Guest Author: Pastor Robert Hall, Calvary Chapel of Rio Rancho in New Mexico

Can we, as pastors and church members alike, remain silent while our nation goes to hell? No! We must speak “the truth in love” into the lives of those in our culture. We have believed Jesus’ injunction to us in the Sermon on the Mount, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world…” Matt. 5:13a, 14a. It is our ministry and calling to speak the Truth about the condition of our culture in the public square, “Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them,” (Eph. 5:11).

Pastors are called to be God’s spokesmen in every age – the prophetic voice of God calling men and women to repentance from evil. Throughout our first 150 years, there were “Election Sermons,” which would be preached to oppose or endorse candidates, by name, running for public office – based on their stance on moral issues. The Founding Fathers of this nation, even Jefferson – though not considered a Christian – never sought to silence pastors from speaking on relevant social issues of the day.
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions.” ― Thomas Jefferson

Pastors were free (from oppression and taxation) in our nation and unafraid to speak the Truth from their pulpits until 1954. This is the year that Lyndon B. Johnson was hotly criticized during his reelection bid for being soft on communism by the two nonprofit organizations, Facts Forum and the Committee for Constitutional Government. After trying to silence them on a local level and failing, he went to Washington and offered an amendment to a Senate tax bill, creating a law to limit the participation of nonprofits in elections.

The bill stopped 501(c)3 corporations from printing or distributing literature opposing candidates running for political office: “Mr. President, this amendment seeks to extend the provisions of section 501 of the House Bill, denying tax exempt status to not only those people who influence legislation but also to those who intervene (including the publishing or distributing of statements) in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for any public office.”  Unfortunately, his amendment also affected churches. LBJ didn’t follow his own advice:

“You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.” — Lyndon B. Johnson

The Internal Revenue Service has taken upon itself the authority to write regulations in response to this amendment in order to silence the pastors of our nation. These regulations not only address the use of money for political campaigns and the printing of political materials – but also seek to limit free speech in the pulpits of our land. The IRS states, “The regulations further provide that activities that constitute participation or intervention in a political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate include, but are not limited to, the publication or distribution of written statements or the making of oral statements on behalf of or in opposition to such a candidate.” If you carefully read the laws passed by Congress, there is no specific mention of oral statements or regulation of pastors’ sermons in regard to political candidates.

For a 501(c)3 church to openly speak out, or organize in opposition to, anything that the government declares “legal” – even if it is immoral (abortion, homosexual behavior, etc.) – that church will jeopardize its tax exempt status. Did the Church ever need to seek permission from the government to be exempt from taxes? Were churches taxable prior to 1954? No. Churches have never been taxable. To be taxable, a church would first need to be under the jurisdiction – and therefore under the taxing authority – of the government. The First Amendment clearly places churches outside the jurisdiction of the civil government, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

However, the government and the culture have sent a message to its conscience: “Be quiet! Stay in your churches and don’t address these political, legal, and social issues. These issues are not within the scope of religion!” As in Germany in the 1930s, one of the defense mechanisms of our culture to silence its conscience is to pull moral issues into the political and legal arena and then tell the Church that these issues are off limits. They immediately cry “separation of church and state” – a phrase authored by Herman Goering, which also came straight from the mind of Adolf Hitler, who often used the phrase in Nazi propaganda throughout the 1930s.

When Hitler took power in Germany, he immediately recognized that the major threat to his tyrannical designs would come from the Church. If he could neutralize the voice of the Church, he correctly reasoned, there would be no one else to stand in his way. Consequently, he immediately cranked up the Nazi propaganda machine to develop slogans designed to silence the voice of the Church – slogans which were then relentlessly hammered into the minds of gullible Germans and their pastors, who meekly complied.

