Why No Pastor Should Restrict His Comments, Even on Politics and Politicians
Or: How Tax Code Has Turned the First Amendment Upside-Down.
On the Sunday before 2008’s election, many pastors preached about issues which ought to inform believers’ votes. Of those preachers, only a handful risked losing 501c3 status because they were willing to name a particular candidate in the process of talking about issues. This post is not about the history which has muzzled preachers–although, as I understand it, it is an interesting history. Apparently, LBJ was so frustrated by central Texas pulpiteers questioning his integrity that he led in the process of having 501c3s (churches and other religious organizations exempted from taxation by their non-profit status) restricted from endorsing specific candidates. Every church leader is familiar with the restriction. “Speak about issues, but do not speak about particular candidates.” “Tell parishioners why issues are important, but do not tell them for whom to vote.” Most preachers live with the restriction because once an issue is clearly presented, it is obvious for whom a follower should vote anyway.
But some pastors have begun to shirk off the restriction. Jerry Falwell did it four years ago when he sermonized openly at the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention about why people should vote for Bush instead of Kerry. I can remember being excoriated by unsympathetic pastors when I suggested that no pastor should ever restrain himself from speaking according to conviction simply for fear of losing tax-exempt status. At the time, I was working on my dissertation and had been researching holocaust atrocities. Of course, one of the shames of the holocaust is how many “Christian” leaders acquiesced to the mantra that the church should not get involved in politics. At the time it sickened me to think that supposed kingdom leaders had abandoned those who were “drawn unto death.” There ought to be an annual memorial for the dead spirits of those failed “spiritual leaders” so that there would not be so many contemporary “leaders” stumbling into the same immoral irrelevance. (By the way, people can disagree completely with other positions I hold about government and still embrace this prophetic responsibility. Speaking prophetically does not have to be simply about voting. But it must include moral issues including, at times, the public rebuke of public figures.) The church should speak clearly and powerfully about every significant moral issue in a culture, regardless of its political ramifications.
So here is the irony. The first amendment reads thus:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The intent is obvious. Government should in no way restrict what an establishment of religion (like a church) does as an establishment of religion. One restriction would, of course, be to tax the church. So the church, being free from government interference, should not pay taxes. It is, in fact, constitutionally non-taxable. Not only would it put an undue governmental burden on the church, but it would inevitably enforce the confiscation of church property for governmental purposes opposed to church teachings.
Then comes complex tax law. And the church, rather than being non-taxable as an entity excluded constitutionally from government regulation, becomes “tax exempt.” It is an affirmative act of government, an effort on their part, to maintain the tax exempt status of the church. And there are, of course, restrictions on the exemption, as the political one mentioned above. And now here we are.
The very thing which should mean pastors are free to speak their conscience from the pulpit is used to muzzle them.
May God grant clarity to just one or two souls a day for the next three hundred million days so that our nation may return to the constitutive purpose which instantiates such a beautiful answer to the prayer of 1 Timothy 2:1ff.
