IRS: Churches OK'd to Speak Moral Values to Politics

This new IRS ruling about the non-profit status of churches engaging is being touted as good for conservatives.

Short of endorsing a particular candidate or spending substantial portions of their nonprofit budgets on legislative lobbying, ministers and their churches are free to engage in political acts on behalf of moral values, the IRS said. Clergy are also free to encourage their congregations' members to get out the vote based on those issues and values.

I would have thought that this was obvious. I've even seen politicians in the pulpits of churches on Sundays, for decades.

Comments

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

Yes, Mr. Kushiner, you have seen Democratic politicians in the pulpits of black churches for decades. When did Ronald Reagan or George Bush ascend to the preaching post at Willow Creek or Saddleback (or St. Patrick's Cathedral) to promote their political goals?

Pat Robertson? Yes, he crossed a line the other way. There are problems with ministers seeking public office (the Catholic Church has barred its priests from doing so) and Robertson used his ministry to support his political ambitions. And I would say it was always wrong for a politician to be in a pulpit on Sunday.

For a minister to preach on the moral aspects of political policies, on the other hand, would seem part of the job description. And that is what the advocates of "the separation of church and state" have wanted to ban, not keeping Al Gore out of a UME pulpit or having the offering plate passed for his campaign (an even worse atrocity). This ruling is a blow - even if not a fatal one - to that censorship campaign.

The First Amendment protects churches from government, not the other way around.