The revelations about the IRS targeting conservative groups seem to keep coming.  According to Fox News, the IRS targeting went broader than originally reported. Apparently, the IRS’ additional scrutiny “went beyond targeting ‘Tea Party’ and ‘patriot’ groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.”

Michigan representative Mike Rogers was on Fox News Sunday where he said: “The conclusion that the IRS came to is that they did have agents who were engaged in intimidation of political groups… I don’t care if you’re a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine. It needs to have a full investigation.”

This news is bad.  And it should send a chill up our spines to know that a very powerful branch of the federal government was specifically targeting political groups with which it disagreed.  Such behavior is more fitting in an authoritarian style of government and should have no place in our constitutional republic.  It is chilling to be labeled, even in a indirect way, as an enemy of the state and to have the power of the federal government arrayed against you.

But what should be reported is that the targeting by the IRS goes even deeper than what is just reported.  Because the IRS has been targeting churches since the passage of the Johnson Amendment in 1954.  There is no difference between what the IRS has been caught doing with conservative groups and what the IRS has done to churches for the last 59 years.  Both are intimidation.  Imagine the impact of a system of intimidation targeting a particular group left unchecked for over half a century.  Because that is exactly what has happened with America’s churches.

The Johnson Amendment was passed in 1954 because Senator Lyndon Johnson did not like the views of his political opponents.  It was a naked attempt to keep the reins of raw power in his own hands and to silence non-profit groups who opposed his reelection because they believed he was soft on communism.  Johnson devised a clever way to target these groups, and his amendment to 501(c)(3) of the tax code has since been applied to intimidate churches and pastors across the country into silence on the moral qualifications of candidates and the positions they hold.

Free speech is a fragile thing and it needs breathing space to exist.  The power of government can all too easily squelch dissent.  In 1926, The U.S. Supreme Court stated that vague laws chill free speech because “People of common intelligence must necessarily guess at [the law’s] meaning and differ as to its application.”  What this means is that if the government enacts a vague speech regulation, people will not know where the line is between what is permissible and what is prohibited.  Thus, they will “chill” their own speech.  Stated more simply, people will not speak at all if there is uncertainty over whether the power of government will come down on them if they say something that might violate the law.  This is what we awe seeing first hand with the revelations of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.  And this has been the problem with the Johnson Amendment and the IRS’ vague regulations enforcing it.  The law does not give any certainty over what is allowed and what is permitted from the pulpits of America’s churches.  So pastors, concerned that they might say something that would trigger the enforcement power of the IRS (a very powerful government agency), stay silent.

It’s good to shine the light on to the private and devious machinations of the federal government when those occur.  But let’s recognize that conservative groups have not been the only ones in the crosshairs of the IRS.  America’s churches have suffered for too long under the intimidation of the IRS.  The best way to shine the light on that intimidation is to stand in the face of it.  That’s why we launched Pulpit Freedom Sunday. And that’s why we hope that if you are a pastor, you will go today to sign up to participate in Pulpit Freedom Sunday.  It’s time for the IRS to stop using its power to squelch free speech and freedom of religion of America’s churches.

Jeremy Tedesco, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel

Rarely can the essence of a lawsuit be captured through pictures. But in Alliance Defending Freedom’s case involving a tiny Church’s First Amendment challenge to the Town of Gilbert’s discriminatory treatment of signs advertising its religious services, a picture truly speaks a thousand words.  Consider these two pictures:

Town officials view the sign on the left, which advertises our client’s Church services, as a constitutional crisis, and thus impose incredibly stringent limitations on the placement of such signs.  Yet these same officials see no problem with the proliferation of political signs, like those depicted in the picture on the right.  In fact, we presented the court with dozens of pictures showing how the Town permits the placement of numerous political signs at intersections throughout Gilbert.

The constitutional problem with the Town’s sign code is that it treats temporary signs VASTLY differently based on what they say.  In First Amendment parlance, this is called “content-based discrimination,” and it is a major constitutional no-no.

The Town’s sign code violates this core First Amendment principle in many ways.  One of them is by imposing highly restrictive requirements (related to size, duration, etc.) on the Church’s signs that it does not impose on similar temporary signs, like political and ideological signs.  For example, the Church’s signs can only be 6 square feet, while ideological signs can be up to 20 square feet (over 300% larger) and political signs up to 32 square feet (almost 600% larger)!  Also, the Church’s signs can be placed just 12 hours before their services begin and must be taken done 1 hour after they end.  In stark contrast, political signs may be placed 60 days before a primary election and may stay up 15 days after the general election and ideological signs may stay up indefinitely!  (A diagram depicting the code’s differential treatment of signs based on content can be viewed here.)  The Town’s code favors signs bearing political and ideological messages over those bearing religious messages, and that violates the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled 2-1 against the Church.  So we filed a petition asking the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case.  Please join us in praying for a favorable outcome and for this tiny Church’s courageous stand to be vindicated.

If you’ve faced similar disparity in your community when attempting to promote your church or ministry, contact Alliance Defending Freedom through our legal help form online.

We recently received an exciting update on a previous situation ADF assisted with in Northern Arizona. Based on some confusion about the First Amendment, the Northern Arizona Council of Governments (NACOG) Area Agency on Aging told all of its service providers, including Meals on Wheels, that they were no longer permitted to allow any collective prayer before the meals they served at area senior centers. For many years, seniors at the centers had been saying a short, voluntary prayer together, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, prior to eating the lunch provided by Meals on Wheels.

ADF offered to provide assistance to NACOG free of charge and drafted a new policy on prayer and religious expression. We recently received word that NACOG adopted the policy and sent it out to all of their service providers.