Hitler crafted two slogans, in particular, and these became the bulldozers he used to push the Church to the margins of the culture and so squelch its freedom to speak Truth. But take note that these slogans do not come from the U. S. Constitution, or from Thomas Jefferson, or from the mind of the Founding Fathers. Here they are, straight from the mind of Adolf Hitler: “Politics do not belong in the Church,” and “The Church must be separate from the State.” If they sound eerily familiar, it will only be because you instinctively recognize in these words the voice of tyranny and repression. The objective of the Nazi regime was to contain the voice of the Church within the four walls of its buildings, turning them into nothing more than echo chambers, and punish any effort of church leaders to make their voices heard in the public square. And the rest, as they say, is history, as J.S. Conway describes in Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-45.

Just because a government legalizes immorality, it does not make it right. They say abortion is a legal and political issue – but as the conscience of our culture, we say, “No! Abortion is a moral issue. Murdering human beings made in the image of God is a capital offense in God’s sight.” They say that sexual orientation is a civil right, and marriage can mean anything anyone wants it to mean, but we as the conscience of this culture say, “No! Unnatural sexual behavior between people of the same sex is an abomination to God. It is a moral issue and making it legal does not make it right!” They say that the Church must remain silent on these moral issues and we say, “No! We have a constitutional right to speak the Truth from the pulpits of our land without interference from the government, as our Constitution tells us ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’”

So, let us all remember, acknowledge, and live out the following core principles in a nation grounded in the Bible:

-Our heritage in this country as pastors demands that we speak out on the moral issues of our day – the culture needs its conscience to speak.

-We have a constitutional right to speak the Truth from the pulpits of our nation. We do not give up our rights as citizens because we stand in a pulpit.

-We have a command from our Savior to be the salt of our culture and the light of our nation. If we don’t speak the Truth, then who will?

Blog by Gary McCaleb – ADF Senior VP; Senior Counsel

Recently, retired Navy Captain John F. Gundlach, a “progressive” former chaplain, mocked those who oppose “repealing” the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy which will force the military to endorse open bisexual and homosexual behavior.

The good Captain claimed that the reasoned opposition of dozens of veteran chaplains and the “endorsing agencies” (which provide the majority of chaplain candidates to the military) was no more than a desperate “SOS” raised by “bigots” who are being cast onto the scrap heap of history.

But the Captain’s arguments scarcely left port when a Christian fighter pilot loosed a few saintly salvos with devastating results.  As an airman who went before in a different type of war succinctly put it, “sighted sub, sank same.” I was pleased to see the spontaneous, reasoned response to the misguided captain. But I’m deeply troubled by the very theme that the captain chose to make his case.

Imagine you are standing watch some mid-winter’s eve, your ship creaking as it heaves and wallows through sullen, angry swells.  It’s one more watch among hundreds stood on that cruise:  four hours of excruciating boredom as you scan a black horizon for whatever it is that lookouts are supposed to look for.  Your ship is just out there, floating in circle at the behest of some distant admiral, a small cog in what you hope is a larger, meaningful machine. But at bottom you are simply cold, wet, tired, and bored, bored, bored.  Really, really bored.

But then it happens—a red flare arcs dimly in the distance; briefly it glitters before the winter sea snuffs its silent plea.

You don’t know who or what prompted the launching of that flare, but you do know one thing:

It was an “SOS.”

May I suggest that at that point, whoever launched that flare would not want a Captain Gundlach at the ship’s helm?  “Flare bearing 260 degrees!” cries the lookout. “Ignore it,” responds the Captain; “it is the act of a desperate person, and we don’t rescue desperate people!”

No, the very point of an SOS is to command attention, spark a rescue, and save a life.  “SOS” invokes heroic effort on behalf of those beset; there is no room to respond with a slur, as did Captain Gundlach in calling the flare-launching Christians “bigots.”

Indeed, on that long-ago winter night when a flare really flew, our ship did not turn away. With the help of a helicopter and the raw courage of the U.S.S. Dahlgren’s boat crew, four aviators were plucked from the sea on that nasty Mediterranean night.

Whether Americans will respond to the “flares” fired off by the chaplains and the endorsing agencies in the midst of this moral storm, I do not know.

