Some want you to believe spiritual leaders across the land are a bunch of cowards more afraid of the IRS than the Almighty.
For instance, Wayne Gruden, research professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary, recently opined that since 1954 the IRS has forced churches to refrain from promoting or opposing any political candidate by name.
“The IRS has insists that any speech by churches that deals with candidates for political office, including a pastor’s sermon, could result in a church losing its non-profit, tax-exempt status,” Gruden says. “This law has suppressed the valuable moral guidance that American pulpits could be contributing to our political process.”
Wasn’t it the president’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who preached, “God damn George Bush?” Haven’t blacks Baptists, Catholics and Jews used the pulpit for political change over the decades?
Was God truly kicked out of government schools that same year as some well-meaning, but ignorant, writers would have us believe? Students in my post-1954 generation prayed every time the words “pop quiz” or “test” were announced.
Like the previous myth, no church has ever lost its tax-exempt status. The only church to ever lose its IRS tax-exempt letter is the Church at Pierce Creek in Binghamton, N.Y.…