Kudos to NACOG for correcting its policy and protecting the First Amendment rights of the senior citizens it serves!

How deep are your religious convictions?  Are religious beliefs merely a colorful veneer decorating the exterior of an individual’s life, or are they more akin to a rudder guiding the course and direction of the whole person?  Questions such as these might be ones that we ask ourselves individually as we wrestle with the role of faith in our own lives.  But they are also being debated at a societal level.  And the worldview of government officials specifically on these questions affects their willingness to either protect religious freedom or to disregard it.  Stated simply, our leaders believe either that religious faith is something that shifts and changes with the times like uneducated opinions, or they believe that religious faith forms the very identity of who we are as individuals and must be protected at any cost.

This issue surfaced with a ferocity unseen in American history when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandated that religious organizations and employers provide coverage for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans.  As most of you are aware by now, the “HHS Mandate” as it is popularly known, has sparked a defiant outrage among people of faith who are being forced by the government to violate their deeply held religious beliefs. For many religious organizations and employers, there is no escape from this mandate.  They either comply or are punished.

The starkest example of the worldview of our governmental leaders was on display in the remarks of Kathleen Sebelius, the head of HHS, when she announced the implementation of the HHS Mandate.  Ms. Sebelius stated: “Nonprofit employers who, based on religious beliefs, do not currently provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plan, will be provided an additional year, until August 1, 2013, to comply with the new law….  This additional year will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule.”

Did you catch that?  According to the head of HHS, religious beliefs can simply be adapted if given enough time.  Put simply, Ms. Sebelius is telling religious organizations that they have a year to drag their timeless and unchanging religious beliefs into the 21st century and to change them to fit the times. But what she really means is that religious beliefs must conform to a government official’s view of the world; that religious beliefs must evolve to fit the times as the government sees them.  Her message was unmistakable – either get with the program and make your religious beliefs flexible or we will mandate this on you anyway.  Either comply or be punished.

Such blatant disregard for the depth of religious convictions has not been seen in American history.  Never before has government attempted to force people of faith to either violate their religious beliefs or be monetarily punished if they choose to abide by them.  The framers of our Constitution, who made the free exercise of religion our “first freedom” by placing it in the First Amendment, would be appalled at the utter disregard shown to people of faith by Ms. Sebelius and the HHS Mandate.

This is where the Church in America must speak out.  Our government is experimenting with actions that, if left unchecked, will result in the destruction of the free exercise of religion.  John Murray, a Presbyterian preacher of the 20th century once stated, “The church lives in the world and it lives within the domain of political entities. If it is to be faithful in its commission it must make its voice heard and felt in reference to public questions.”  The greatest public question facing the Church today is whether government will respect religious freedom or exercise its power to destroy it.  The importance of the outcome of this debate cannot be overstated.  The future of religious freedom in America depends largely on the Church making its voice heard loudly, clearly, and forcefully on this important issue.

Although the HHS Mandate does not directly affect churches because churches are exempted from the mandate, it does affect every church member and most religious ministries and organizations.  The Church must protect those within its ranks subjected to the mandate.  If the Church is the conscience of the nation, which it is, then it must stand against this unconscionable act.

One way that can happen is by participating in Pulpit Freedom Sunday.  On October 7, 2012, hundreds of pastors will unite their voices against the government’s desire to control religion.  Pulpit Freedom Sunday is an excellent opportunity for the Church to come alive and speak boldly to government.

The Church must stand united to protect religious freedom.  Faith is timeless and forms the bedrock foundation of our lives.  It does not change with the culture or by the whim of the government.  And that’s a message our governmental leaders need to hear loud and clear.

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If you are a pastor, go to www.pulpitfreedom.org and sign up to participate this October 7.  The website contains resources and answers to questions you may have regarding Pulpit Freedom Sunday.  And if you are not a pastor, please get the information about Pulpit Freedom Sunday to as many pastors as you can.

I recently explained the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision affirming a church’s right to control whom it employs as a teacher in its religious school in a post you can read here. Unfortunately, the vital protection this case provides for religious freedom has largely been lost on the mainstream media. Instead, they’ve often focused on how this decision may affect teachers at religious schools. One AP article went so far as to assert that a teacher of Jewish Studies at a Jewish school should be seen as a “teacher whose subject is religion, not a religious teacher.” In the context of a religious school, this is completely at odds with the concept of religious freedom.

The Court of Appeals in the Hosanna-Tabor case made a similar argument (which was thankfully rejected by the Supreme Court). It opined that the teacher who sued the religious school wasn’t a minister because she spent six hours a day teaching secular subjects like math, social studies, and music.  Only an hour or so was spent on exclusively religious instruction. The fact that the teacher also lead weekly chapel services, taught a 30-minute religion class four days per week, lead prayer three times per day, and taught a morning devotional was considered to be largely irrelevant.  So the school was prohibited from firing the teacher, even though she violated church teachings regarding mediation of disputes among believers.

The appeals court (and the Associated Press) failed to recognize something even Christians sometimes forget – our biblical worldview and Christian principles affect all aspects of our lives.  That certainly includes how we teach our children all subjects – even those that don’t appear to be “religious” – such as music and social studies.  It even includes math, as demonstrated by the great mathematicians Sir Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes. And it certainly includes religious classes like Jewish Studies at a religious school that has as its purpose inculcating the religious theology and values of a particular religion.

Saying the Hosanna-Tabor case undermines the rights of teachers is like saying the desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education wrongly ignored the rights of teachers who wanted to only teach certain kids. The larger, more important, principle of elimination of racism – or protection of religious freedom in this case – is being missed. Thankfully, all nine Justices of the Supreme Court aren’t influenced by the misguided opinions of the Associated Press.