Dozens of pastors challenge IRS rules
Dozens of pastors around the nation are challenging an Internal Revenue Service rule that anti-Christian activists often invoke when they want to silence the message of churches, according to the Alliance Defense Fund.
The organization has announced that more than 80 preachers are taking part in its second annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday this weekend.
The pastors will preach Sunday sermons related to biblical perspectives on the positions of electoral candidates or current government officials, exercising their constitutional right to free religious expression, the ADF said.
They will do so despite a “problematic” IRS rule that activists use when they want to silence the message of Christians, the ADF said.
”Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without fear of punishment. No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights,” ADF senior legal counsel Erik Stanley explained.
The censorship for church pastors has been in place since the Johnson Amendment was added to the Federal Tax Code in 1954. However, enforcement has been spotty and the results have been vague, even though critics of Christian churches contend it limits what they can say from the pulpit.
”Churches were completely free to preach about candidates from the day that the Constitution was ratified in 1788 until 1954,” explained Stanley. “The real effect of the Johnson Amendment is that pastors are muzzled for fear of investigation by the IRS. Rather than risk confrontation, many pastors have self-censored their speech, afraid to be critical of blatant immorality in government and foregoing opportunities to praise moral government leaders. The participants in Pulpit Freedom Sunday refuse to be intimidated into sacrificing their First Amendment rights.”
First for you Christian haters, I am actually not in favor of tax exempt status for Christian churches and only Christian churches. I do not care about such tax exempt status for Muslims or even witchcraft. Such entanglements by the Christian with the evil world system only and always pollutes and contaminates the pure Gospel. The Gospel needs to be preached boldly, without fear and in defiance of the State.
Next for you Christian haters, it is a violation of the Bill of Rights to use the tax code or any involvement by any organization, even schools, with the government as a reason to deny them free political speech or freedom of worship. The Bill of Rights prohibited Congress from passing ANY laws that in any manner infringe upon these basic human rights.
Next for you Christian hating liberals, while it is unconstitutional, if such laws are to be enforced, it must be enforced against black churches equally as well, which daily use their pulpits to endorse liberal political candidates and make their pulpits available for politicians to use to promote liberal social programs.
I have said it until most of you are sick of it, but the Bill of Rights, and I know how much most of your passionately hate the idea, applies to Christians as well as non-Christians.
