Kevin Theriot and I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of hundreds of pastors gathered together in Washington D.C. last week for the Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall conference.  The title of the event comes from Isaiah 62:6: ”I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest.”  Family Research Council describes its Watchmen on the Wall ministry in the following terms:

We believe that a Watchman Pastor is called to do the following:

Watch what is going on in the culture.

Pray for the wisdom to engage biblically, courageously, and winsomely.

Sound the Alarm from the pulpit.

Take a bold stand with others to defend and advance faith, family, and freedom.

I spoke to the pastors about ADF’s Pulpit Initiative and what the project is all about.  The Pulpit Initiative is a project to have the Johnson Amendment declared unconstitutional – to once and for all get the IRS and all government agencies out of the pulpits of America.  The purpose of the Pulpit Initiative aligns wonderfully with FRC’s Watchmen on the Wall ministry.  Pastors must sound the alarm from the pulpit that their constitutional rights are being infringed upon and that now is the time for pastors to stand up to regain the right to speak freely from their pulpits without any fear of government censorship or control.

While there, I was able to reconnect with many of the pastors who have participated with ADF in the past in the Pulpit Initiative.  These courageous men have been willing to stand and sound the alarm from their pulpits and it was encouraging to see them again.  ADF’s Pulpit Initiative would be nowhere without pastors standing up to fight for their rights and we owe these men a great debt of gratitude for leading the way on this important issue.

If you are a pastor, take the time to learn about the Pulpit Initiative and sign up today.  If you know of a pastor who would be interested, let them know about the Pulpit Initiative and encourage them to sign up today and stand with ADF and other pastors around the country.

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While churches need not fear, hundreds of thousands of small non-profits groups nationwide, including para-church ministries, may find their tax-exempt status at stake come next year.  That’s because of an IRS deadline by which small charities had to file some required information–which came and went on May 17, 2010.    If you missed it, though, you’re in good company–over 200,000 other charities missed the deadline, too.

Fortunately, the IRS has pledged to work hard to help charities avoid losing their tax-exempt status.   To get more information on how to avoid what would be a devastating blow to many small-but-important ministries, go here.

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Michael Newdow has made quite a name for himself trying to eradicate any mention of God in the public square. He’s brought–and lost–lawsuits challenging the phrases “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (three times), “In God We Trust” on our currency, and “So Help Me God” in the President’s inaugural oath.

Now he is going after pastors and the IRS.

Newdow, along with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Sections 107 and 265(a)(6) of the Revenue Code, claiming that they violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Section 107 allows churches to provide pastors with housing (or a housing allowance) without requiring the pastor to pay additional federal income tax. Section 265(a)(6) allows pastors to deduct home mortgage interest payments and property tax payments from their taxable income–deductions given to all taxpayers. Newdow is also challenging the parallel state tax code provisions.

Such exemptions have been common throughout American history. Congress has always understood the First Amendment to authorize property tax exemption for religious groups. And it was natural for this exemption to extend to parsonages, or church-provided housing. A parsonage has generally been viewed as more than just a pastor’s residence; it is an extension of the church. So it’s no surprise that shortly after the modern federal income tax was established, a federal income tax exemption for parsonages appeared in the Revenue Code. That exemption has now been in place for almost 90 years.

If this exemption is eliminated, as Newdow wants, the financial consequences for churches and pastors would be significant. One past congressional estimate concluded that American clergy would see their taxes increase by $2.3 billion over a five-year period.

Is Newdow’s lawsuit likely to be successful? It’s doubtful. In a 1970 case, Walz v. Tax Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an Establishment Clause challenge to a New York law granting property tax exemption to religious organizations. It concluded that there “is no genuine nexus between tax exemption and establishment of religion” because the exemption “restricts the fiscal relationship between church and state,” and eliminating it would expand governmental involvement in churches–which the First Amendment is designed to protect churches against. The same reasoning applies equally to this case. So Walz should dictate its outcome.

Further weakening Newdow’s claim is the fact that pastors are not the only ones who receive these types of tax benefits. Employees who receive housing from non-religious employers get similar tax benefits under Section 119 of the Internal Code. So Section 107 simply puts pastors on the same footing. And, as mentioned above, Section 265(a)(6) merely ensures that pastors get to deduct their home mortgage interest and property tax payments from their taxable income the same way that most other taxpayers do.

