Two pieces of legislation under discussion in Congress would allow churches fuller participation in the political process. One bill, introduced by Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., would allow houses of worship to endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status. A second bill, by Rep. Phil Crane, R-Ill., would permit religious institutions to spend as much as 20 percent of their funds on political activities without putting their tax-exempt status at risk. Question: Should Congress act to expand the ability of religious institutions to participate in politics? UPI National Political Analysts Peter Roff and Jim Chapin face off on opposite sides of this critical question.
Roff:
It was never the founder's intention to exclude the church from the political life of the nation.
As Yale Professor Stephen Carter has brilliantly explained, the purposeful separation of the church and the government is for the protection of the church, not the other way around.
Allowing individual churches to participate in the political process more fully would be a welcome change from the increasingly anti-religious tenor of electoral campaigns since the mid-80s.
It is interesting to note that those religious entities viewed as right leaning tend to support the Jones and Crane efforts while those that hew leftward tend to oppose it.
The Democrats have, in many cases, seamlessly intertwined religious bodies with political organizations to the point that, sometimes, the two cannot truly be seen as separate entities. However, those that would be expected to endorse Republican candidates are watched more closely and, generally, are subjected to greater scrutiny when they exercise their First Amendment right of participation in ways that do not push the envelope nearly as far.
Every couple of years, a particular liberal organization sends a "chilling effect" letter, it says, to every house of worship in America. Enclosed with the letter is an outline of what they may or may not do during the election cycle. As the group sending the information has a pronounced opposition to the involvement of the religious in politics, the document is written in such a way as to discourage participation.
The Federal Election Commission has, for a number of years, tried to stop groups on the right from engaging in passive efforts to inform those attending worship services where candidates stand on issues they believe should be of importance to the faithful.
Contrast this with the level of activity seen in some houses of worship -- particularly but not exclusively those where the congregation is black or Latino -- on the part of Democrats.
During the 2000 campaign, Democrats from Al Gore on down were routinely welcomed into these pulpits to address "important issues" while the religious leader nodded approvingly.
Over the years, the prohibitions designed to keep political activity out of houses of worship have been repeatedly disregarded. The fundraising event attended by former Vice President Al Gore at a Buddhist temple stands out as the most glaring, but it by no means the only instance.
One side should not be harassed for engaging in activities that the other party appears to be able to do free of penalty. They must be treated equally.
From a constitutional standpoint it is wrong to keep communities of faith from exercising the most basic of rights as defined in our founding documents. The system should be open to everyone, including the faithful and their institutions.
Chapin:
Religion and Politics Are Separated For a Reason
It is hard to believe that what American politics needs is a greater infusion of public religion. The nation survived quite well for most of its history without leaders telling us about their personal beliefs at every opportunity.
Ritualized displays of religious piety during national political campaigns were almost unheard of until Dwight Eisenhower introduced them in the 1950's.
Over the next 50 years, they have become obligatory.
In the most recent national elections, the candidates vied in public expressions of piety.
Of course, all these candidates and religious politicians are violating the words of Christ himself, who said: "When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. They love to stand in the synagogues and on the street corners and pray loudly. They want people to see them pray. I tell you the truth. They already have their full reward. When you pray, you should go into your room and close the door. Then pray to your Father who cannot be seen. Your Father can see what is done in secret, and he will reward you."
More to the point, they are all, left and right alike, committing the sin of simony, which is not just that of taking money from the church, but the greater sin of diverting those things meant for God to the purposes of man.
To claim that campaigns have had an increasingly anti-religious tenor since the mid-1980's is simply to overlook reality.
What IS reality is that, since the 1980 election, when religious preferences played perhaps the smallest part in voting choices in any election in American history, there has been a reorganization of political choice along religious lines.
This reorganization was driven by the so-called Christian Right, which played a larger and larger role in the Republican Party and in its campaigns. As Warren T. Miller pointed out in his revised version of "The American Voter," the increased identification of religion with politicized right-wing fundamentalist Protestantism has also created an opposition group in the general population, which increasingly identifies itself as non-religious and votes against it.
Ironically, the greatest strength of American religion has been its separation from the State. The established churches of Europe, financed by state monies, have near-empty pews.
If this administration's campaign to transfer general tax monies to specific religious groups succeeded, it would be the start of a slippery slope which would hurt churches far more than it would hurt the state.
The world envisaged in the Crane and Jones bills, in which churches would keep their tax exemptions while spending their money on campaigns and making political endorsements would, in the short run, advantage religious conservatives. In the long run, politicized churches that would be campaigning for their slice of government dollars would create political systems reminiscent of those in Israel or the Netherlands, systems in which government dollars are more important than private contributions.
Maybe it's time to remind conservatives that America's "free market" in religion is what has made religion so strong here. Directly implicating religion and government in each other's operations would necessarily result in a regulated market of acceptable religion. And, thus, in time, weaker religion. And that would be bad for all Americans. I guess it's up to liberals to save religious conservatives from themselves.
