Posted on 05/19/2003 8:10:22 PM PDT by webber
ISSUE: Ever heard of the First Amendment?
Apparently, it doesn't apply if you're in church.
There are limits to what your preacher can say from the pulpit -- limits placed there by the government. Now, a bill introduced in Congress seeks to change the law.
If a church speaks out on issues that the IRS deems to be too political, it risks losing its tax-exempt status. But the "Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act" (H.R. 235) would repeal the authority of the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax status of a church, temple, or mosque whose clergy speak out.
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who introduced the bill, explained how the problem of churches speaking out on political issues arose.
"Lyndon Johnson in 1954 put an amendment on a revenue bill that stifled the ministers, priests and rabbis from being able to speak of moral and political issues," Jones said. "That's not what America's about. America's about freedom. And we've got to have freedom in the churches." He said Johnson's amendment has had a chilling effect that fails to define where their speech is actually protected. He also contended the restrictions have not been impartially enforced.
"I think all churches should be treated the same," Jones said. "They should have freedom to talk about these issues."
ACTION ITEM: All houses of worship SHOULD be treated the same. They should have freedom to talk about any issues affecting any aspect of society -- including politics. Anything else is simply un-American.
As Rep. Jones stated, "This legislation goes beyond party lines and theological debates. We must not allow a government institution to have this kind of chilling effect over America's churches."
Rep. Jones' bill is supported by religious leaders from all faiths, and he now has over 120 co-sponsors on this simple straightforward legislation that will finally give back to churches and other houses of worship what was unjustly taken from them 49 years ago: the freedom to speak however they feel led to speak, whether the issue is construed as political or not.
Go to our site below to ask your Representative to support H.R. 235, the "Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act":
NOTE: Please be sure to forward this to everyone you know that wants to see free speech rights apply to ALL Americans, in EVERY situation.
Thank you!
Perhaps you could give us an example of someone from the Christian right attempting to make Jefferson a Christian. Everyone knows that he was a deist not a Christian. Neither was he an agnostic or an atheist or a libertarian or anti WOD or a democrat.
The purpose of pointing out Jefferson's benevolent attitude toward Christianity is precisely because he is considered the least favorable of all the founders. If he is the least favorable, and he respected Christianity, the modern attempt to make him a secular libertarian is the real problem-- not the straw man which you assembled.
No, they knew the dangers of establishing a state church
Well, you'd think that if all the Founders wanted to prevent was the establishment of a State Church they would have simply agreed on something like: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a state church" or some such language in the First Amendment.
Not that some of the founders didn't try. They did try almost that exact language (and several times with similar language) but each time it was rejected by Congress as not being broad enough. In the end, they chose the broadest language possible -- the one you see today in the Bill of Rights
An argument from silence isn't an argument at all. However, if you insist on that approach, maybe you could explain why it has taken so long for the intent of the founders to be realized? IOW, if the Fathers wanted a secular state, why didn't the contemporaries of the Fathers understand it that way? Why do we need modern liberal judges to finally understand what the contemporary peers of the Founders could not?
The whole modern push to secularize the state is without foundation. The phemonenon is similar to gays proof-texting Scripture to support pet perversions.
Read up on Unitarianism. Channing's Baltimore sermon is a good place to start. You may not wish to think Unitarians were Christians but they did.
If you claim Jefferson was a "deist" and not Christian because of his Unitarian faith, then you must also toss out John Adams, Millard Filmore and Julia Ward Howe who wrote the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. All of them were Unitarians and they all considered themselves Christian.
As a historical matter, it is impossible to separate religion, politics and science in the 18th century. They were intertwined. Scientists such as Priestley were theologians first. Even those who turned against the Christian faith, Paine for instance, knew the Bible inside and out. All of them learned to read by reading the Bible and the New England Primer which was drenched in Christian thought. Just as the founders were reforming the political sphere, many were also reforming the Christian faith--stripping it of the "priest class", eschewing the mystical aspect of the faith and attempting--as Bultman, Schweitzer, Bonhoeffer and many others have down the ages--to arrive at the essential teachings of Christ, to rid the faith of the temporal trappings of the established church.
