WASHINGTON (ABP) — One of the biggest backers of a controversial bill that would allow churches to make partisan political endorsements has changed its mind, after changes to the bill.
The Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission announced April 25 that it is withdrawing its support for the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act.
The legislation, which Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) has introduced in every session of Congress since 2001, was designed to allow churches to endorse political candidates and parties without losing their tax-exempt status. All tax-exempt groups organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code have been banned from political endorsements or contributions since a 1954 congressional action.
Most Religious Right groups support the Jones bill. The ERLC lent its support with a caveat — that, while the group did not believe it is proper for churches to engage in partisan political endorsements, it nonetheless thought that decision is best left up to the church rather than the government.
But the latest changes, according to the ERLC, essentially gut the purpose of the bill by significantly narrowing the conditions under which churches may engage in partisan endorsements. They include a provision that would ban dissemination of partisan endorsements beyond the walls of the church service in which they are made.
The changes are “a grotesquely bad idea,” said ERLC President Richard Land, according to a press release. “We supported the original Jones bill because, while we believe that churches shouldn't endorse candidates, we also believe that it should be a church decision, not a government decision,” Land said.”Under the new bill, the government would permit churches to endorse a candidate but then would allow government investigators to come in and determine when the church has exceeded the government's narrow parameters of permission,” he continued.
Jones' spokesperson, Kristen Quigley, said she was unfamiliar with the ERLC's criticisms of the bill when contacted by a reporter April 26. She said the legislative aide who deals with the bill was not immediately available to comment.
The bill lost its only vote — in the House in October 2002 — on a 239-178 vote. It never made it out of committee in the last session of Congress.
Many moderate religious groups and civil-rights groups, such as the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, opposed the bill from the beginning. Joe Conn, a spokesman for Americans United, said the ERLC's withdrawal of endorsement would throw up a further obstacle to the bill's passage.
“It certainly makes it much more difficult to pass, because the SBC was one of the primary supporters of it,” Conn said. “But it's certainly good news that they have realized how unwise this measure is.”