33 Pastors across 22 American states are putting their toes into constitutional hot water by endorsing Senator McCain’s presidential campaign from the pulpit. Their actions are a deliberate challenge to tax laws prohibiting pulpit-politicking.
Rev. Broden said in the Dallas Morning News: ‘”What I did (on Sunday) is consistent with the freedoms that are guaranteed me under the Constitution. Second, I’m being consistent with my call as a minister and a prophetic voice in the culture.”
Broden considered the church’s and the candidates’ positions on abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and same-sex marriage.
“The Democratic candidate did not fit our view,” he said. “The Republican did.”’
The “establishment clause” in the 1st Amendment prohibits government from showing preference to a particular religion or interfering in that religion, and vice-versa. Thomas Jefferson said this was intended to erect a “wall of separation between church and state”.
Why is this wall important? For the same reason that an employer should be prohibited from influencing the votes of their employees. Institutions have power over people, and that power can be used to pervert the natural course of democracy. These churches seek to influence the way their congregations vote, which of course some already do through more covert mechanisms.
Churches exert considerable social pressure on their members to conform to and internalise moral principles. When a pastors tells their congregation that one political candidate shares their common moral principals they are endorsing one and condeming the other.
Politicising religion is an obvious danger to individual freedom, to the freedom of government from powerful and unelected religious influence, and what’s more, to the freedom of religion from government influence.
If Jefferson’s wall does come down, church and state may intertwine in complicated and unexpected ways.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State reported six churches to the IRS for violating federal tax laws by endorsing candidates from the pulpit.
And here’s one take on the original story from the Dallas Morning News:
David Christopher 
November 10, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Hi David,
We met at Filmstock the other night, so I thought I’d look you up. Loved Pitch!
This is interesting…As you probably picked up from our conversation the other day, I’m not into coercion or herd-mentality or some of the things that these mega-churches seem to be doing. It can indeed be dangerous. But I also think it’s impossible for religions or churches to be apolitical.
In my view religions are fundamentally political. They have opinions about the way life should be ordered, about what it means to be human, to live a good life etc…in that respect they have more in common with the political agenda than nearly any other sphere of society. You are absolutely right that institutions have power over people, and can persuade and influence them. Whether that is an afront to personal freedom I’m less clear on. It’s a pretty depressing personal freedom that expects to be free from the influence of others in making our individual decisions
What do you think?
November 11, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hi Lucy,
You make a good point. I believe that personal freedom should include both the freedom to belong to an organized religion and the freedom to decide how to cast your vote. Separation is difficult to achieve in practice, because religion is political, but I believe that independence should still be strived for by both church and state, in the full knowledge that it may never be achieved.
American churches have tremendous political clout, if churches across America are allowed to pick political sides it will be a divisive force. Furthermore the spiritual message may be corrupted, simplified and spun to achieve a political agenda.
In this specific case I believe that if a church is behaving like a political entity then it is no longer a charity and should lose its charitable tax status. That wouldn’t prohibit the same people gathering elsewhere to discuss politics, but then those people would be there to hear a political message and not a religious one.