have been voting for Democrats for years based on the belief, which no pundit or spin doctor had to tell them, that at least since the Sixties, Democrats have been talking a lot more than Republicans about the kind of issues Jesus championed in the Sermon on the Mount.  (I always found it curious that as Republicans went ga-ga over posting the Ten Commandments, I never heard anybody want to post the thoughts of that peacenik, poverty-opposing preacher on the mountain.)

John Green did point out, however, that Latino Protestants and Catholics are a bit more inclined toward the Democratic Party this year.  Could this perhaps be the result of the newly articulated distaste for immigrants by the Religious Right?  Could this be because (to bring this up again) the "Values Voter Conference" had a number of well-known anti-immigration advocates included CNN's Lou Dobbs prominently presented?

And, Jay, I have known you long enough to know that you don't use the kind of rhetoric I cited in my last post that came from speakers at last weekend's conference (and the quotes are accurate).  I just think it is important that people right, left and center condemn vitriol when they hear it.

I've been getting more information in about last weekend's "Values Voters" confab in Washington, the place where the "Obama Waffles" booth was located.  Speaker Star Parker referred to public schools as "cesspools" and claimed that taxing the rich was a "violation of the Scripture".  Fox News host Sean Hannity ripped into Senator Edward Kennedy with bad alcohol "jokes", as if he didn't even care that the Senator is being treated for a potentially lethal brain tumor.  Less than polished actor Steven Baldwin announced that attendees should start "kicking butt for the kingdom of God".  And on Tuesday, the "Obama Waffles" people officially announced that their product is not racist.

There is a belief, widely shared in the Obama camp, that there is a plethora of voters out there who are dying to vote for a Democrat if they can just be convinced that he or she is truly religious. ...

I know you are happy about the verdict in the Teen Challenge case.  Frankly, I have never been convinced this case was really about religious discrimination.  It always seemed to me to be one more sad example of the NIMBY...

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