‘Pulpit Freedom Sunday’ Pastors Don’t Care About Religious Freedom

[DonViejo]

A thousand Christian ministers plan to defy the law by endorsing candidates in their sermons. But they’re protesting an imaginary problem and ignoring the real challenges to others’ freedom of religion

On Oct. 7, approximately one thousand evangelical pastors will urge their congregations to vote, not just for Christian values or “life” or “family,” but for for, as Stephen Colbert put it, “Mitt Romney—or not Obama.” Boosted by dutiful Fox News coverage and an always-zeitgeisty endorsement from Mike Huckabee, the fifth annual “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” will culminate in copies of hundreds of illegal sermons being mailed to the IRS to challenge its restriction on tax-exempt organizations endorsing political candidates. According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian-right group behind the protest, “the future of religious freedom” depends on your pastor being allowed to tell you how to vote.

The pastors have a point about the law. The restriction on electioneering by tax-exempt organizations came in the Johnson Amendment passed in 1954, and originally had nothing to do with religion. The amendment has a curious backstory involving McCarthyism and hardball Texas politics. It was a product of then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson’s battle with Sen. Joe McCarthy, who was leading a national witch-hunt for communists. Johnson feared that the right-wing groups in Texas circulating articles in favor of his opponent, Dudley Dougherty, would cost him reelection. On the day one of the special House committees investigating tax-exempt organizations concluded its work, Johnson presented an amendment to revise the tax code and quietly disarm his opponents. Only later would it become clear that churches would be collateral damage.

The Johnson Amendment is a relic of a strange, particular period of American politics, not a sacred expression of our Constitution or secular values. In fact, it’s difficult to make a case that it should stay on the books. There remains no persuasive explanation of how anything would change if tax-exempt, indisputably partisan organizations like the National Right to Life or the National Rifle Association explicitly endorsed candidates. Does anyone have any doubt whatsoever which presidential candidate those organizations support? (Seriously, just try going to one of their websites and see if you can possibly avoid figuring it out.) The same goes for churches: if a pastor preaches against the evils of same-sex marriage and abortion and urges his congregation to vote, what difference does it make if he names Mitt Romney?

The pointlessness of the Johnson Amendment does not, however, make Pulpit Freedom Sunday a righteous cause. Contrary to the ADF’s apocalyptic rhetoric, the electioneering restriction does approximately zero harm to religious freedom. In fact, it might as well not exist: in the five years since Pulpit Freedom Sunday began, the IRS has been essentially saying, We don’t give a damn what you say in your sermon. The agency has ignored the protest, and its officials have consistently downplayed its interest in prosecuting churches for illegal campaigning. The IRS’s internal bar for beginning an electioneering-related audited is extraordinarily high. Ironically, IRS action against electioneering churches has been so nonexistent that the Pulpit Freedom pastors are complaining about how little the agency enforces the law. “It’s frustrating,” an ADF lawyer told The New York Times in 2011. “The law is on the books but they don’t enforce it.”

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