Candace

Talmadge

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September 23, 2008

Alliance Defense Fund Ploy: People of Faith Denounce Pulpit Partisanship

Their fellow Christians are none too happy with them.

Egged on by the radically conservative Alliance Defense Fund, three dozen members of the clergy across 20 states reportedly have agreed to endorse or oppose specific political candidates by name from their pulpits this Sunday, September 28.

The ADF claims an IRS ban instituted in 1954 on partisan political activities by non-profits organized under the 501c(3) tax statute violates religious organizations’ First Amendment speech rights.

Any religious organization taking part in the ADF’s “Pulpit Initiative” risks losing its coveted tax exemption if the IRS finds it violated federal tax statutes.

This brazenly unconstitutional attempt to mingle religion and partisan politics is just so wrong-headed in so many ways it is hard to know where to start.

Most disgusting, perhaps, is the spectacle of Scottsdale, Arizona-based ADF urging the churches into the breach while not putting its own non-profit status on the line. The entire exercise calls to mind one George W. Bush’s “bring it on” bravado when he was never to be in harm’s way. Bombastic but empty talk is the cheapest of all.

Next is the minor, pesky fact that the ADF is a consortium of attorneys formed to represent Christian conservatives in legal battles. Yet these same legal counselors are nonetheless urging potential clients deliberately to violate tax law. The goal of this apparently is to develop a test case to take all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a presumably more conservative set of justices will throw out the ban on pulpit partisanship.

This latter point has former IRS Commissioner Mortimer M. Caplin and ex-IRS attorneys Cono R. Namorato and Marcus S. Owens steamed. They have dispatched a letter to the director of the IRS’s office of professional responsibility urging an investigation of the ADF’s legal staff for possible violations of the IRS rule of professional conduct for lawyers who represent clients in dealings with the agency. This is a fancy way of saying the ADF is engaged in unethical and unsavory ambulance-chasing wrapped in a First Amendment fig leaf.

Finally, there is the question of whether the IRS regulation really does infringe on constitutionally protected speech. Owens told The Washington Post he doesn’t think the Supreme Court is likely to overturn lower court rulings that uphold the ban, or its own ruling in a related precedent.

Owens and his colleagues are advising Eric Williams, pastor of North Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio, in his efforts not to let the ADF get away with this pernicious ploy. Williams has also written the IRS and petitioned fellow clergy members not to be involved in what he calls “this latest attempt by the ADF to cross the line and jeopardize the unique role and moral authority that leaders and communities of faith have exercised throughout the history of our nation.”

The web site of Americans United for Separation of Church and State quotes many people of varying faiths who do not seem to think their freedom of speech has been eroded by the tax law and disagree with what the ADF is trying to do. Among them are Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.; Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas; Sister Mary Ann Walsh, representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; and T.D. Jakes, pastor of The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas. None of them thinks their pulpits or congregations should serve the interest of any one candidate or political party.

In their book on why they support this year’s Democratic candidate over the Republican choice, longtime Republicans Wilbur O. Colom and James W. Parkinson said it well. “The paths of men and women searching for God need to be protected from the polluting influence of partisanship.”

Amen to that, gentlemen.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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