ADF video: “Internal Revenue Service has insisted that pastors remain silent regarding political campaigns, candidates and issues, or risk losing their church’s tax exemptions.”
In years past ADF used Pulpit Freedom Sunday to invite pastors to break the IRS rule which prevents churches and other 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations from advocating for or against political candidates. ADF’s goal was to provoke a lawsuit that would, they hoped, result in the courts striking down the rule, known as the Johnson Amendment.
Since 2013 is not a major federal elections year, ADF decided this year to ask pastors to preach against marriage equality instead. “The Supreme Court is poised to render decisions on two cases by the end of June that could redefine marriage,” ADF wrote last week. “Make sure your congregation knows where the Church stands on marriage. The Bible has not changed. God’s Word remains true that homosexual behavior is wrong and that marriage is as God Himself defined it in the beginning pages of Scripture – between one man and one woman only.”
Legally it is uncontroversial to preach about homosexuality and marriage, and doing so breaks no IRS rules. Yet in its video pitch for the event ADF misled pastors to believe that they would put their church’s tax-exempt status at risk by doing so. From their video “Pulpit Freedom Sunday”:
In 1954…future president Lyndon Johnson pushed an amendment through Congress that made it unlawful for churches to participate in the election process. Since then, the Internal Revenue Service has insisted that pastors remain silent regarding political campaigns, candidates and issues, or risk losing their church’s tax exemptions. [emphasis added]
It is patently untrue that IRS rules prevent pastors from speaking out on issues from the pulpit. Pastors routinely extoll the virtues or vileness of marriage equality and many other social and political issues from the pulpit. As long as a church does not “devote a substantial part of their activities to attempting to influence legislation” or advocate for or against candidates, pastors are free to say whatever they want without fear of losing their tax-exempt status.In fact, ADF’s allies in the marriage discrimination business routinely recruit pastors to exhort their congregations to oppose marriage equality, and they use ADF-generated materials to quell the very fears that the Pulpit Freedom Sunday video tried to instill. [cont'd]
