So, “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” has come and gone and we have some initial mainstream press reports.
So far, the event seems to have been a mixed bag — much as I predicted last week. Let’s walk through several pieces of the Los Angeles Times report, starting at the top:
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. … But friends, it’s your choice to make, it’s not my choice. I won’t be in the voting booth with you.”
Latter, we read this description of another sermon linked to the Alliance Defense Fund:
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.”
At that point, the newspaper calls in an outside expert to evalute the situation and we read:
Because the pastors were speaking in their official capacity as clergy, the sermons are clear violations of IRS rules, said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington University. But even if the IRS rises to the bait and a legal fight ensues, Tuttle said there’s “virtually no chance” courts will strike down the prohibition.
“The government is allowed, as long as it has a reasonable basis for doing it, to treat political and nonpolitical speech differently, and that’s essentially what it’s done here,” Tuttle said.
Do you see the problem? The expert seems to have assumed that the two pastors said the same thing.
Unless there are additional remarks missing from this story, Emrich offered a personal endorsement and then explicitly said that he could not tell the faithful how to vote. This is a wink-wink strategy that has been used for years on the left and right. In fact, I wrote about a famous case on the left just the other day. Meanwhile, the Georgia pastors seems to have tackled the IRS law head on — in clear violation.
However, there is no evidence that the Los Angeles Times team realized that it was dealing with two different sermons containing — yes, it is nuanced — different messages.
Over at the Washington Post, the Pulpit Initiative story opened with yet another approach to this issue.
Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of “severe moral schizophrenia.”
The Rev. Ron Johnson Jr. told worshipers that the Democratic presidential nominee’s positions on abortion and gay partnerships exist “in direct opposition to God’s truth as He has revealed it in the Scriptures.” Johnson showed slides contrasting the candidates’ views but stopped short of endorsing Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain.
In this case, the pastor proclaimed moral judgment on a politician — but did not endorse the politician’s opponent. This is interesting, since it is very common for pastors — again, left and right — to attack the beliefs and policies of politicians by name. This happened in sermons related to the Iraq war, for example. That’s free speech about a moral issue. The key is when someone openly endorses a candidate in the name of the religious organization and tells the faithful to vote in a particular way.
Now, it is true that the 1954 amendment to the tax code, as the Post notes, states that nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not “participate in, or intervene in … any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.” Part of what the ADF is testing is the meaning of the word “intervene,” which could affect behavior broader than open, corporate endorsements. That’s the key, you see, and that would affect a wide variety of behaviors that have taken place in the past on the left as well as the right.
Right now, the press is focusing on voices on the right, with counter thrusts from people who are very worried about these activities on the right. I am still not seeing signs that the reporters understand that there are a variety of messages being delivered here and some of them violate the law, as currently written. It is not clear that they all do.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that there are some people on the right who are currently in big trouble for using strategies that have also been used on the left. Here’s hoping that some reporters start comparing apples with apples and oranges with oranges. Again, let’s all say our mantra: Religious liberty is messy, but it beats all the alternatives.
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Comments (12) |
September 29, 2008, at 2:12 pm
Terry:
The Alliance Defense Fund intended that the sermons violate the law, according to their lead counsel in a story from the Tennessean.
The other interesting thing about the ADF is that they believe the IRS has no right to tax churches. That’s the crux of the story, between those who see the tax exemption as a right and those who see it as an act of legislative grace.
September 29, 2008, at 3:46 pm
BOB:
I know. Yet it appears that they may have been very subtle, with some sermons that violated the law and some that did not. The group may, in fact, be testing the spectrum as one way of tearing it apart.
The standard church-state doctrine in American is that the power to tax is the power to destroy or control and that you cannot do that under the First Amendment. Thus, the same laws apply to religious and secular non-profits. The ADF is saying it is wrong to shackle all of these groups, as a kind of speech content censorship.
September 29, 2008, at 8:05 pm
Good point.
Still, I think it’s helpful to know that the ADF’s underlying assumption is that the state has no right to tax churches.
