{"id":59,"date":"2008-09-29T11:50:08","date_gmt":"2008-09-29T11:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l.html"},"modified":"2008-09-29T11:50:08","modified_gmt":"2008-09-29T11:50:08","slug":"bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l.html","title":{"rendered":"Bullies in Pulpits Challenge Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, about 35 pastors, most with the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, have issued a challenge to the Internal Revenue Service&#8217;s statutory authority to prohibit preachers from endorsing or opposing candidates from the pulpit using church resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For example, the pastor at Warroad (Minnesota) Community Church <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grandforksherald.com\/articles\/?id=87926&amp;section=homepage\">said<\/a>,\u00a0&#8220;We need to vote for the most righteous of candidates..the most righteous is John McCain.&#8221; And from Edmond, Oklahoma comes Fairview Baptist Church&#8217;s pastor Paul Blair <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onenewsnow.com\/Church\/Default.aspx?id=269060\">telling the faithful<\/a> that &#8220;as a Christian and an American citizen, I will be voting for John McCain.&#8221; \u00a0The <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB122265357171384405.html\">Wall Street Journal <\/a>reports additional pulpit endorsements in California, Texas, and Pennsylvania. \u00a0You get the picture.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>In your last posting, Jay, you noted that you had defended the Church at Pierce Creek in its challenge to the prohibition on partisan politicking by churches. \u00a0Why didn&#8217;t that church try to &#8220;take its case to the Supreme Court&#8221;? \u00a0Do you think it was a smart tactic for the Alliance Defense Fund to have multiple churches disobey the law yesterday? \u00a0Do you think that even with the more conservative Supreme Court of 2008 that any members believe you can&#8217;t attach this non-politicking prohibition to a grant of tax-exemption?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It seems to me that all this posturing is just one more effort by the so-called &#8220;Religious Right&#8221; to gain more clout. \u00a0It is about its incessant effort to tell how Americans should act from the moment of conception until the moment of death (which you guys also want to define, by the way). \u00a0I&#8217;m willing to have preachers, pastors, priests and all other religious figures tell me how they think I should act in the most intimate areas of my life. \u00a0If I don&#8217;t want to pay attention to their thoughts on intimate matters, though, I don&#8217;t want them heading off to the legislature for a &#8220;moral bailout&#8221;. \u00a0What&#8217;s that? \u00a0It is when the clergy says: &#8220;we just don&#8217;t seem to be able to use our powers of moral suasion to change people, so let&#8217;s get the government to force them to change.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The aforementioned Pastor Gus Booth recently summed up his view for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2008\/septemberweb-only\/139-41.0.html\">Religion News Service<\/a>: &#8220;If we can tell you what to do in the bedroom, we can certainly tell you what to do in the voting booth.&#8221; \u00a0No further comment is necessary.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, about 35 pastors, most with the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, have issued a challenge to the Internal Revenue Service&#8217;s statutory authority to prohibit preachers from endorsing or opposing candidates from the pulpit using church resources.\u00a0 For example, the pastor at Warroad (Minnesota) Community Church said,\u00a0&#8220;We need to vote for the most righteous&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-politicking","category-election-08","tag-alliance-defense-fund-internal-revenue-service-gus-booth-church-at-pierce-creek"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bullies in Pulpits Challenge Law - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bullies in Pulpits Challenge Law - Lynn v. 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Sekulow","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bullies in Pulpits Challenge Law - Lynn v. Sekulow","og_description":"Well, about 35 pastors, most with the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, have issued a challenge to the Internal Revenue Service&#8217;s statutory authority to prohibit preachers from endorsing or opposing candidates from the pulpit using church resources.\u00a0 For example, the pastor at Warroad (Minnesota) Community Church said,\u00a0&#8220;We need to vote for the most righteous&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l.html","og_site_name":"Lynn v. Sekulow","article_published_time":"2008-09-29T11:50:08+00:00","author":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/bullies-in-pulpits-challenge-l.html","name":"Bullies in Pulpits Challenge Law - Lynn v. 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Sekulow","description":"A debate blog about church, state, faith and politics with Jay Sekulow and Barry W. Lynn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/98ebaf547801cce8ce6fff4c27f51fc8","name":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}