Pastors buck ban on pulpit politics

The Rev. Jody Hice plans to pick a fight Sunday with the Internal Revenue Service.

The Barrow County minister is part of a national move by about 30 conservative churches and a Christian legal organization to trigger a court fight over IRS regulations that forbid pulpit politicking.

Hice will tell his congregation that they should vote for U.S. Sen. John McCain if they believe in biblical values.

He could get a call from the tax man and risk losing the church’s tax-exempt status for doing that. Political endorsements from the pulpit are out of bounds for nonprofits such as churches, says the IRS.

“We are hoping for a challenge,” said Hice, head minister at Bethlehem First Baptist Church.

He hopes the ensuing court fight will get the prohibition dropped, but that goal is dividing the religious community, many of whom see a danger in commingled religious and political power.

“We don’t need to be choosing sides with a politician,” said the Rev. David Sapp, the senior pastor at Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church.

“Every time we’ve done that, we’ve ended up tainted,” Sapp said.

The participating pastors who plan to make endorsements across the nation Sunday are backed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian legal aid group based in Arizona. Its lawyers are applauded by conservative Christians for doing things such as challenging states’ recognition of gay marriages and defending abortion protesters’ rights.

If the IRS comes knocking, as they hope, ADF attorney Erik Stanley said he will sue to get the regulation overturned. At stake are issues of free speech and the constitutional prohibition against government intrusion into religion, he said.

Stanley said he is confident he will win.

That opinion is not universal.

“They will lose,” said Michael Broyde, an Emory law professor and projects director for the school’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion.

“It is clear the IRS regulations prohibit ministers from making endorsements. It is clear as day that these regulations are constitutional,” he said. The prohibition does not apply to clergy when speaking outside of sanctuaries.

Groups such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the Anti-Defamation League as well as moderate to liberal Christians are speaking out against the weekend’s planned events and plan to report violators to the IRS.

“I am as concerned about what such a practice in houses of worship would do to the integrity and credibility of religion as about what it would do to weaken the Constitution,” said an e-mail from the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, a Louisiana Baptist and president of the Interfaith Alliance.

Sapp said, “To cross the line into partisan politics puts the Gospel at risk. It reduces the Gospel to a political perspective.”

Hice doesn’t see it that way.

“We are just standing up for the right of pastors to speak biblical truth from the pulpit,” he said.

A news release from the IRS says it is aware of the situation, will monitor it and “take action as appropriate.”