I’m Your Pastor, and I Approved This Ad

[Woodmonkey]

Call it an act of faith or call it a political ploy, but 33 ministers plan to endorse a presidential candidate from their Sunday pulpits in defiance of federal law.

The ministers and the conservative group organizing them know they are breaking a 54-year-old law barring tax-exempt organizations from using their sheltered status to support a political candidate. They want to be taken to court, quickly, in hopes of overturning it.

The pastors complain that the statute limits their free expression. We take any challenge to free speech very seriously, but this is not a challenge to free speech. This is about protecting the collection plate while using the power of the pulpit to influence elections. Shepherds are entirely free to tell their flocks whom to vote for. They just cannot expect taxpayers to subsidize turning their churches into campaign offices.

The tax code mandate they are challenging has protected the separation of church and state by denying tax deductions for contributions to charitable organizations that engage in secular campaigning.

The ministers haven’t announced their preferences, although Senator John McCain is expected to be favored. Senator Barack Obama has blurred church-state lines in promising more subsidies for social programs run by religious-based groups. But Mr. McCain has gone much farther, proclaiming America to be “a Christian nation.”

A (tax-exempt) consortium of Christian lawyers that presses conservative causes — the Alliance Defense Fund — has organized the ministers’ protest as Pulpit Freedom Sunday. They argue that the tax code restricts their right to be “talking to their congregations about biblical issues related to candidates and elections.”

Taxpayers of any faith should see this as an election-year gambit to dash the pillar of church-state separation. Other clergy, mindful of being spiritual not political ministers, have organized to say no thanks to Pulpit Freedom Sunday. We expect the courts and the Internal Revenue Service to say those preachers are in the right.

The Source

[Snowden]

If they do this, their churches should simply lose their tax exempt status. That simple. The law is the law, and the pastors should always obey the law. As they should know, Jesus said to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. In this case, it's quite applicable, as doing this should result in taxation. That's what he was talking about.

[BrianK]

Separation of church & state has always been one of the stronger points of our established system.

Being invited to a political public forum and expressing a personal view keeps freedom of speech alive & well.

What's the problem? Preach politics from the pulpit and lose the tax free status.

[Woodmonkey]

They have a free choice. Do their job, their only job, which is to spread the Good News about God, or preach politics. One has a tax exempt status and one doesn't.

[Snowden]

Exactly right. They were ordained, presumably; not elected.