Second Annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday This Weekend

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is announcing the second annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday coming up on September 27.

Pulpit Freedom Sunday is part of the ADF Pulpit Initiative, an effort designed to promote and secure the First Amendment rights of churches and pastors to speak the truth in the public square. This freedom has been threatened for decades by an unconstitutional 1954 amendment to the tax code.

Last year many pastors across the country, including here in South Dakota, took part in Pulpit Freedom Sunday,  exercising their freedom to speak about moral and immoral choices in the public square, including candidates that stand for moral and immoral policies.

In 1954, Senator Lyndon Johnson wanted to silence nonprofit opposition to his liberal candidacy, so he introduced and saw successfully passed an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code §501(c)(3) which has since been used to muzzle churches, pastors and para-church organizations from fulfilling their duty to be salt and light in a decaying society.

The First Amendment, meanwhile, says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”

The Johnson amendment to the tax code obviously conflicts with the First Amendment by penalizing Christian organizations and officials if they exercise their religious freedom and freedom of speech to tell people about candidates who support or oppose moral policy initiatives.

According to ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley, “Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without fear of punishment.  No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights. ADF is not trying to get politics into the pulpit.  On the contrary, the whole point is that churches should be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to talk about.  The IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status.  We need the government to get out of the pulpit.”

ADF says the Johnson amendment is unconstitutional for the following reasons:

• The amendment violates the Establishment Clause by requiring the government to excessively and pervasively monitor the speech of churches to ensure they are not
• transgressing the restriction in the amendment. The amendment allows the government to determine when truly religious speech becomes impermissibly “political.” The government has no business making such decisions.
• The amendment violates the Free Speech Clause because it requires the government to discriminate against speech based solely on the content of the speech. In other words, some speech is allowed, but other speech is not. The Supreme Court has invalidated this type of speech discrimination for decades.
• The amendment also violates the Free Speech Clause by conditioning the receipt of a tax exemption on refraining from certain speech. Put simply, if a church wants the tax exemption, they cannot speak on any and all issues addressed by Scripture. This is an unconstitutional condition on free speech.
• The amendment violates the Free Exercise Clause because it substantially burdens a church’s exercise of religion. The government does not have a compelling reason to burden religion in this way.

Churches and pastors have had full freedom to speak on moral issues that affect public policy going back to the early days of our republic and before.

In fact, were it not for the churches and pastors in colonial America, there might not have been an American Revolution. The revolution was even called the “Presbyterian Revolution” in England because so many Presbyterian pastors were involved in building the moral foundations for independence.

From the Alliance Defense Fund:

Historically, churches had frequently and fervently spoken for and against candidates for government office. Such sermons date from the founding of America, including sermons against Thomas Jefferson for being a deist; sermons opposing William Howard Taft as a Unitarian; and sermons opposing Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election. Churches have also been at the forefront of most of the significant societal and governmental changes in our history including ending segregation and child labor and advancing civil rights.

The Alliance Defense Fund will be defending any churches that face sanctions for participating in Pulpit Freedom Sunday.

Last year, complaints were filed against several participating churches, but no actions have yet been taken against those churches.  The IRS even withdrew an audit on a participating pastor in Minnesota.

From their inaction and retreat, it would appear the IRS knows it stands on unconstitutional ground and doesn’t want to take the issue to the Supreme Court…where it knows it will lose.  Instead, secularists hope to rely on ignorance, fear and intimidation to keep the churches muzzled.

It’s time that came to an end.  For too long we’ve bought the lie about “church and state” and allowed the merchants of immorality to cow us.  It’s time to blow away the fog of fear and make way for America’s churches and pastors to once again serve as the salt and light to our society that they are called by their Lord to be.

Let’s get behind this effort and let freedom ring!

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