Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spoke last week at the Catholic Community Conference and urged Catholic priests and bishops to talk up immigration reform from their pulpits.  Pelosi reportedy stated, “The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me … say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’ and I said, I want you to speak about it from the pulpit.”  Pelosi went on to say that, “Some (who) oppose immigration reform are sitting in those pews, and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels.”

This statement is amazing as it is usually those on the left that are the first to raise the tiresome chant of “separation of church and state” when a pastor speaks from his pulpit on any issue touching politics.

I wonder whether Pelosi would have approved of statements like those of Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput who commented on the health-care reform bill and stated that the Senate health-care bill does not meet minimum moral standards and therefore, doesn’t have the support of the Catholic bishops.  Or would Pelosi have approved of and encouraged statements like the one made by Bishop Michael Sheridan that politicians like Pelosi who go against the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion should not present themselves for communion.  I wonder whether Pelosi would agree that pastors have the right to speak out against candidates for office who do not align themselves with Scriptural Truth.

To be fair, I don’t know what Pelosi believes about a pastor’s right to speak freely from the pulpit (I don’t think she is on record one way or the other on this issue) and, to be sure, her comments to the Catholic Community Conference suggest a willingness to include pastors and priests in the public debate on the important moral issues facing our country.  But, to borrow a phrase from our current President, “let’s be clear” about how far that goes.  For too long, pastors and priests have been told they cannot speak out on moral issues that touch on politics.  Indeed, the IRS has even gone so far as to say that a pastor can endanger their church’s tax exempt status by using “code words” during an election season.  (If you doubt whether that is true, look at page 345 of the IRS’ internal training materials on tax exemption restrictions on churches).

The point is that the government has been sending mixed messages for too long to our nation’s pastors.  On the one hand, politicians encourage pastors to speak from their pulpits when it is convenient, but on the other, the IRS comes knocking on the church’s door when a pastor speaks in a way that is not favored by those in power or crosses the IRS’ imaginary line between what is permitted and what is prohibited.

These mixed messages have gone on long enough.  It is time to bring clarity back to the law and get the government out of the business of censoring what a pastor can say from the pulpit.  That’s what ADF’s Pulpit Initiative is intended to do.  Pastors should be free to preach from their pulpit without fearing any government censorship or control.  And when a politician like Pelosi urges them to speak out on an issue, they should feel free to do so – even if that means opposing Pelosi or any other politician if the pastor believes that the politician or candidate for office does not align themselves with Scriptural Truth.

If you are a pastor, sign up for the Pulpit Initiative and get involved to protect the right of pastors to speak freely from their pulpits without any restriction.

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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.

Please leave a comment below to share your thoughts or follow us on Facebook to join the conversation. http://www.facebook.com/SpeakUpChurch

The Florida Baptist Witness recently posted an article about ADF’s Pulpit Initiative.  ADF has been speaking to pastors and church leaders across the country about the Pulpit Initiative, and encouraging them to sign up for Pulpit Freedom Sunday on September 26, 2010. 

The Pulpit Initiative is an opportunity for pastors to speak scriptural truth from the pulpit without fearing government censorship or control.  Something is wrong in America when we allow the government to step into the pulpit and censor a pastor’s sermon.  Whether you believe that a pastor should endorse or oppose a candidate from the pulpit is not the issue.  The issue the Pulpit Initiative was created to decide is who gets to make that decision for churches.  We believe that it is solely up to a pastor and the church leadership to decide whether to address candidates and elections from the pulpit and the government should not mandate that churches remain silent on this issue.  The Pulpit Initiative is intended to remove the government once and for all from the decison-making process of what gets said from the pulpit of a church.  It is time to remove the government from the pulpits of America.

Have you taken time to look at the information on our website about the Pulpit Initiative?  Have you prayerfully considered becoming part of this important fight?  If not, why not do so today?  become part of the movement to regain the sanctity and autonomy of America’s pulpits.  Join ADF in the Pulpit Initiative.