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Says the “misguided” idea is “corrosive” and “unnecessary”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Huett | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 202-680-4127
September 23, 2010
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The effort to recruit pastors to endorse political candidates from the pulpit on Sept. 26 is a misguided idea and a brazen attempt to blend the worship of God with electoral politics, said a Baptist leader, constitutional scholar and church-state expert.
J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said the Alliance Defense Fund’s plan to provoke investigations of these houses of worship by the Internal Revenue Service could risk the tax-exempt status of the churches. ADF lawyers would then challenge the investigations in court.
Click here to read more of Walker's statement.
Walker says “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” is a misnomer because pulpits
already are free in this country. He calls the idea “misguided” because
it is unnecessary, divisive and corrosive.
“Pulpit
Freedom Sunday is entirely unnecessary. Preachers are perfectly free to
interpret and apply scripture as they see fit, speak out on the great
moral and ethical issues of the day, and urge good citizenship
practices, such as registering to vote and voting,” Walker said. “The
only thing they can’t do — in exchange for the most favored tax exempt
status — is to tell the faithful how to vote.
“In every church I
know of, it would be like setting off a bomb shell in the sanctuary for
the preacher to tell the congregants how to pull the lever in the voting
booth,” Walker said. “It would be incredibly corrosive of the church’s
true mission to spread the gospel and be salt and light in the culture.
As soon as the church throws in with a particular candidate or party,
its prophetic edge is blunted. You can’t raise a prophet’s fist at a
candidate or party when, with the other arm, you are locked in a tight
bear hug. “
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The Baptist Joint Committee is a 74-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based
religious liberty organization that works to defend and extend God-given
religious liberty for all, bringing a uniquely Baptist witness to the
principle that religion must be freely exercised, neither advanced nor
inhibited by government.
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