WASHINGTON (ABP) — While just 33 churches signed up to participate in a conservative Christian group’s “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” Sept. 28, planners viewed it as a success.
That is, organizers said, because its stated purpose was not to inject politics into the pulpit, but rather civil disobedience aimed at prompting a legal battle over an Internal Revenue Service restriction against churches endorsing candidates as a condition of their tax exemption.
However, new polls show that Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of injecting partisan politics into the pulpit.
Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund said they are prepared to defend any pastor targeted by the IRS for endorsing a candidate Sept. 28 based on the First Amendment guarantee of the right to free speech.
Meanwhile, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed complaints with the IRS against six churches for violating federal law by endorsing candidates from the pulpit. “These pastors flagrantly violated the law and now must deal with the consequences,” said AU Executive Director Barry Lynn.
Rob Boston, AU’s assistant director of communications, said if any church loses tax exemption because of the event and files suit, the church-state watchdog group would file friend-of-the-court briefs opposing partisan politics in America’s pulpits.
“It’s a shame it has come to this,” Boston said. “But now the issue is engaged, and Americans United intends to see it through.”
In his Pulpit Freedom Sunday sermon, Curtis Parker, pastor of the independent First Baptist Church of Avoca, N.Y., compared voting records of McCain and Obama on four issues: abortion, stem-cell research, homosexuality and marriage.
“As we evaluate the candidates’ stand on these issues, we can make our decisions easy,” Parker said. “We can kind of do away with the rock-star personality, with the generation of excitement that comes along with individual candidates and kind of cut right to what’s important.
“After everything you’ve heard about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, is it possible that, as a believer [in Christ], you can cast your vote in their favor?” Parker asked. “I would say no.”
At Bethlehem Baptist Church in Bethlehem, Ga., Pastor Jody Hice endorsed John McCain for president, telling worshipers the Republican candidate has a more biblical worldview than Obama when it comes to issues of abortion and gay marriage. “These are not political issues,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted the Southern Baptist pastor and local talk-radio host as saying. “These are moral issues.”
“According to my Bible and in my opinion, there is no way in the world a Christian can vote for Barack Hussein Obama,” said Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif. He used Obama’s middle name, which is a common Arabic name. Allusions to it have fed unfounded rumors that Obama is a Muslim. He is a practicing Christian.
Instead of endorsing McCain, however, according to the Los Angeles Times, Drake suggested that his parishioners vote for a different presidential candidate — himself. A past vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Drake is on the ballot in California as running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate Alan Keyes.
The pulpit initiative comes at a time when many Americans are growing increasingly wary of politics in the pulpit.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that for the first time since the question was first included in their poll 10 years ago, a majority of Americans said churches should stay out of politics instead of expressing their views on social and political concerns.
Another poll, conducted by the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing arm, found that 59 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement: “I believe it is appropriate for churches to publicly endorse candidates for public office.”
“We saw a very strong response that Americans don’t want churches to be actively campaigning for political candidates,” commented Ed Stetzer, president of the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention publisher LifeWay Christian Resources.
Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said that’s because the ADF initiative was “misguided” and a “brazen attempt to blend the worship of God with electoral politics.”
“This initiative certainly will politicize churches more than it will Christianize politics,” Walker wrote in an opinion article prior to the event. “It will assuredly turn our pulpit prophets into political puppets. It will, no doubt, convert our churches into virtual political action committees — where candidates will line up at the church door to seek endorsement, especially those that are on television.”
None of that fazed Eric Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. “The issue is not necessarily whether a pastor should or should not endorse or oppose a candidate from the pulpit,” Stanley told CBN News.
“The issue is who gets to regulate that,” Stanley said. “It’s our contention that the government should not be the one regulating what a pastor can and can’t say from the pulpit. It’s the pastor’s job to determine the content of his sermons, not the IRS.”
Stanley believes that if challenged, the Johnson amendment — inserted into the federal tax code in 1954 — would be ruled unconstitutional. Championed by then-senator Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas), it instituted the ban on partisan political endorsements by churches and other non-profit organizations.
Americans United’s Lynn isn’t so sure. He says tax exemption is a privilege granted by the government, not a right.
“Houses of worship exist to enrich people’s spiritual lives, not act like political machines that issue marching orders to voters,” Lynn said. “They are tax-exempt because their work is religious and charitable, not political.”
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