But in Swaggart Ministries v. Board of Equalization, 493 U.S. 378 (1990), the court ruled differently. Swaggert’s ministry argued that it was not required to pay sales tax. The court disagreed:
“The collection and payment of the tax imposes no constitutionally significant burden on appellant’s religious practices or beliefs under the Free Exercise Clause, which accordingly does not require the State to grant appellant a tax exemption.”
The court seemed in this case to rule to view a tax exemption as a privilege, not a right.
September 29, 2008, at 10:19 pm
Get post, I’ve linked to if from Pulpit Endorsements: The Sky Will Not Fall
I think the title conveys my opinion.
I believe the churches are sending a copy of their services to the IRS.
September 30, 2008, at 2:29 am
Slacktivist explains the issue quite clearly:
Now, as a matter of theory, I don’t think that it’s always so easy to “separate politics and religion,” but in this particular concrete case, it’s pretty clear that the effects of allowing the ADF to succeed would be damaging to both our religious and our political institutions.
September 30, 2008, at 7:02 am
CARL:
That is a very real issue. Courts are allowed to pursue three things in church-state cases — fraud, profit and clear threat to life and health.
I think this would fall under the first two.
Also, note that religious groups can already pursue this strategy if they are cynical enough. All they have to do is adopt one of the wink-wink approaches to endorsement that have been used in the past on the left and right.
The Slacktivist article also mentiones channeling this money to campaigns. Through donations from the church? I am 99 percent sure that would be fraud.
Like them or not, the evidence is that what the ADF is going for is the ability to preach sermons on hot-button moral issues (which is legal, of course). However, the ADF wants to test the law that says a cleric cannot then LINK that moral and doctrinal judgement TO A PERSON’S NAME. That’s where the legal hurdle exists. Open, clear, uncynical endorsement — as opposed to the winking methods I have detailed.
Like it or not, that’s what this seems to be about.
September 30, 2008, at 9:04 am
[…] Related link: Parsing the Pulpit Freedom Stories | GetReligion […]
September 30, 2008, at 9:19 am
Does ADF really possess that simple an agenda? Are the religious/political activists only wanting to have the unhindered bully pulpit? It is not clear in reports what, if any political activity ADF would agree should be barred.
So it may be fundraising. Or political brochures in the back. Or perhaps an enterprising activist creates a political organization as a nominal church (think mail-order ordination). There’s mischief there and it all comes from not asking “what activity should not be allowed by a church.”
September 30, 2008, at 9:31 am
If the ADF is really fighting for the right to endorse a candidate from the pulpit without using a “winking method” why don’t they just come out and do it. It seems like some pastors are hedging their bets by dancing on the fence without going over it - only a few went clear over the line by directly endorsing a candidate. I don’t think the ADF is right, but I’d have more sympathy for their cause if they didn’t seem so lukewarm about it.
September 30, 2008, at 9:41 am
BRIAN:
I intend to ask them.
My theory, if you’ve been reading, is that they tested a spectrum of responses. See my original post on this topic.
September 30, 2008, at 10:26 am
One big question I have is have there ever been Churches in resent history (past 20 years) that have lost their IRS non-tax Status? If so, what happened to them financially, the sermons, and growth?
I think the loss of IRS non-tax status is less of a deal than doomsayers state. In fact, I would have to say that dangling the no taxes as hush insentive is itself anti-Church and State seperation. I thought the whole idea was for the Church not to control what the State does and the State not to control what the Church does.
September 30, 2008, at 12:45 pm
[…] GetReligion.org has this discussion of the Pulpit Initiative. It includes a series of links to various articles and several reader comments along with this observation: Now, it is true that the 1954 amendment to the tax code, as the Post notes, states that nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not “participate in, or intervene in … any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.†Part of what the ADF is testing is the meaning of the word “intervene,†which could affect behavior broader than open, corporate endorsements. That’s the key, you see, and that would affect a wide variety of behaviors that have taken place in the past on the left as well as the right. […]