But in this story, each of you serves both as lookout and Captain. If you’re awake; if you are willing, you have a crew—your Senators and Representatives —who may yet rescue the military from a very misguided homosexual agenda.  The chaplains and endorsing agencies have given you the words; it is up to you to use inspire that crew to act.

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Blog by Gary McCaleb – ADF Senior VP; Senior Counsel

When highway patrolmen wanted to honor thirteen troopers who died serving in the vast expanses of Utah, they decided to use roadside crosses.  The private Utah Highway Patrol Association then used volunteer labor, donated materials, and a lot of heart to carefully place memorials at or near where each trooper died.  Each bore the trooper’s name, the highway patrol logo, and a plaque narrating the tragic loss.  Just as the Association intended, those who see the crosses instantly know that an officer died there; that the death is honored, remembered, and deeply felt.

This seems reasonable and right; families and colleagues should be able to honor their heroes as they see fit.  Except, of course, if such memorials offend passing atheists—who then flee to federal court, claiming that the memorials somehow “establish religion” and violate the so-called “separation of church and state.”  Sadly, just as these troopers once fell to violence, now their memorials may fall to a wrongheaded notion of American law.

ADF is defending the Association’s memorials and won the case in district court.  But the atheists prevailed at the first level of appeal, thanks to the muddled state of the law on Establishment Clause issues.  Now ADF is asking the Supreme Court to take the case and protect the memorials.  Happily, many allies came alongside ADF to file supporting “friend of the court” briefs urging the Court to take the case using well-reasoned logic and law to press their point.

But for me, two of those briefs are less about the law than they are about some heart-rending memories rooted in my life before law, when I was a government forester in Oregon and New Mexico.  In our western states, April may have its showers, but May brings wildfire, not flowers, as a seasonal drought comes about.  And with wildfire comes a small migratory horde of yellow-clad firefighters.

Their work is primitive and dangerous:  man versus flame, with little between but a  hand-scraped fireline.  When the danger turns deadly, the firefighter’s last hope rests in a “fire shelter,” a tiny metalized tent.  It works when things are bad, but its nickname “shake and bake” reflects a bitter truth: it cannot protect against the worst.

And the worst happens:  death follows fire as fire follows drought, sometimes consuming entire crews.  Thirteen were swallowed by flame in a grassy swale called Mann Gulch in Montana.   Fifteen fell in California on the rocky slopes of Powderhouse Canyon.  And fourteen died on Colorado’s brush-choked Storm King Mountain.

But like any band of brothers (and sisters—four women died at Storm King), firefighters honor their fallen friends and colleagues.  Today, those firefighters are memorialized by crosses marking where they fell in Montana, California, and Colorado.

And therein lies the link:  two of the supporting briefs recount the stories of the firefighter memorials in California and Colorado —the latter brief submitted by Robert Mackey, whose son Don I met a few days before his death on Storm King.

As I read these briefs, my ADF office fades; in its place is a small-town cemetery,  where on a hot New Mexican day I slipped the black band of mourning over my Forest Service badge and escorted one of our own to his final rest—one of three who died when our firefighting helicopter crashed.  Somehow time turns transparent to pain; loss then is immediate now; the longing to remember and honor the fallen is palpable.

Yet whatever anguish a colleague may feel; however deep the loss or piercing the pain may be, if the Supreme Court spurns the Association’s petition, then our fallen American heroes may receive only such honor as would please an atheist.

We at ADF often ask our supporters to pray—just as ADF team members pray each work day morning for our cases—and this would be my plea to you today; that the high Court take our case, right the wrong, and let all of these memorials stand.

