More than 1,000 pastors plan to challenge IRS by endorsing presidential candidate

[jaxx]

More than 1,000 pastors plan to challenge IRS by endorsing presidential candidate
By Eric W. Dolan
Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:10 EDT

More than 1,000 pastors plan to openly defy the IRS by telling their congregation on October 7 to vote for a particular presidential candidate, according to Fox News.

The annual event, dubbed “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” has been organized by the conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom. The pastors participating in the event plan to preach about the election, endorse a candidate, and send video of their sermon to the IRS.

<..> The goal of Pulpit Freedom Sunday is to force the IRS to take churches to court and have the Johnson Amendment declared unconstitutional.

Americans United for Church and State has pushed back against the event, sending letters to 60,000 houses of worship that urge them to obey federal tax law.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/23/mo...candidate/

The IRS needs to act on every one of these churches and put them on the tax rolls. The country can use the money and the churches will be breaking the laws. It's time the religious conservative churches pay up or shut up about politics. Religion does not rule this country!!!!!

[janedrake]

Imagine if they chose to spend the day preaching the love and tolerance of Jesus Christ instead. One can dream that a church actually behaves as a church, can't one?

[jaxx]

(09-23-2012 01:04 PM)janedrake Wrote:  Imagine if they chose to spend the day preaching the love and tolerance of Jesus Christ instead. One can dream that a church actually behaves as a church, can't one?

I don't think that's what the rightwing fringe has in mind.

[janedrake]

(09-23-2012 01:12 PM)jaxx Wrote:  

(09-23-2012 01:04 PM)janedrake Wrote:  Imagine if they chose to spend the day preaching the love and tolerance of Jesus Christ instead. One can dream that a church actually behaves as a church, can't one?

I don't think that's what the rightwing fringe has in mind.

Exactly. This is Step 1. Step 2 will be to claim persecution by the Obama administration if they lawfully lose their non-exempt status. Step 3, race war.

[jaxx]

(09-23-2012 02:39 PM)janedrake Wrote:  

(09-23-2012 01:12 PM)jaxx Wrote:  I don't think that's what the rightwing fringe has in mind.

Exactly. This is Step 1. Step 2 will be to claim persecution by the Obama administration if they lawfully lose their non-exempt status. Step 3, race war.

I watched a show about the Civil War yesterday and it discussed some of the religious south who have never given up...it was god's will that they pursued their "cause" and they still have it. It gave me an eerie feeling.

[SeattleGirl]

(09-23-2012 08:46 PM)jaxx Wrote:  

(09-23-2012 02:39 PM)janedrake Wrote:  Exactly. This is Step 1. Step 2 will be to claim persecution by the Obama administration if they lawfully lose their non-exempt status. Step 3, race war.

I watched a show about the Civil War yesterday and it discussed some of the religious south who have never given up...it was god's will that they pursued their "cause" and they still have it. It gave me an eerie feeling.

I spent a lot of time in the south (though not the deep south) when I was growing up, and yep, the Civil War is not over for a lot of people there.

[jaxx]

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly Alliance Defense Fund) is an American conservative Christian nonprofit organization with the stated goal of "defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation."[1] ADF was founded in 1994 by Bill Bright (founder, Campus Crusade for Christ), Larry Burkett (founder, Crown Financial Ministries), James Dobson (founder, Focus on the Family), D. James Kennedy (founder, Coral Ridge Ministries), Marlin Maddoux (president, International Christian Media), and Donald Wildmon (founder, American Family Association), along with the leadership of over thirty other conservative Christian organizations.[2]

ADF supports the inclusion of invocations at public meetings and the use of religious displays (such as crosses and other religious monuments) on public lands and in public buildings.[3] The ADF opposes abortion, and believes that healthcare workers have a right to decline participation in the performance of abortions and other practices an individual health worker finds morally objectionable. ADF opposes same-sex marriage and civil unions, as well as adoption by same-sex couples based on their belief that children are best raised by a married mother and father. ADF believe parents should be able to opt their children out of sex education in schools that run counter to a family's religious beliefs.[3]

<..> Major donors for the organization include the Covenant Foundation, the Bolthouse Foundation[7] and the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, whose vice president is Blackwater Worldwide founder Erik Prince.[8]

<..> The Blackstone Legal Fellowship is a nine-week summer internship program designed for Christian law students.[13] Interns work closely with legal professionals and advocate a Conservative Christian worldview. According to ADF, the goal of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship is "to train a new generation of lawyers who will rise to positions of influence and leadership as legal scholars, litigators, judges, and perhaps even Supreme Court justices, and who will work to ensure that justice is carried out in America's courtrooms."[14] More specifically, ADF states that the Blackstone Legal Fellowship purposes to "[e]quip Christian law students to engage the legal culture with biblical and natural law principles," to "[g]ive law students confidence that the foundation of law on which our country was established is rationally superior to any competing legal philosophy," and to "[p]rofoundly influence Christian law students to take their training and knowledge into positions of influence where they can bring about needed change in America’s legal system."[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Defending_Freedom

Eeeeeekk!!!

[azmouse]

I hope at least a few church members have the courage to stand up and walk out.

[janedrake]

Watching that video posted in the forum today of GOP voters holding forth certainly gave me the same kind of feeling, Jaxx.