Happy Pulpit Freedom Sunday! I’ll be celebrating by going to Mass and then getting waffles, but if I were Protestant and living outside of New York I might be celebrating it by listening to a sermon about the ‘08 elections.
The Alliance Defense Fund is sponsoring today’s event, in which participating pastors "will preach from their pulpits Sept. 28 about the moral qualifications of candidates seeking political office" in order to protest the IRS rule requiring that tax-exempt organizations "not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."
I love the idea, though I think the ADF could have achieved a more pointed effect by revisiting another landmark infringement on religious liberty. In 1987, gay student groups at Georgetown sued the school for recognition as registered student organizations, and never mind the catechism. The bottom line after appeals was that Georgetown was not required to grant the clubs "official recognition," in violation of Catholic doctrine as the school understood it, but was required to furnish them with the same benefits as officially recognized clubs (a mailbox, an office, funding, a booth at the freshman bazaar, and so on).* If politically rambunctious pastors really wanted to turn the tables on the moneychangers, so to speak, they might employ the same bizarre logic. If official endorsement in Georgetown’s case meant a public statement, in so many words, and nothing less, perhaps "on behalf of (or in opposition to)" should be similarly narrow, and anything short of "All Christians must vote for [Smith]" taken not to qualify?
For more on Pulpit Freedom Sunday and the origins of the IRS rule, see Tara Ross’s article in Doublethink .
*Then there was the Armstrong Amendment and much later there was Dale , which this guy thinks will matter , and, besides, Georgetown came to an agreement with the clubs in 1989 rather than take the case to the Supreme Court, which they might otherwise have done. A similar antidiscrimination case in 2005 of a gay student group suing a Catholic university for recognition ( Romeo v. Seton Hall ) was decided in favor of Seton Hall, but on the basis of a New Jersey statutory exemption for religious institutions, not on the logic that religious institutions have a right to theological integrity, or even "expressive association," that supersedes certain kinds of antidiscrimination claims. In any event, the contortions of ‘87 remain memorable.
