On Monday, National Review reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has decided that it has the right to monitor what is said in the pulpits of America‘s churches.
The article reports:
It was bad enough, as I wrote here last August, that the Internal Revenue Service appeared to reach an agreement to monitor the pulpits of ill-favored churches. What’s worse is that the IRS, directly counter to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requirements, steadfastly has refused to make public key documents pertaining to that decision.
So the IRS, acting with the whole power of government behind it, seems to be saying it can monitor and presumably punish churches for the content of their sermons, but the churches can’t know exactly if, how, and why they are being monitored.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Judicial Watch filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on April 9 requesting the release of the IRS documents.
The article concludes:
Completely apart from the administrative law-breaking, it is that First Amendment right that remains the nub of the underlying case. The public has been bombarded in recent weeks with stories of battles about the limits of private expressions of faith in the business world. What the IRS apparently is doing, at the atheist group’s request, attacks faith at an even more fundamental level than that: inside the churches’ own doors, at their very pulpits.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1808, “I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, disciplines, or exercises.”
Surely, if a government agency is monitoring religious institutions in a way that could lead to such intermeddling, the public deserves an explanation of how, why, when, and where such monitoring is taking place. But this is Obama’s IRS. It seems to think it answers to nobody. The courts must disabuse it of that virtually criminal notion, with every power at the courts’ disposal.
If the churches and the organizations affiliated with them do not step up to defend our religious freedom, no one will. This should be a wake-up call to every church to get involved in the political process–not shy away from it. My message to pastors is, “Don’t preach party politics–preach the principals that built this country.