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.
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.
