Theocrats

29 September 2008



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Pastors Flout IRS Code with Political Sermons

Yesterday, 33 pastors who are part of the Alliance Defense Fund, a socially conservative legal consortium based in Arizona, gave deliberately and overtly political sermons. Their objective is to force a court case to overturn the part of the IRS code that says nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not “participate in, or intervene in . . . any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.” For once, the IRS wears the white hat of the hero.

The Reverend Ron Johnson Jr. claimed that voting for Senator Barack Obama was evidence of “severe moral schizophrenia.” Senator Obama’s view on abortion and gay marriage was “in direct opposition to God's truth as He has revealed it in the Scriptures.” The other 32 pastors are said to have taken the same approach.

The Reverend said, “The point that the IRS says you can’t do it, I’m saying you’re wrong.” The Washington Post reported “Johnson said ministers have a responsibility to guide their flocks in worldly matters, including politics, calling the dichotomy between the secular and the sacred a myth: "The issue is not 'Are we legislating morality?' This issue is 'Whose morality are we legislating’?”

Unfortunately for him, the Reverend can’t have it both ways. If he wants to engage in politics from the pulpit, why does he get to do so without the church paying taxes? One has no quarrel with a churchman discussing the issues (although they tend to focus more on the 10 Commandments rather than the Beatitudes), but to take sides in a political campaign erodes the separation of church and state.

The IRS needs to bring a case here to underscore that the protection afforded by that separation to the churches is at risk by this action. Rabbi Jack Moline of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Virginia, chairman of the Interfaith Alliance board, put it best, “Endorsing a candidate from the pulpit is saying, ‘This is what our God says should be the government of the country.’ I think that is a nightmare scenario for a country that introduced the Bill of Rights to humanity.”

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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