Religious Right Gears Up To Push Political Choices From the Pulpit

Church-State Watchdogs Say Both Candidates’ Backers Cross the Line
By Jennifer Siegel
Thu. Jun 19, 2008

... The Alliance Defense Fund — a legal outfit launched by James Dobson and other prominent conservatives in the mid-1990s — has recruited 50 pastors to deliver sermons in September that will include direct endorsements of political candidates. Although churches and other religious groups, like all not-for-profits, are required by law to eschew partisanship in exchange for their tax-exempt status, ADF’S Pulpit Initiative advances a premise yet to be fully tested in the courts: that religious leaders speaking from the pulpit should benefit from special speech protections ...

ADF is “trying to push the envelope,” said Rob Boston, a spokesman for the First Amendment watchdog group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In the past, many conservative preachers would “plead ignorance of the law, or state that they didn’t intend to give an endorsement, so this is a little more aggressive” ...

http://www.forward.com/articles/13622/

sort of thing, keeps political literature in the back of the church. But since they choose to pay taxes they say they are allowed to do that.

the pulpit

And that we are armed with cell phone cameras!

that argument will fly about as far as a lead balloon. Tax exempt status is not a right, it is a privilege, granted in exchange for conditions ensuring that it will not be abused. The law is based on purely secular principles (among which is preventing political campaigns from using non-profits as tax-exempt conduits to funnel money through), and has been applied equally to religious and non-religious organizations and to liberal and conservative organizations.

You have to remember that fundies don't care about the truth and they don't care about the law. All they care about is getting their way, and they are unshakably convinced that they are right about everything.

but I think their hope will be misplaced. The law is so crystal clear on this that even a hard-core conservative judge won't dare to stray far from it. The fundies probably thought that a Bush appointee would work to their advantage in Kitzmiller v Dover too, and that didn't turn out so hot for them. Bottom line is, if they want to be able to endorse candidates from the pulpit, they can give up their tax-exempt status...it's that simple. And I'm sure their congregations will go along, if it's that vital to them.

They have to avoid partisanship... they are actively planning a partition activity.

I admit I don't have time to learn all the details of the tax exemption laws and presidents. but I would be interested in knowing if their announcement of this is enough to already have them in trouble.

advising the organization that they are engaged in activity that violates their tax-exempt status. If they continue to violate the law (and the fundy churches like Falwell's have been completely arrogant and brazen about it), then the hammer comes down hard, but as far as I've seen, they are always given a chance to get back in compliance.

will be unable to play the oops! i didn't know! sooo sorry! game


Pastors Challenge Law, Endorse Candidates From Pulpit

Few Americans would invite an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, but that's exactly what Minnesota pastor Gus Booth wanted when he stood behind his pulpit and told his congregation God wanted them to vote Republican ...

when Booth addressed the members of his Warroad Community Church one Sunday in May and told them, "If you are a Christian, you cannot support a candidate like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for president," he very much knew he was violating the law. He even wrote a letter to the IRS explaining what he had said and challenging the tax collection agency to do something about it ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3361813

with their "5 non-negotiables". They spun off the political arm to not be tax-deductible, and even though they ban political discussion in their forms, they prominently post a link to their narrow voting rule list, which comes out to a lightly veiled Vote Republican of course.

I always suspect such absolute inflexibility reflects some authoritarian personality disorder

And I say that, as someone who has a certain sympathy for their position on some issues: I consider abortion morally problematic, almost entirely oppose euthanasia (though in very limited circumstances where there is a thoroughly debilitating condition with no positive prognosis and no associated mental disorder, suicide may not warrant unconditional condemnation), and I really have major misgivings about embryonic stem-cell research and
human cloning