In short, courts have consistently rebuffed Newdow’s efforts at eradicating religion from the public square, and I expect this case to be no different.

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AOL News published an on-line debate on ADF’s Pulpit Initiative between myself and Barry Lynn from Americans United for Separation of Church and State. My article makes the point that ADF has been making since we launched the Pulpit Initiative in 2008, namely that the IRS has no business being the orthodoxy police and censoring what a pastor says in the pulpit.

Barry Lynn makes the same tired argument that he has made before; that churches voluntarily give up their right to speak out on candidates and elections when they take the gift of tax exemption from the government. The argument is so wrong that it borders on laughable.

Churches cannot be forced to give up their most basic freedoms simply because they obtain a tax exemption – something the government is constitutionally required to give anyway. Church tax exemption is the best way to preserve the proper role between church and state as I have previously argued.

It is ironic and telling that Americans United, an organization that claims to want to protect the “separation of church and state” should be arguing so strenuously for continued government entanglement and monitoring of churches. The current IRS regime of investigating and censoring pastors entangles the government in the internal affairs and workings of the church at its most basic level. Understanding this can only lead us to conclude that AU doesn’t want true separation of church and state as they claim. Rather, AU wants churches to be prevented by the power of the government from influencing government in any way. AU doesn’t want the state to be separate from the church. Instead, it wants the state to control the church.

Not only is AU’s view out of step and inconsistent with a basic understanding of the role of the church in American society, but it ignores hundreds of years of church history in America. Churches have been at the forefront of virtually every great and necessary social movement in our history including ending slavery, ending child labor, promoting women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement just to name a few. And it was churches and pastors who led the charge for independence during the colonial era. What would have happened if AU’s view of state control of churches was followed in the colonial era? It certainly would have been doubtful whether America would have achieved her independence had pastors kept silent. It was pastors who provided the communication to the people of the moral and Biblical basis for independence and many pastors led the way into battle to gain America’s independence.

AU’s view of the role of church in American society is a view of the state controlling churches and it is just flat wrong and harmful. Pastors must be free to preach from their pulpit without any fear of government censorship or control. Pastor, sign up today for the Pulpit Initiative and stand together with ADF to protect the constitutional rights of pastors and churches to preach freely from their pulpits.

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Many of us have been there - playing on the school playground when suddenly you find yourself in the cross-hairs of the school bully.  There you are minding your own business when the bully comes up to you and perhaps demands your lunch money or just wants to pick on you to satisfy their own cruelty.  Maybe you stood there with sweaty palms and a racing heart and gave in.  Or maybe you chose to fight back.  But the passage of time gives us a perspective that perhaps many of us lacked in those playground situations.  As we get older and more experienced in life we realized that the bully was really nothing more than a weakling who made up for his own weakness by being loud and obnoxious.  Perhaps that reality dawned on you if you refused to be pushed around by the bully and stood up to him.

Whatever the case, playground bullies still exist today, and one of the organizations that gets a kick out of trying to bully churches is Americans United for Separation of Church and State.  ADF was recently the subject of an AU blog post full of bellicose bullying.  AU basically yells at anyone who listens to them, that ADF’s Pulpit Initiative is a failure and that we should just give up.

Basically, AU’s blog post boils down to threats and intimidation by the “playground bully” of churches.  And bullying churches is something that AU is very good at.  Every election cycle, AU sends letters to churches trying to scare them into not addressing the issues of the day, and breathing threats that any church who crosses AU’s imaginary line in the sand will get reported to the IRS (put another way, “if you don’t do what I say, I’m going to tell…”).  AU also reports churches to the IRS that it believes have violated the IRS rules and regulations.  What AU doesn’t tell you, though, is that the IRS almost never acts on any complaints AU files.  And what they don’t tell you is that the only substance behind AU’s threats against churches is their own say-so, which doesn’t amount to anything and certainly is not in line with constitutional law.

AU says that the Pulpit Initiative is a failure yet they continue to yell and scream about it to anyone who will listen.  This is the classic behavior of a playground bully who knows deep down inside that his only method of control is to scare people and who actually understands a threat to their regime of fear and intimidation. Keep reading… »