Churches, nonprofit status, and politics

I've been lukewarm for quite a while about the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an organization started by the likes of Bill Bright and James Dobson which bills itself as the conservative Christian counterpart to the ACLU. They run the Blackstone Fellowship, in which many of my friends have participated. Right now it seems that my doubts about the organization are becoming a reality.

Right now they are mounting an effort to get pastors to disregard the nonprofit tax laws in order to build a freedom of speech claim against the IRS. The way 501(c)(3) status works, churches (and any other 501(c)(3) organization are strictly limited in their ability to lobby or promote political candidates. The ADF argues that this is an unconstitutional limitation on the freedom of speech. This is why this development upsets me:

Because the founders of the organization are such big names in the Christian community, the work of ADF is likely to be perceived as efforts by the evangelical community at large. At least in my corner of the world, I don't see strong Christian support for this. ADF is essentially calling on pastors to break the law. When Jesus said to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's," he was essentially supporting the tax law of the existing regime. While ADF might argue that part of the church's mandate is to tell congregants whom to vote for (I don't happen to believe that is necessarily true) and thus they much choose to either obey their God-given mandate over the tax law, this is a false conflict.

501(c)(3) tax exempt status is a privilege given to churches with the underlying assumption that churches give something back to society, so the government wants to subsidize it. If a pastor wants to be really involved in politics, the laws do not prevent that--the pastor can just not claim 501(c)(3) status for his church. The church can allow all tithes and offerings to be taxed and it will no longer get free postage. While there is a cost to this decision, there really is no conflict at all.

In fact, I think this challenge is more likely to hurt churches rather than help. As I said before, the tax exemption for churches is based on the understanding that churches are beneficial to society, but also historically, the exemption finds its basis in legislators feeling uncomfortable infringing on the sovereignty of the church through taxation. Now, given the increasingly secular culture of the United States, the value of the church to society is likely to decrease as is the recognition of the church as sovereign. My sense is that tax exemption for churches is already on shaky ground. Does ADF really want to draw attention to this? Is this really the biggest legal challenge facing the Christian community? This looks to me to be a case of one step forward for two step back.

Morality and the Law III

The last couple posts have present some other folks' view on morality and the law. I've been thinking about the following from "Christianity and the (Modest) Rule of Law:"

"If we weren’t so closely linked with the campaign to prohibit gambling, evangelicals might speak with more authority — moral, not legal — when criticizing, say, state governments’ all-out efforts to promote their own lotteries."

Is this distinction between moral and legal authority valid? If so, I wonder if American evangelicals bolster their legal authority in the political arena at the expense of the moral authority they believe (or should believe) they already possess. The general assumption is that "legal moralism" comes from the strong moral views of Christians, but I am afraid it really comes from the Church's fear that its moral authority has become irrelevant.

I am uneasy about covering up a position of fear and weakness with a facade of dogmatism and power--particularly where the Church is concerned. It conjures images of the insecure playground bully who is really just in need of a friend.

Even if the Church's moral position (rightly) leaks over into the legal realm, I would assume that the Church's moral authority is much stronger than its legal authority. It appears that many evangelicals mistakenly see politics and the law as a way to make Christianity culturally relevant in a post-modern society through brute force. If one truly believes that only Jesus can meet our spiritual needs, the Christian faith is already relevant in society--post modern or not--assuming that society always carries a Jesus-sized spiritual void. Regular Joes off the street are likely to think we are more sure about our policy solutions than our religious conviction; when the term "evangelical Christian" has become more associated with a particular political party than a man called Jesus, I have the feeling something is wrong.