Pastor Luke Emrich prepared his sermon this week knowing his remarks could invite an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. But that was the whole point, so Emrich forged ahead with his message: Thou shalt vote according to the Scriptures.
"I'm telling you straight up, I would choose life," Emrich told about 100 worshippers Sunday at New Life Church, a nondenominational evangelical congregation about 40 miles from Milwaukee.
"I would cast a vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin," he said. "But friends, it's your choice to make, it's not my choice. I won't be in the voting booth with you."
All told, 33 pastors in 22 states were to make pointed recommendations about political candidates Sunday, an effort orchestrated by the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund.
The conservative legal group plans to send copies of the pastors' sermons to the IRS with hope of setting off a legal fight and abolishing restrictions on church involvement in politics. Critics call it unnecessary, divisive and unlikely to succeed.
Congress amended the tax code in 1954 to state that certain nonprofit groups, including secular charities and places of worship, can lose their tax-exempt status for intervening in a campaign involving candidates.
Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said hundreds of churches volunteered to take part in "Pulpit Freedom Sunday." Thirty-three were chosen, in part for "strategic criteria related to litigation" Stanley wouldn't discuss.
Pastor Jody Hice of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Bethlehem, Ga., said in an interview Sunday that his sermon compared Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain on abortion and gay marriage and concluded that McCain "holds more to a biblical world view."
He said he urged the Southern Baptist congregation to vote for McCain.
"The basic thrust was this was not a matter of endorsing, it's a First Amendment issue," Hice said. "To say the church can't deal with moral and societal issues if it enters into the political arena is just wrong, it's unconstitutional."
There's more here.
In answering this, don't jump to conclusions. Think about Jefferson's writings on religion and politics and the Constitution from your reading so far, and supplement them with this 1798 letter to John Taylor and his famous reply to the Danbury Baptist Association.
2 comments:
It is very likely that Jefferson would be against this kind of speech in church. In his life, Jefferson was disenchanted with organized religion, and he fought hard for separation of church and state. Jefferson was proud of The Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom, which denied the support of taxes to established churches and got rid of test laws which forced people to prove their religious faith in order to take political office. That being said, Jefferson would probably not have been pleased with the 1954 tax code that allowed for these churches to receive federal funding in the first place. Additionally, the pastor's comments go against the second part of Jefferson's statute. He is influencing his congregation's votes based on his own "test" of the candidates' faith when he says that McCain "holds more to a biblical world view." It is clear that separation of church and state (an idea supported by Jefferson) is violated in this situation.
Jefferson believed that the best way to preserve the interests of religion as well as the state would be to maintain the absence of established state churches. Jefferson had sought to preserve the already decided will of the “American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State; adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience.” The divisive nature of creating established state churches could not only be used in restricting the practices of other religions but also in abusing the church for the benefit of ambitious politicians. The idea to “use a part of the people to keep the rest in order” Jefferson states, has been used in the past by “despots” and established churches could simply become the warped tool of individuals political aspirations. Furthermore the idea stated by Hice that the restriction of churches to participate in political endorsement is a violation of first amendment issue, would have probably been answered by Jefferson similarly to the first quote above. The nation does not want (as spoken by the people) to allow any marriage between the two separate institutions of the church and state. Additionally, the tax exemption laws (which would have probably been thought to indirectly support churches) may have increased Jefferson’s opposition to church open participation in politics. This could be seen as the manipulation of churches by the state for state interests.
Post a Comment