Posted on 03/24/2008 12:12:41 AM PDT by baa39
What a time to be a religious leader. Well, make that a black religious leader.
Advertisement Last Thursday, Philadelphia's black clergy endorsed Sen. Barack Obama. At the same time, Mr. Obama's pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, was in the spotlight for preaching his message that blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America" and that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."
You see, it's apparently acceptable not to hold Mr. Wright (sorry - I simply can't refer to him as "Reverend") accountable for his words, because it took until last Friday for Mr. Obama to finally separate himself from Mr. Wright and his leftist agenda.
(Excerpt) Read more at thebulletin.us ...
So why the double standard for Mr. Obama and Mr. Wright? It's apparently an advantage to be a black senator and clergyman. But if you happen to be Catholic, different rules apply.
FYI
How many images do we have of different Democratic presidential candidates speaking before a black church from their pulpit? This double standard is not new. Why aren’t all of these black churches that engage in this not having their tax exempt status pulled? The double standard has existed for a long time.
IMO they shouldn't have it pulled, period. Not for the (hypocritical) reasons currently given by one political part or another, but for other reasons entirely...
**Why aren’t all of these black churches that engage in this not having their tax exempt status pulled? **
Excellent question. It had occurred to me too.
I don’t understand. Are you saying that a Church engaging in a political race by having a politician speak during church service is not enough reason to have it’s tax exempt status looked at?
Because these Churches don’t share the burden of their federal taxes from contributions to the church, I don’t think its unreasonable for tax payers to expect that they don’t engage in politics as set forth in election laws.
I know everytime a Catholic church even passes out a list of politicians of either party who are pro life in an upcoming election, they have the IRS on their rear ends like green on shamrock. That’s just distributing facts, not having the politicians prosilityzing the church.
I'm going one step further than that. Did you read the linked material in my prior post?
Thus showing themselves to be more interested in race than in voting based on Christian principles.
No Christian should vote for a man who has no problem with allowing babies who survive an abortion to lie on a table or shelf, without medical care, until they die.
Obama is vile, and so are those who support his candidacy.
Here, I agree with you.
The state should not have any authority whatsoever over the messages of religious communities, and should have no power at all of taxation (and conditional exemption from taxation is a recognition of the state's underlying power to tax) over religious communities.
Folks don't realize that the trade-off between tax-exempt status and refraining from political involvement only goes back perhaps a half-century or so.
sitetest
“Did you read the linked material in my prior post?”
I just read it now. As for your assertion about tithing to the Church first, that is a purely Jewish/Christian doctrine. I don’t think that our government should take any specific Church doctrine such as tithing and apply that to federal law. That would explicitly go against the first amendment in the seperation of Church and state.
As for recognizing God’s pre-eminence, that is done in our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence clearly states that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. These rights in general pertain to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are further enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
I would agree that the state in the form of Democrats in general are in a constant attempt to take away rights given to us by our creator and enumerated by the BOR. That is what we have to fight against.
However, no where in our founding documents can you point out to me where it says that religious organizations can be exempt from paying their fair share of the burden for running the government. I’m okay with doing that as set out in our current tax laws as long as they do not use their religious organizations as political organizations. I think this is happening on the liberal side, but when it comes to conservative issues, you don’t seem to be able to do that. There’s a definite double standard going on here. If some preacher wants to rail against government policies pertaining to abortion or programs for the poor, I’m okay with that. When a politician comes to the pulpit to do it, I think that’s a line I’m unwilling to cross.
Fuzzy memory, here ... that little provision was, IIRC, invented by the Democrat Party, under Lyndon Johnson. Again, IIRC. Fuzzy memory and all that.
I would agree with you if that was applied equally to all church's. But the left wants it to apply only to church's that espouse liberal views.
“Fuzzy memory, here ... that little provision was, IIRC, invented by the Democrat Party, under Lyndon Johnson.”
Yes, before he was president. Churches were included in section 501(c)(3) in 1954 through the machinations of then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson.
sitetest
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