Free the Pastors
Pull quote from this story about an effort called Pulpit Freedom Sunday:
“These are not political issues,†Hice said. “There are moral issues.â€
The group of pastors behind the national campaign want their freedom of speech back.
[Rev. Ron ] Johnson also said abortion is the key issue in the campaign for Christian voters and highlighted the division between Obama and McCain.
“If a candidate supports something that is evil and wicked from a biblical perspective,” Johnson said, “then I have the right to call out the wickedness, and I have the right to say this is what this person stands for — this is wrong.”
Liberal watchdog groups listen to sermons from the pulpit – and programming on talk radio on the non-profits, for that matter – to pounce on anything they can claim as biased toward a particular candidate (always the ones who stand for conservative social values and religiously informed voices).
This campaign chose to face that threat squarely.
The effort is intended to elicit an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service that ADF would then challenge in federal court, with the ultimate goal of persuading the Supreme Court to overthrow the 54-year-old ban called the Johnson Amendment that restricts tax-exempt non-profits, such as churches, from engaging in political campaigns.
Morally informed church leaders should be in the public square, much less the pulpit, engaging the issues of the day free from the ‘thought and speech police’ and a bogus rendering of the Constitution.
After all, it doesn’t require the separation of sense and state. Though that’s often not so clear.