The Colonists saw themselves (in New England more than the South) as the new Israelites with a new covenant out to create the Kingdom of God on earth (Unitarians believed works, not grace, were the key to salvation). The British certainly saw the American Revolution as a religious war. The first warship constructed to fight the Brits was named the Oliver Cromwell. The King got that message clearly.
I'm a conservative but not a member of the religious right. Jefferson was a Christian--a Unitarian. Liberals, trying to strip Christianity from our history, are the ones who push the idea he was a deist. Don't want to repeat myself so check above. Lots to search on if you doubt me.
About a year before Daniel Webster--another Unitarian--successfully argued that the Unitarian church in Massachusetts should continue to rely on state taxes for funding, Jefferson expressed the wish that all Americans would become Unitarians.
See DPB101's post #84.
I'm glad we agree he was a Deist (they capitalized it).
The Founders made a very good try. It was the "Age of Reason", and not just because of Paine's book.
I'm not questioning the importance of Christianity, or the fact that many Founders were Christians, or that Jefferson had at times attended church in a government building.
What I am challenging is your assertion that America was founded as a "Christian Nation". It very clearly was founded as a nation that enshrined freedom of religion, including ALL religions, and even those who had no religion.
I stand corrected.
Uh yeah......unless you've ever done *any* research -- preferably primary source -- into the legislative history behind the Bill of Rights.
It is there that you can find the true meanings & debates -- unencumbered by revisions & selective interpretations -- surrounding the Founders thoughts re: the Bill of Rights.
You should try it some time.
Likewise.
Just because you really, really, really, want there to be no legislative or historical underpinnings for the separation of church & state does not make it so.
Well, given his outright rejection of the Resurrection, the virgin birth, Jesus' miracles, etc, I would say that's the understatement of the day.
Rather than rehash this endlessly with others, here are some keywords for anyone interested in the dissenter/Unitarians of the Revolutionary era: Joseph Priestley, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin,Theophilus Lindsey, William Ellery Channing, Unitarian.
Catholics alway kept a ken eye out for heretics and the Catholic encyclopedia of 1905 has a remarkably fair account of the history of Unitarianism in America and elsewhere here.
Unitarianism is important because it is one half of the equation which created the liberal/conservative split in American politics. Harvard was Unitarian and "liberal". Yale was Calvinist and "fundamental" or conservative.
Harvard won that battle. But Unitarian Christianity lost its soul--Unitarians today, except for a very few here and there, are not Christian at all. They are marxists, statists, new-agers, Buddhists, Wiccans or whatever.
I never said that. America was founded by Christians who saw faith as essential to maintaining a free republic--"Religious nuts with guns" as P.J. O'Rouke elegantly put it. There was never an intent to drive faith out of the public square or to have an absolute separation of church and state. The debate on the wording of the first amendment is fascinating because they were concerned that someday, someone might read it exactly as it has been read since 1947--that religion must be censored. The founders took great pains to see that didn't happen. But it did.
Oh well...the free exercise of religion lasted for over 150 years. Not too shabby.
I would agree, he was not anti-Christian in general. He did seem to have some difficulties with organized churches, though. Jefferson made some favorable comments about Jesus, but did not believe in His divinity.
If Paine's anti-Christian views cost him his friends, doesn't that say something about the times and the respect for Christianity? Franklin gave Paine fair warning and advised him not to include his anti-Christian material in his book. Paine foolishly published it anyway.
There indeed was great respect for and belief in Christianity.
I think Paine was warned by Jefferson as well as Franklin. It's been a while since I read The Age of Reason, but I seem to remember most of the book was about the Old Testament rather than the New.
And there's certainly no doubt his publication of the book made him a pariah.
I capitalize Deist as it is a recognized religion. Agnosticism isn't. Atheism might be, but seems pretty silly to me as it requires faith in a negative. How could you possibly prove there is no God ?
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