Blog by: Jordan Lorence – ADF Senior Vice President; Senior Counsel

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday issued a stunningly wrong decision denying the First Amendment rights of churches and other religious groups to meet in government buildings on the same terms and conditions as other community groups.  In the Bronx Household of Faith decision, the judges by a 2-1 vote, upheld a New York City school board policy that bans religious worship services from meeting in the City’s almost 1200 public schools at times when school is not in session.  The school board allows private community groups to meet for any purpose “pertaining to the welfare of the community,” yet explicitly singles out religious worship services for exclusion.   Thousands of community groups meet in the schools each year.   About 60 or so churches meet weekly in NYC public schools, according to school officials.  Many other religious groups, including Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim groups, meet in the schools on a less regular basis.  These religious groups have been meeting under an injunction won by ADF attorneys nine years ago in 2002.  The Second Circuit overturned that injunction Thursday and reinstated the policy that bans worship services, but allows all other forms of private expression (speeches, debates, recitals, meetings, ceremonies, etc.).

The majority opinion finds constitutional significance in the fact that the school board is  banning the “conduct of an event or activity that includes expression of a point of view, and excluding the expression of that point of view.”  The majority opinion explains that although the school board could not ban religious expression, it could ban activities, or events, such as “marital art matches, livestock shows and horseback riding,” A church service is like a rodeo, the majority reasons, so it can be banned!

The big flaw here is that the majority views a “worship service” as a collective event and refuses to see it as a collection of  specific expressive acts.  But that is essentially a theological determination, and not a matter of constitutinal law. A federal court, or a public school district can only use the Constitution when examining whether to permit a “worship service” in its forum.  That means it should view a ”worship service” as a summation of component expressive elements, such as singing, preaching, prayer, Bible reading, etc.   The issue should be whether the government’s policy setting up the forum allows that speech.  However, the Second Circuit does not agree, making the incredible statement that  ”[p]rayer, religious instruction, expression of devotion to God, and the singing of hymns, whether done by a person or a group, do not constitute the conduct of worship services.  Those activities are not excluded.”  This is not a misprint.  The Second Circuit freely admits that all of those expressive activities are permitted under the NYC policy.  But those expressive activities combined together is exactly what Bronx Household of Faith does at the schools on Sunday mornings.  So just because Bronx Household of Faith calls it a “worship service,” the label allows the school district to ban the meetings from the forum, the majority ruled.  The label a private groups chooses for its meetings should not make a constitutional difference and allow the school district to ban the church’s expression.   A worship service is not some sort of mutant form of expression that garners less protection under the First Amendment.

The elegant and powerful dissent by Judge Walker exposes the defects and wrong reasoning the majority opinion.  His compelling analysis rightly explains how the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the arguments the school board has raised to defend its policy.    He points out the major flaw in the majority’s opinion:  This is private religious speech, not government sponsored religious speech.  The government does not sponsor private expression that it permits in an empty public building. This violates the free speech rights of the church, and the Establishment Clause does not require such a harsh religious exclusion.   This will be the basis that the Supreme Court or the Second Circuit sitting en banc  will use to reverse this decision.

We are planning to appeal the case.  Getting the correct interpretation of the Constitution is important.  But there is another important factor here - the many churches now meeting in New York City public schools and the people and families they impact throughout the city.   The school district estimates that around 60 congregations meet regularly in the 1200 school buildings on weekends.  I do not know how many people attend these churches, but there are probably many who are finding help for themselves, their marriages, their families, etc.  There are many who are finding hope in Christ and the truths fo the Scripture.  These churches are helping people to clean up their lives, get off of drugs, save their marriages, stop stealing, learn how to raise their children responsibly, motivate them to help their neighbors as Christ commanded, etc.  All of  that “pertains to the welfare of the community,” as the New York City policy requires for any community group meeting in the public schools on the weekends.  My prayer is that this unconstitutoinal policy will never again go into effect, and that the churches will continue to meet freely in the New York City schools as they have for the past nine years.

Guest Author: Pastor Robert Hall, Calvary Chapel of Rio Rancho in New Mexico

In this day and age when the Church is under attack, there are several steps pastors must take to guard our flocks:

-Know our Christian heritage and follow the great pastors from the past 2,000 years – from the Apostle Paul to Charles Spurgeon to Billy Graham.

-Understand our legal rights as pastors and citizens of the United States by forming a relationship with an organization that will champion your religious freedom, like the Alliance Defense Fund – “I appeal to Caesar.”

