wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Foes hail defeat of church-electioneering bill

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Note #7465 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Foes hail defeat of church-electioneering bill
02391
October 8, 2002

Foes hail defeat of church-electioneering bill 

Measure would have allowed politicking from the pulpit

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - Presbyterians who opposed a controversial bill that would have
permitted tax-exempt churches to involve themselves in partisan political
campaigns celebrated last week's sound defeat of the measure.
The proposal, hotly debated in the U.S. House of Representatives, was
rejected on Oct. 2 by a vote of 239 to 178. 

The bill would have lifted the Internal Revenue Service's effective ban on
political activity in churches, synagogues and mosques and granted religious
leaders a right of free political speech, permitting them to endorse
candidates and contribute money to political campaigns. Any house of worship
that does so now risks its tax-exempt status.

The Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church(USA) and many Presbyterian
ministers joined with other religious leaders and organizations from across
the theological spectrum in opposing the "Houses of Worship Political Speech
Protection Act" (HR 2357). 

"We're very happy that it was defeated in the House, so that we don't have to
deal with it in the Senate," said the Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory, director
of the Washington Office.
Critics feared approval of the bill could have turned church collection
plates into political-campaign coffers and eroded the separation of church
and state.

 "It's one of those bills that has a title that sounds like a good idea,"
Giddings Ivory said. "So those who signed on to it in the House thought they
were protecting churches. But when they dug further, they realized this would
cause more problems than it's worth."

Opponents said the bill could have reversed campaign-finance laws and
probably would have enabled big-money donors to funnel money through
churches, turning them into political machines and muting their moral voices.
If the bill were enacted, she said, it might also have given the IRS and
Federal Elections Commission more reason to monitor churches. 

"This is actual direct politics, and I think we need to keep direct politics
out of the churches, out of the pulpit," she said. "We can talk about issues.
We can talk about the concepts of justice, what's right and what's wrong, but
we can do that without talking about actual political party partisanship."

Backers of the bill are already planning to resurrect it next year, Giddings
Ivory said.
Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-NC, who introduced the bill, argued that political
campaigning from the pulpit is a matter of free speech, and the measure was
necessary to protect religious leaders' right to speak out on moral issues. 

"Our nation's pastors, priests, rabbis and clerics should be free to express
their political opinions, just (like) any other American," Rep. Wally Herger,
R-CA, wrote recently. "We should be doing everything we can to promote
freedom of speech."

The House rejected the legislation despite intense lobbying on its behalf by
the Religious Right. Supporters included the Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of
the Christian Coalition, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and James Dobson, director of
the group Focus on the Family.

The Rev. Donald F. Beisswenger, a pastoral associate at Hillsboro
Presbyterian Church in Nashville, TN, opposed the bill, calling it "harmful
to religion" and arguing that it could have led to the "politicization" of
houses of worship along partisan lines.

"It would undermine the integrity of religious institutions," Beisswenger
said.  "They (churches) would just become political agents, not religious
agents. Politics would take over everything else and it would lead to the
kind of prejudice that is detrimental to our election process."

Beisswenger and two other Presbyterian clergy from Nashville, the Revs.
Richard Rouquie and Eugene TeSelle, joined about a dozen ministers from a
variety of denominations in sounding off against the bill in an editorial
published last month in The Nashville Tennessean.

"If implemented, this legislation would result in an unhealthy mix of
politics and religion," they wrote, "one that would greatly alter the way
houses of worship and people of faith currently engage in the political
process."

Not all Presbyterians were against the bill. One supporter was the Rev. Woody
Allabough, pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Dubuque, IA.
"I think it's a very good proposal," Allabough said. "... because I think
there is a very strong link between the church and our government. We think
about our roots, we think about the fact that a lot of the parts of our
government are based upon even the Presbyterian system (of government),
historically."

Allabough did comment that, if the bill were passed, churches would have to
be careful to serve as a "conscience" for the nation, not as a political arm
of the government.

"I think there's a fine line that we have to be careful about," he said. "I
think we have to be careful that we don't manipulate towards a particular
candidate, but that we have the freedom to speak about those who support the
causes that we support."
 
Religious groups and the government have locked horns often over politics and
the Constitution's guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
After a decade-long battle, for example, the IRS concluded in 1999 that the
Christian Coalition should not be tax-exempt, because it distributes voter
guides in churches.

The prohibition on political activity was imposed in 1954 by Congress on all
501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations, under an amendment offered by then-Sen.
Lyndon Johnson. 

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found
that 70 percent of Americans oppose the idea of churches endorsing political
candidates. 

Congregations are permitted under law to hold non-partisan candidate forums
and invite political candidates to services or meetings (as long as all
candidates are included); leaders may take stands on political issues and
support or oppose referenda issues; and churches may sponsor
voter-registration drives.

Among others opposing the measure: the Baptist Joint Committee on Public
Affairs; the Central Conference of American Rabbis; the Church of the
Brethren Washington Office; the Friends Committee on National Legislation
(Quakers); the General Board of Church and Society, United Methodist Church;
the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA; the American Jewish
Committee; and the American Jewish Congress.

Many of the religious right's largest groups and most prominent leaders
endorsed it, including the Christian Coalition, the American Family
Association, Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council. The
Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination closely aligned with the
religious right, also endorsed the measure.
 
"The House did the right thing by rejecting this reckless scheme," said the
Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of
Church and State, a watchdog group that opposed the measure. "This bill may
have been the religious right's dream, but it was a nightmare for anyone
concerned with the integrity of houses of worship and the political process."

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