Blog from the Capital

Let's file this under the "Continuing Need for Education..." (if only because the Department of Bonehead Moves is full):

The Southern Baptist Convention expects very little from its vice presidents -- nothing, in fact -- unless the SBC president becomes incapacitated. Traditionally, those elected each year to the mostly honorary VP positions are seen but not heard.

But when Southern Baptists elected Wiley Drake second vice president in June, they should not have expected Drake to be quiet about it.
...
Drake recently created his own makeshift letterhead proclaiming "Southern Baptist Convention, Office of the 2nd Vice President" -- and used it to endorse Republican Dick Mountjoy of California in his bid for the U.S. Senate -- he got a stern warning from the SBC's top lawyer.

"If there has been political activity using letterhead, it should immediately cease, due (among other reasons) to its potential to place the Convention at the wrong end of an IRS investigation," wrote attorney August Boto in an Oct. 4 letter, alluding to laws that make political activity by non-profit groups like the SBC illegal.

"Looking back, I shouldn't have done it," Drake told Associated Baptist Press Oct. 26. "But no one told me what I should or shouldn't do."

This makes my head spin - or else it's the Friday afternoon caffeine. But, you know, these are not new IRS rules and the guy's a long-time pastor. (I wonder what he is sending out on church letterhead?) There sure is lots of "misunderstanding" going on right at election time. So which is more troubling: that Rev. Drake needed to be told that religious institutions may not officially endorse candidates? Or that the SBC would seem to have no educational mechanism in place to guide its representatives in being an official of a prominent religious organization?