Wednesday, September 24

Freedom of Speech, for Pastors too.

I have 'made no bones' about my opposition to the IRS ban on churches and their pastors making known to their congregations who they will personally endorse and why in regards to the Presidential Election, or any election for public office in the United States of America. I know, according to an August polling, that a majority of Americans feel that the church should stay out of politics, indeed that Christian values shouldn't be a factor on who is nominated into the offices of the governing body.

It is strange that we allow our pastors to teach their personal views on Scriptures, even false doctrines, from the pulpit, but won't allow them to speak their personal opinions of political candidates.

It is funny, though, how Barack Obama was allowed to utter a political speech during the United Church of Christ's convention in Hartford, Conn. last year and no one was bothered by it.

The Reverend Eric Williams, in conjunction with some 55 other religious leaders, oppose the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and it's recruitment of ministers within the religious community to endorse or oppose candidates for political office in sermons. Reverend Williams, pastor of the North Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus Ohio, feels that "the rightful place of religious leaders and communities of faith in American life is not in electoral politics."
Don't vote your values, apparently. And don't hold those elected to lead this country according to their faith, either.

In endorsing or opposing candidates, even personally, from the pulpit can endanger the church's tax exempt status, although the UCC was not sanctioned under its own violation of the ruling. A ruling that was introduced by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson to stop a religious movement from harming his own election chances.
"Christians should not be penalized for expressing their beliefs, and that includes pastors," said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.

Pastor Wiley Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California was the latest pastor to be brought under investigation by the IRS because he publically endorsed then-Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee on church letterhead and through his broadcasts on his radio program. Pastor Drake endorsed Huckabee as an individual and not as a representative of the church, which is his right under the protection of the First Amendment. The IRS cleared him of any violation in the charge brought by American United for Separation of Church and State.

But Reverend Williams feels that endorsing or opposing poltiical candidates unfairly imposes the pastor's views upon the congregation. In the compliant filed with the IRS against the ADF's action, Williams along with 55 other Christian and Jewish leaders said, ""As religious leaders, we have grave concerns about the ethical implications of soliciting and organizing churches to violate core principles of our society."

Therein lies the gist of the movement to remove this politically motivated rule, to allow Pastors of the faithful to remind their congregations to vote according to the values and core principles of their faith and highlight those candidates that they, as leaders of such, see as the ones who will promote those values.

President Johnson's legislation, written to protect the assurance of his own political motivations, has (as with all such legislation) morphed into a standing law that liberals have used for years to securely silence the moral teachers of this nation. Is it any wonder that a majority of Americans now feel that such teaching in the Christian community is wrong for the first time in over a decade?

With Barack Obama no longer a member of the UCC church that preached Black Liberation Theology, yet who has yet to stand in opposition to such teaching, and John McCain, who refuses to discuss his 'personal' faith, now more than ever before we need to have our 'nominated' (either by attendance or by election) religious leaders to sound in on who, if either, candidate they feel supports, will defend, and can promote such values that they preach from the pulpit each and every Sunday.
I have posted the ADF's petition to Pastors below regarding this issue.

Although I am not a pastor of a church and am on hiatus from chaplaining the Meadowbrook Chapel, I would sign this in a heartbeat. I would urge those in congregations to support their pastoral staff in their endorsement of this petition to restore "First Amendment rights" to those who lead us in our faith.

It is time for the body of Christ to stop living it's faith only inside the walls of the church on Sunday and represent its faith to the world in everything, at all times.

In Christ,
Jim Hutson
Senior Chaplain, (LOA)
Meadowbrook Chapel

ADF's petition statement:

Dear Pastor,
The upcoming election is the most critical in the history of our nation. The very future of our nation’s foundation is at stake. Every person will be affected. If the liberals win, then our foundation will no longer be based on the traditional Judeo-Christian morality. It will gradually but assuredly be based on an ever shifting, ever moving foundation.

In case you may think I’m a “the sky is falling” type of person, you should know: I am a graduate of Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. I am an ordained United Methodist minister and have been for 44 years. I founded AFA more than 30 years ago and see the upcoming election as the most critical ever. Yes, if the liberals win you will lose some of your religious freedom and free speech rights. You will not be allowed to say certain things about a particular group. Homosexual marriage will be approved.

I cannot overemphasize the importance the Nov. 4 election. That is why I hope you will sign the Pastor’s Pledge, and forward it to fellow pastors and encourage them to sign the Pastor’s Pledge.

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association
I pledge to:
1. Encourage my members to register to vote.
2. Encourage my members to study the issues.
3. Encourage my members to vote.

And a few GODLY MEN will redeem......

"Help, O LORD. No godly person is left. Faithful people have vanished from among Adam's descendants! All people speak foolishly. They speak with flattering lips. They say one thing but mean another. May the LORD cut off every flattering lip and every bragging tongue that has said, "We will overcome with our tongues. With lips such as ours, who can be our master?" "Because oppressed people are robbed and needy people groan, I will now arise," says the LORD. "I will provide safety for those who long for it." The promises of the LORD are pure, like silver refined in a furnace and purified seven times. O LORD, you will protect them. You will keep each one safe from those people forever. Wicked people parade around when immorality increases among Adam's descendants." Psalms 12:1-8 (GWT)

Most theologians believe that David wrote this psalm during the reign of King Saul, when honesty and religious piety were in a decaying state in the government and country as a whole. David, in his typical fashion, also probably included his personal affronts suffered at the hands of treachous friends and the boldness of his sworn enemies. He mourns the loss of godly men, once abundant in the kingdom but now few in number, though whether through death or a falling away from the Truth he doesn't highlight.

