Lifeway Research just issued the results of a survey it conducted by phone of 1,000 Protestant pastors.  It asked these pastors whether they agreed with the statement,  ”I believe pastors should endorse candidates for public office from the pulpit.”  The survey found that 84% of the pastors survey did not agree with the statement. So does this mean that 84% of Protestant pastors disagree with ADF’s Pulpit Initiative?

No.  In fact, surveys like this only tangentially relate to ADF’s Pulpit Initiative.  This may seem odd at first glance since ADF’s Pulpit Initiative focuses on pastors who choose to make endorsements or oppositions of candidates from the pulpit.  But the Pulpit Initiative has never been about “political” speech from the pulpit and the endorsements or oppositions of candidates is only the vehicle for a larger purpose of getting the government out of the pulpits of America.

To understand what ADF is doing through the Pulpit Initiative, you must understand that, for the first 166 years or so of American life, there were absolutely no restrictions on what a pastor could say from the pulpit.  The government didn’t care and didn’t monitor a pastor’s sermon to determine if it complied with some law or regulation.  Pastors could say whatever they wanted to say and many did take the opportunity to endorse or oppose candidates from the pulpit or to talk about political issues of the day. America’s pastors were bold and fearless.

Yet, in 1954, the government did start reviewing a pastor’s sermon to determine if it complied with the law.  The tax code allows for this monitoring and review of a pastor’s sermon by government agents.  The Pulpit Initiative is intended to fight against this intrusion into the pulpit by the government.  The fact is, the monitoring undertaken by the government is to see if the pastor says anything that might be construed as an endorsement of or opposition to a candidate.  But the restriction could just as easily be to see if the pastor says something about the morals of homosexual behavior or about whether marriage should be between one man and one woman as Scripture teaches.  The point is not that the monitoring is about candidates and elections.  The point is that the monitoring is happening at all!

That’s why it doesn’t matter that 84% of pastors disagree with the statement that a pastor should endorse political candidates from the pulpit.  That’s why the Lifeway Research Survey doesn’t really have a bearing on the Pulpit Initiative.

Ask pastors today whether they agree with the statement, “I believe the federal government should monitor my sermon and punish my church if I endorse or oppose a political candidate,” and I guarantee that you would get a much different answer.  That’s because pastors know the difference between a theological debate and a government mandated punishment. Pastors can and should debate whether it is theologically correct to endorse or oppose a candidate from the pulpit.  But every pastor should agree that the government has no business monitoring and punishing their church if they say something wrong.

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