Today is "Pulpit Freedom Sunday." Organized a number of years ago, Pulpit Freedom Sunday is a day when pastors across the nation intentionally violate the Johnson Amendment making it against the law for non-profit organizations to endorse political candidates. Each election year, thousands of pastors participate and after preaching their offending sermons they mail them to the IRS.
To the unending frustration of the organizers of Pulpit Freedom Sunday, the IRS has yet to show any signs of caring. No prosecutions have taken place. No pastors clapped in irons. No churches seized for violation of some sacred code. These pastors are fighting a war against what they perceive as a government trying to silence them and the government won't fight back.
The non-existent war on religion in this country is the product of a half-century of political rhetoric aimed at preventing "Soviet-style" atheism in America. For decades the John Birch Society and others railed against the threat of atheism. As the Supreme Court continued to uphold the freedom of all Americans to worship as they choose and to untangle religion from government, a myth was born. The myth of the war against religion.
Today that war is fought on many fronts. There is the war on Christmas, the war on Sunday, the war on values and, in recent years, the war on "religious freedom." This new front has grown into the great "Western Front" of the imaginary war.
Religious freedom is the new buzzword for a particularly narrow segment of the Christian community's protest against some government actions. Generally speaking, what they perceive as "religious freedom" is in fact the freedom to impose their religion on the rest of us. Thus, Pulpit Freedom Sunday, the day when preachers declare what candidates are and are not faithful Christian choices.
The Johnson Amendment, passed at the height of the red scare as a protection measure for Lyndon Johnson's re-election campaign, states that non-profit organizations cannot endorse a particular candidate. The law was aimed at right-wing anti-communist organizations working against Johnson's re-election, however churches were swept up in the mix as well. It is against the law for a pastor to stand in the pulpit and say "vote for X."
My question is this. Who cares? Who cares if pastors cannot stand up in the pulpit and say "vote for X because it is the Christian thing to do?" What pastor in his or her right mind would want to do that in the first place?!
To be sure there are almost certainly pastors who serve congregations more politically homogeneous than my own. Not all congregations run the gamut from center-left to center-right and have Democrats, Republicans, Independents and none-of-the-aboves. Both of my congregations do. So in addition to being against the law, candidate electioneering is not such a good idea for me.
Even if I did serve a mostly like-minded congregation, though, I cannot imagine a circumstance when I would speak up for a candidate in my sermon. In the first place, I cannot imagine there being a candidate who is so vital to the interest of the community that their election rose to the level of parity with the word of God. Secondly, I cannot imagine preaching a sermon saying "vote for X because that is the Christian thing to do" and still being able to ask for the trust of a congregant who is voting for the other person.
As a pastor and preacher, my task is to stand in the pulpit and do my level best to tell the truth of the Gospel as I have come to know it. It is not my task to tell people how to live, that's Jesus' job. It is not my task to demand that people follow me; that is Jesus' job. It is not my task to declare who is and who is not righteous in the eyes of God; that is, well you get the point.
I am all for politics in the pulpit as long as "politics" means speaking about how we live together in the polis- the city. Electoral politics- the politics of personality and electioneering- have no place in the pulpit because they have no place in the vision of the word of God. When Jesus says "feed my sheep" he does not say "as long as it is a Democrat who gives them the food." When Jesus says "heal the sick" he does not say "as long as it is a Republican deciding how to do it."
The politics of the pulpit and the cross is not the politics of party and personality. It is the politics of the people of God living together in the City of Man, to use Augustine's language. The politics of the pulpit is about declaring that all God's children are deserving of food, shelter, clean water, freedom to worship and the basic dignity owed to every human being. The politics of the pulpit is about standing up to the forces in the world that would denigrate and degrade the children of God. The politics of the pulpit is beholden to no party or personality, it is beholden to God and God's word.
If we want our pulpits to be truly free, we bind them to the liberating word of God in Christ Jesus and the promise that is the City of God. Tethering the pulpit to the coattails of a political personality or even a political party does nothing but diminish its mission and anchor the pulpit to this world and the broken political machinations of the City of Man.
* UPDATE This entry was updated on 10/8/12 to correct a spelling error in the seventh paragraph.
No comments:
Post a Comment