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Posted on Sunday 7 September 2008


Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

"For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church," ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. "It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It’s not for the government to mandate the role of church in society."

Yet an opposing collection of Christian and Jewish clergy will petition the IRS today to stop the protest before it starts, calling the ADF’s "Pulpit Initiative" an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state.

Backed by three former top IRS officials, the group also wants the IRS to determine whether the nonprofit ADF is risking its own tax-exempt status by organizing an "inappropriate, unethical and illegal" series of political endorsements.

The Alliance Defense Fund is a legal consortium that considers itself the antithesis of the American Civil Liberties Union. It spends more than $20 million a year to underwrite legal battles and train lawyers to push the country in socially conservative directions. Founded in 1994 by Christian conservatives including James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family and William R. Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, the ADF has challenged same-sex marriage initiatives, stem cell research and rules that limit the distance protesters must keep from abortion patients. It helped the Boy Scouts ban gay Scout leaders. Defining its latest mission, the ADF declared that pastors have "too long feared" the loss of tax exemptions.
Tax Exemptions for Churches are not a right. They are allowed by laws passed in State and National Legislatures. The Religious Right has launched an all out assault on the requirement that to receive tax exemptions, the organization must not make political endorsements. These groups increasingly attack this requirement – as if Religious Institutions have a special right to do whatever they want to do.

Why should any political organizations be tax-exempt? I can think of no reason. I’d suggest accomodating these demands by removing tax exemptions for all religious organizations. Then they could say whatever they wanted to say, whenever they wanted to say it…

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