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Analyst's note:  Absolutely must read.  We learn something each day.  We the People have a lot of work to do to take back our country.

[...] before 1954, “there were no restrictions on what churches could or couldn’t do with regard to speech about government and voting, excepting only a 1934 law preventing nonprofits from using a substantial part of their resources to lobby for legislation.”

My guess is that this insight into American history will be news to many of you as well.  Please don't miss the embedded videos, the first of which takes a little time to start to make sure you don't miss the opening title.

 

[....] The pastors deliberately applied biblical perspectives to the positions of candidates for public office in defiance of a regulation adopted by the Internal Revenue Service, the 1954 Johnson Amendment. ADF’s aim is to provoke a challenge from the IRS that would enable it file a lawsuit and defeat the regulation in court on constitutional grounds.

The Johnson Amendment bans churches and ministers from participating in, or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office.

Supporters of the event, which began in 2008 with just 35 pastors, say the government simply cannot dictate to churches and ministers their sermon topics.

In a commentary at Townhall, Stanley said it was the “most successful Pulpit Freedom Sunday to date.”

He called it “an exercise in free speech that violates a flawed Internal Revenue Service rule,” insisting pastors who participated were “not engaging in a ‘political crusade.’”

What else is the IRS up to? A former Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate who says Barack Obama was unknown to him and his fellow Columbia University classmates says now the president is using the Internal Revenue Service to punish and silence him. Read it here.

“Instead, they are simply applying Scripture and theological doctrine to the positions held by the candidates running for office,” he said. “Pastors have been applying scriptural teaching to circumstances facing their congregations for centuries.

“This is not ‘political’ speech,” he said. “Rather, it’s core religious expression from a spiritual leader to his congregants. That kind of expression is at the very center of the freedom speech and religion protections in the First Amendment.”

Stanley said the issue is simple: Government cannot be allowed to condition a status, such as being tax-exempt, on the “surrender of a constitutionally protected freedom.”

Would churches, for example, be willing to give up their right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure in exchange for tax-exempt status, or “if you want to maintain your right against cruel and unusual punishment, just give up your tax-exempt status?

[....] Pastors who participated found support and instructions at pulpitfreedom.org, and they are backed by a legal team at the Alliance Defending Freedom.

 

 

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