Churches and Politics
- Thread starter twistedredbird
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Depends, there will obviously be some gray area. In CCG's example they are obviously advocating for a candidate or party.
Out of curiosity how many people go to churches where they preach political issues? Gone for a long time and have always had a preacher teach out of the bible and avoid issues like abortion, social programs, death penalty, etc.
IMO the role of the preacher is to teach the bible and let you come up with your own positions.
Why should preacher free speech rights be tramped on? Let alone the pulpit where others than the preacher often speaks. The church is to teach us about morals and values. One big item is abortion and the gay marriage issues. If candidates are promoting those things, the churches responsibility is to confront the issues and the candidates. Our society keeps degrading when we say nothing. U.S. history clearly shows strong Christian values in the formation of the country. WallBuilders | Presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage. is a great place to find out what the founding fathers actually believed and some is surprising because of much historical revisionism that has gone on esp since the 1920's. One does not have to like it or be comfortable with the church informing of what is right. Everyone wants to live life as they want to rather than how they are suppose to.
This gagging the pulpit started with some policy that Pres LB Johnson proposed and was written into a law with No discussion (sound familiar?). The IRS has not invoked it even once even though they threaten. There are around 300,000 churches that would know they are totally free to say what they want when the courts struck it down when it gets challenged. The law will not be challenged until the IRS actually uses it.
Churches and pastors can go to www.SpeakUpmovement.org to find out the rules and particulars.
This rule has certainly not stopped politicians getting in the pulpit and spouting their drivel such as Clinton,, Jesse Jackson, and Barack's so-called pastor Rev Wright.
This gagging the pulpit started with some policy that Pres LB Johnson proposed and was written into a law with No discussion (sound familiar?). The IRS has not invoked it even once even though they threaten. There are around 300,000 churches that would know they are totally free to say what they want when the courts struck it down when it gets challenged. The law will not be challenged until the IRS actually uses it.
Churches and pastors can go to www.SpeakUpmovement.org to find out the rules and particulars.
This rule has certainly not stopped politicians getting in the pulpit and spouting their drivel such as Clinton,, Jesse Jackson, and Barack's so-called pastor Rev Wright.
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Free speech rights and being a tax-exempt entity are completely unrelated. The issue at hand is if we want to make blatantly political organizations like the church of LDS tax-exempt or if they should have to chose between tax exempt status and continuing to spend millions upon millions on politics.
That doesn't affect any individual's freedom of speech one shred and doesn't even effect the organization's free speech. Our government simply doesn't classify political propaganda as charity and we are correct in doing so.
The gray area is huge, but within that vast expanse there's an obvious place to draw the line.
Does a church spend over 5 million a year directly on political campaigns, ads and propoganda? Yes? They're not tax exempt. This way the preachers can still pretty much say whatever the H they want to in the pulpit, but the members of the church can't give a % of their income to what is effectively buying political ads in others states and pretend that's "charity".
Surprisingly, not everyone agrees with a particular church's definition of "What is right" or need to be told what is right or wrong, nor do religious insititutions hold a monopoly on truth and decency.
Proving my point about the inability to define what is considered "talking politics". In my examle, the church is advocating a morale position. There are pro-life Democrats.
It was the churches that pushed for the end of slavery by preaching for the end of it from the pulpits across America.
See the problem here?
But what about all those issues you feel are in the gray area? Where do you draw the line? Answer: you can't unless you draw it maybe at naming/endorsing specific candidates.
Yeah....give me an example/some wording that starts to accomplish this? I say it is next to impossible. Maybe I'm wrong.
not sure what's so difficult about it. Any money that goes to political campaigns, or any money that goes to a company or org that is actively involved in political issues(advertising, directly funds campaigns, directly funds known partisan orgs like think tanks, lobbying organizations, foundations and media forums)
Again obviously wouldn't be perfect but would be a good start.
And from your example abortion would be on that list but adoption wouldn't be.
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