"The only way to be manly," Dr. Larry Crabb states in The Silence of Adam, "is first to be godly."

In the wake of the emasulation of manhood by society through the promotion of 'feminism' and the destruction of the family, men throughout the world are seeking to right the wrongs visited by their own silence in the promotion of such humanistic declarations and find true masculinity. The problem for most is that they forget that first and foremost is a relationship with God, through which true masculinity is taught, understood, and emulated. The Creator of it all has the definitive answers men seek.

"Finding Christ," Crabb continues, "is a long, pride-crushing battle that leads through despair to the unmanageable joy of Spirit-fulness and then back again through darker despair to an even brighter joy."

In today's society, where the measure of 'bad times' is financial stresses, poor economic growth, and the abundance of war, we have been misled; as a nation, as a people, and as men. It isn't such that God declares is 'bad times', but rather the abundance of godless men who speak with mouths full of pride, profanity, viscious words, and ineffective utterances. Sin abounds without declaration of its existence, as men once again remain silence, unwilling to fulfill their role as warriors standing against darkness and chaos to protect the beauty and order that God created.

Men have allowed society to declare what is manly and forgotten the lessons taught by the One who created both man and woman. God will punish such men, and as a result, the evilness of society which has been allowed to run unchecked through the marrow of society's bones.

We truly live in 'bad times' as godless men and purposeful immorality has been allowed to run unchecked to the degree where openly sinful men are declared to be the 'best' among us and allowed to run for political office to affect, control, and minimize godly direction in this great nation.

These men, confusing with their utterance of 'religious tolerance' and 'religious authority' the Truthfulness of God, stand in the public square and declare, "With our tongues will we prevail against the cause of virtue; our lips are our own and we may say what we will; there is no one who can stop us or call us to an accounting!"
We, as a people, can be false; our flesh being the primary ruler of our emotions and reactions. Self-protection and preservation is paramount. But God is faithful and God has proven His trustworthiness where man cannot deliver such absolutes.

And it is those men, fast men as they have been called by in other times, who are faithful to God who will lead this nation into redemption and restoration to Godly blessing and truth. These godly men use their words as confirmation of their bond to God through the conscience decision and effort to being true to God for the sake of all mankind. It is these men, who value faithfulness to God above themselves and use their power to lead in service to those in their marriages, families, and communities, that will bring Truth to a world dying.

"Men of this generation must learn to count the cost of following Christ," Crabb states, "(The cost is easily calculated: everything we have)......resist[ing] the christian culture that values self-discovery and self-fulfillment above abandoning ourselves to God."

Such men value godliness and spiritual wisdom more than worldly degrees and toughened skills gain in the corporate world. They look to the absolute authority and Truth of God's word, silver refined to the purest degree as shown through the proof of its power and inpurviness of worldly influence. And it is the visible representation of consistency and agape love that will attract the lost and wayward of this world to seek these men out, as they shine with the light of the Heavenly Father in the darkness of troubling times.

To cause a people to seek not comfort in the manipulation of man of God's design but to search and value the mentoring of godly men and women who humbly refute their 'gentle discernment and spiritual wisdom' as not their own but something given by God to all His people, to lead them in spiritual pursuit of their Creator God. These men will create a culture shift; from worldly pursuit of personal godliness to a influencing life lived in pursuit of God-led involvement in social and moral leadership to lead through the emulation of a servant (Christ) that will radically alter how we live in marriages, families, and communities and give value to Godly pursuits instead of secular 'spirituality'.

These men have been, are, and will be forever forged in the fires of struggle, trials, temptations, and pay a price that few today are willing to pay; absolute and continous surrendering of everything to God. It is these men, and women of the same ilk, that will forever be the source of restoration and redemption in the world until Christ Himself returns.

Such men, even in society today, are valued as friends by Christian and non-Christian alike. The North American Indians have a more eloquent word for 'friend' than we do in English. In their language, the word for friend literally means, "the one who carries my sorrows on his back." Such are the service given by Godly men, real men by the original and perfect intent of God, who value service to the people above personal pursuits. Who seek God's wisdom and discernment and avoid their own.

Until such men, pursuing masculinity in themselves through the Creator who made them, stand and declare themselves willing, the men who seem so populous in the world today will continue to be exalted into places of authority, trust, and power and the laws that govern us will promote rather than prevent immorality and reward a sinful people according to self-serving pursuits. Until such is resisted by godly men and women, the wickedness of the world will control society's destination and those who deceive, debauch, and destroy others in unchecked, willful, and unafraid sin will continue to cause the moral and spiritual descent into darkness for this nation, society, and the world.

Wickedness abounds in the world today; in the halls of European countries and down to the very paths to the Executive Office of this once God-fearing nation. Under the continued protection and countenance of those in authority, such sinfulness and moral decay can only promote rather than abolish 'very bad times'.

Until these places of authority and trust are once again returned to those who seek to bring spiritual truth and justice, to shine the Light upon the highest hill, to a society enamoured with its sinful, self-serving pursuits, we have continued trouble ahead.

It is time for 'a few good men' to answer the call of their country and their God.

Will you be such a man?