In an interview over the weekend on Fox News, Baptist Joint Committee director Rev. Brent Walker ripped into this Sunday's planned "pulpit initiative", in which the Alliance Defense Fund is urging clergy to endorse candidates for office, in violation of their tax-exempt requirements.
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.
Walker later said Pulpit Freedom Sunday is a misguided idea because it is divisive, corrosive and unnecessary. "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."
In an interview over the weekend on Fox News, Baptist Joint Committee director Rev. Brent Walker ripped into this Sunday's planned "pulpit initiative", in which the Alliance Defense Fund is urging clergy to endorse candidates for office, in violation of their tax-exempt requirements.
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. Walker later said Pulpit Freedom Sunday is a misguided idea because it is divisive, corrosive and unnecessary. "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.