-Understand the issues of our day and support those standing with us (ADF and allied organizations) – be “salt and light.”

Proverbs 29:2 tell us, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice…” We are privileged to live in a country that has a unique place in world history. The formation of the U.S. was the first time that Christian people sought to establish a nation and government based on the principles of the Bible. It is the grand experiment of freedom as a nation that has never been tried before or since. Renowned Christian author, historian, and pastor, Peter Marshall (1902-1949), proclaimed, “May it be ever understood that our liberty is under God and can be found nowhere else . . . We were born that way, as the only nation on earth that came into being for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.”

The “American Dream” was born of people seeking liberty from the religious and political oppression of restrictive governments and state-controlled churches. Immigrants came to this continent from many countries and united to form a constitutional republic based on the principles of faith, freedom, and family – and fought for that vision. They wanted a land where they could freely pursue their Christian faith and their personal dreams through responsibility and hard work. They wrote three main documents to secure their own freedoms and the freedoms of future generations, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments are considered to be part of the original Constitution).

The Declaration of Independence says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” The writers believed that men and women are created beings, made in the image of God, and therefore have God-given inherent rights. This is reflective of Gen. 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”  Note that the Founders believed our rights are “unalienable” – “Not to be separated, given away, or taken away” – and that these rights were given by God to man, not by human government; and therefore, they cannot be justly removed by any human government. In fact, the basic purpose of human government is to secure and protect these rights.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are not the only rights that human beings are to enjoy as a gift from God;  they are only some of those rights! (“among these are”) These three rights, however, express the heart of the American dream.

The ideological basis for these statements and the other founding documents was the Bible. University of Houston political science professors Donald Lutz and Charles Hyneman published a monumental study in 1983 that took them 10 years to complete. They surveyed more than 15,000 documents written by our Founding Fathers between 1760 and1805, and they discovered that the Bible was, by far, the most cited source, comprising 34 percent of all quotations. In fact, the Bible was quoted four times more than any other source. Significantly, the next most commonly cited sources were Barron Montesquieu (1689-1755), William Blackstone (1723-1780), and John Locke (1632-1704). All of these men were strong adherents of natural law philosophy and encouraged the incorporation of biblical law into civil law. Lutz and Hyneman affirmed that the Pilgrims, the Puritans, and the constitutional framers all insisted on cementing the connection between law and morals by infusing biblical precepts into the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Important American figures strongly reflect this reasoning.

“The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” ― John Quincy Adams, cited by John Wingate Thornton, in The Pulpit of The American Revolution

“Our Fathers were brought up by their veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles within the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions – civil, political, or literary.” ― Daniel Webster (Dec. 22, 1820) The Works of Daniel Webster

Because of this biblically based beginning, American pastors were one of the main leadership voices in our society. For the 178 years following the founding of our nation, pastors were expected to weigh in on the moral issues facing people in their daily lives and preach Bible principles concerning all areas of life, including politics. From the pulpits of our nation, the current events issues of morality, law, government, politics, elections, war, etc., were examined every week against the Truths of Scripture to either justify or condemn. Leaders were mentioned by name and called into account – by the pastors, to God, and His Word – for their words and actions. From the beginning, pastors fulfilled the role as the voice of conscience of the nation.
With our heritage in mind, looking at our current culture, our nation and its leaders need its “conscience” to speak up and call it into account, as our culture is in a moral and ethical crisis of unbelievable proportions. Paul aptly described us in his letter to Timothy:

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…” ― 2 Tim. 3:1-4

Today, the results of this godless lifestyle are unwanted babies, sexual immorality (including homosexual behavior), sexually transmitted diseases, breakdown of the family, immoral laws, unchecked greed, dishonest leaders, and a spiritually and financially bankrupt nation. Our nation and government has become so corrupt that it is now legislating immorality and has legalized the murdering of children. When government forgets or turns its back on its God-given role of restraining evil – and begins to stand for evil and to perpetrate evil – the pastors have a God-given responsibility to speak up.

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