Pastors With Bad Ideas

I don't like this idea at all:

CHICAGO -- 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.

Pastors have the right, just like any other citizen, to endorse whomever they like as long as they do it as private citizens. Dr. James Dobson has done that for years, separating his endorsements from his work with Focus on the Family. The tax laws state very clearly that if you want to enjoy the benefits of tax-exempt nonprofit status, you can't get involved in political endorsements. I have no problem with that.

If anything good comes out of this it may be a crackdown on the type of campaigning that Democrats have done for years, speaking in and even collecting donations in churches (often African-American). If churches do not want to comply with the restrictions on political activity, fine, they should give up their tax-exempt status.