Fire and Brimstone?

In his December column, "The politics of religion in America", The Boston Globe's columnist James Carroll joins the ranks of innumerable others by taking a stance on how those very subjects are intertwined in America.  Initially inspired by Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech, Carroll's column expounds on the confusing differences between religious and political freedom.  He argues that although the religious, including Romney, claim that America's mandate for political freedom springs forth from religious values and ideals of freedom and equality, the "most overtly religious people" in our country actually oppose freedom.  According to Carroll, the religious right is responsible for supporting many of the negative parts of our political system that "secular" Europe already eliminated, such as the death penalty and an insatiable desire for war.  Closing out his column, Carroll attacks all forms of faith, not singling out Mormonism, and ensuring that this views on faith come through clearly.

I find it interesting first that the religious leaders would establish themselves as a source and proponent of freedom, given that religion was actually quite the opposite merely 150 years ago.  As discussed in "Religion and Politics in the United States, by Kenneth D. Wald and Allison Calhoun-Brown, religion was popular for the lower classes because it gave them hope for the next life, and the upper classes propagated it because it encouraged the lower classes to accept their position in life as God's will, and helped pacify them.  Looking at such a history, it appears that religion and the political freedom advocated by Jefferson are mutually exclusive ideals.  I agree with Carroll in this point, that Romney's speech lacked factual basis, but despite the other examples he mentions, I do not see the connection between his early argument and the statement that "every religion is a religion of myth".  With this remark, Carroll makes the transition from an argument that is reasonably well documented, or at least convincing, to raining fire and brimstone on the basis of religion, which causes me to rethink his opening point.  Without taking such a position, Carroll's column would be much more credible, but an important part of being a columnist is inciting heated discussion, right?

Politics in Sheep's Clothing

In an important election year, pastors from particular churches are openingly endorsing and opposing candidates based on candidates’ positions on policies ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage. Because some churches and charities are tax-exempt under the Internal Revenue Code section 501(c) (3), they are forbidden by law to intervene in political campaigns. The Religious Right is not taking this restriction lightly. According to Reverend Steve Riggle, “The government should not be telling the Church what it should or should not be saying”. As a direct response to the government’s intrusion, the Alliance Defense Fund has started a campaign urging pastors to discuss potential candidates for public office at the pulpit in hopes of sparking a test case that will once again catapult the issue of “separation of church and state” to the federal appeals court, which has previously (in 2000) unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the tax law.

Are the churches being defiant of justified legal establishments or is the government side-stepping the right of the Religious Right towards religious freedom? This is a compounded issue that needs to be tweezed out into its separate components. At face value, Rev. Riggle’s statement is true. After all our Founding Fathers were adamant in protecting religious liberty as “a right as natural and as significant as those of thought and expression” (Meacham, 84). However, Rev. Riggle overlooks at least one condition that makes this struggle between church and state unique: the church in which these pastors are preaching are tax-exempt.

Tax-exemption is a financial status that benefits organizations that perform charitable, religious, or educational functions. Through the tax-exempt status, the church—in this case—enters into an agreement with the understanding that it will not attempt to influence legislation. In this pact, the religious institution becomes neutral in its own political agenda. If the pact is broken, financial support from the American people inadvertently advocates the opinions of that institution which may not be the conviction of the majority. In the Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson remarks that the use of public funding (or the exempt of taxes, in this case) to advocate the belief of a particular group is oppressive: “That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.” Like Jefferson, it appears that the drafters of the Internal Revenue Code were also sensitive to benefiting a particular group without reservation.

Through political preaching, the pastors in these controversial churches are no longer promulgating religious beliefs but rather employing “religion as an engine of civil policy” (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments). If pastors like Rev. Riggle propose that political preaching is an expression of religious freedom, the Founding Fathers would probably turn in their graves at the sound of such “unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation” (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments).

With the appeals court holding fast to the basic principles set forth by Jefferson and Madison regarding the role of religion in government, much has not changed in the idea that religion and government are better off apart whenever possible; however, some vociferous religious proponents have become increasingly bold and more political in their attempts to integrate religion into government than in the past. Fortunately, they are met by an equal secularist force that quickly identifies when preaching becomes a political agenda in sheep’s clothing.

To see the original article, visit Pulpit Perfidy.