Preachers need to read Bill of Rights

On the last Sunday in September, a group of conservative Christian pastors defied federal regulations by making narrowly partisan political statements from their pulpits. Egged on by a right-wing outfit called the Alliance Defense Fund, some of the pastors went so far as to endorse John McCain.

In Indiana, according to The Washington Post, the Rev. Ron Johnson Jr. stopped short of an explicit endorsement but told his congregants that Barack Obama’s positions on abortion and gay rights were “in direct opposition to God’s truth as He has revealed it in the Scriptures” and that a vote for Obama would be evidence of “severe moral schizophrenia.”

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Barrow County minister Jody Hice, pastor of the Bethlehem First Baptist Church near Athens, went all the way. He later said his members were pleased by his McCain endorsement and showered him with hugs, handshakes and words of support.

“Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without fear of punishment. No one should be able to sue the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights,” Erick Stanley, Alliance Defense Fund lawyer, said in a statement.

Tax-exempt organizations, including churches, are prohibited from partisan politicking. The ADF wants to provoke the Internal Revenue Service into a lawsuit that reaches to the U.S. Supreme Court and ends, the ADF hopes, with a court ruling sanctioning its ministers’ actions. The group’s so-called Pulpit Initiative is designed to “secure the First Amendment rights of pastors in the pulpit,” according to the statement.

Stanley needs to take a refresher course in civics, with an emphasis on the Bill of Rights. Its First Amendment certainly gives preachers the right to endorse any candidate they please. But it does not confer any right to a tax exemption while doing so. If Hice wants to make endorsements from the pulpit, he can expect his church to start paying taxes, just like any other politically active group.

Ultraconservative Christians have had difficulty with the Bill of Rights for more than 40 years, since U.S. Supreme Court rulings that prohibited teacher-led prayer and religious instruction in public schools. Those sectarians have fundamentally misunderstood the intent of the Founding Fathers and the lessons of European history that drove them to establish a nation where no religious group could foist its beliefs on others.

By the time of the Declaration of Independence, Europe’s example of bloody religious wars and harsh religious persecution —- wherein one group of believers sought to impose their views on all others —- had persuaded Jefferson, Madison and Mason, among others, that no religious group should be allowed overarching power in civil or government affairs. If you cannot see the value of their wisdom, just look around the world. Christians tried to annihilate Muslims in the Balkans, while intra-Christian violence rocked Northern Ireland for centuries. The conflict between different branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi’a, continues in Iraq.

Indeed, as a left-leaning Christian, I disagree vehemently with the views of Hice and his brethren. They are obsessed with abortion, which is never mentioned in the Bible, and homosexuality, which Christ never mentioned. By contrast, Christ spoke frequently of the poor and his followers’ obligation to help them, an edict with which ultraconservative ministers are much less concerned. If I were forced to follow the teachings of Hice and Johnson, I’d be ready to launch my own uprising. (Their partisan preaching shouldn’t get the benefit of tax relief, either.)

On its Web site, the Alliance Defense Fund makes the transparently fraudulent claim that its campaign is not about “any particular candidate or political party.” The simple truth is that the preferences of ultraconservative Christians always lead them to the Republican Party, whether the subject is gay rights, taxes or the invasion of Iraq. That’s been true since the GOP made a marriage of convenience with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in 1980.

The Christian right is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, and if its preachers want to endorse politicians from the pulpits, those pulpits owe federal taxes.

> Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor.

cynthia@ajc.com