Blog from the Capital

Americans United points to a recent radio show of conservative Christian host Janet Folger. There, she complained to her guest Kenyn Cureton of the Family Research Council that some of her church members were actually - gasp! - thinking of voting for a Democrat for President. Cureton reassured her that FRC is on the case...

“It just seems to me that the messages are somehow not reaching the congregations,” Folger said. “Is it the pastors that need to speak more clearly? What’s the answer?”

“I think that’s the case,” Cureton replied. “The pastors need to speak clearly about it. I’ll tell you we are working with the Alliance Defense Fund on a series of sermons this fall for pastors to preach, so that they educate their people on the issues.

“We’re gonna be talking about the value of life, the value of family and the value of freedom, basically talking about abortion and stem-cell research,” he continued, “and then also about the gay agenda and then finally about our Christian heritage and how it’s being stripped from every corner of society. And then finally we’re gonna be doing a candidate comparison message that is going to ask pastors to cross the line.”
...
“We’re going,” he said, “to prompt pastors and say to them that, you know, we really believe that they need to challenge some of the things, some of the thinking that we have going on in our society, which is that separation of church and state doctrine, that we really need to preach the Bible on these issues and apply them to the things that are going on in the culture today.”

Pastors would not be heroic for a just cause by refusing to follow the IRS' tax-exempt guidelines. They would be jeopardizing their church's status, not to mention the integrity of the church's message once it becomes infused with the mechanics of politics. Urging a minister to take such a stand is, at the very least, irresponsible.