Today Some Preachers Will Knowingly Violate The Law

I am not now a christian, but I was raised in a fundamentalist church and received my college degree from a religious college (with a minor in religion). So I know a little bit about christianity and religion. And one of the things I was taught is that christians should obey the laws of the country they live in. The only exception to that is if a law required a person to do something that was unethical or immoral. So I'm a little confused about what is scheduled to happen today in dozens, if not hundreds of churches. In those churches, preachers and ministers are going to intentionally violate the laws of the United States.

In this country we have religious freedom, and our Founding Fathers considered that so important that they wrote it into the Constitution. That religious freedom guarantees that all Americans can practice freely any religion they want to or practice no religion at all. And the government doesn't have the right to interfere with any person's practice of religion (or lack thereof). In fact, it is written in that same Constitution that the government cannot favor or oppose any religion. And to further that religious freedom, the government has exempted religious institutions from having to pay taxes, whether it be taxes on religious property or income.

But the religious institutions have some responsibilities also. They must not harm other indivuals or groups, and they must (as a religion) stay out of politics. If they don't stay out of politics, they can lose their tax exempt status. This only makes sense, because no religious group wants another religious group to use government against them.

But there are a lot of fundamentalist preachers who see religious freedom as the freedom to impose there own religion on others, and the ban on preaching politics from their pulpit as restricting their own freedom of speech. So with the support of Alliance Defense Fund (a right-wing fundamentalist group), some preachers have declared today to be Pulpit Freedom Sunday -- and they plan to intentionally violate the law by using their pulpit to support political candidates or a political party.

The crazy thing about this is that none of these religious leaders are being denied freedom of speech as they claim. They can publicly support any candidate or party they wish to support -- they just cannot do it from the pulpit or as a part of a religious service. That's because when they do it from the pulpit they are no longer just speaking for themselves, but they are speaking for an entire church or religion and saying that the religion demands people to vote a certain way (and people who vote differently are not good christians). They are using the church's tax-exempt status to further their own personal political views.

And these preachers are not being singled out because of their occupation. Most working people cannot use their job to further their own political views. I was a government employee for most of my working life, and I can assure you I and my co-workers were banned from any political activities while at work because that would have given the impression that the government agreed with and supported our views (whatever they were). And it's no different in most other jobs. Employers don't want their employees preaching politics at work since that might make customers think those were the views of the company.

These preachers are just wrong. There is nothing unethical or immoral in the regulations that prevent them from using their pulpit to preach politics. In fact, those regulations protect the members of their church that may have a different political view (which is their right). These preachers have no right to try and pressure their members to vote a certain way by using the tax-exempt pulpit (although they are free to talk politics outside of the church).

These preachers need to make a choice. They can give up their tax-exempt status and turn their church into a political organization, or they can avoid preaching politics from the pulpit and keep that tax-exempt status for the church. But they cannot have their cake and eat it too. personally, I hope the IRS revokes the tax-exempt status of any church that allows their preacher or minister to break the law by preaching politics from the pulpit.

I intentionally used the picture above for this post to illustrate how ridiculous it is to assume that Jesus or any other religious leader from centuries ago prefers one political party or candidate over another in these modern times. I may not be a christian, but I have studied the Bible -- and no where in it could I find where Jesus said he preferred Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or the Green Party, or any other political group. And anyone who says that is so is lying.

Preachers, and other religious leaders, should be ethical and moral leaders. They cannot do that by breaking the law -- even a law they don't particularly like because of their personal politics.