{"id":6423,"date":"2011-10-02T19:34:16","date_gmt":"2011-10-02T19:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=6423"},"modified":"2011-10-02T19:34:16","modified_gmt":"2011-10-02T19:34:16","slug":"render-unto-the-taxpayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/render-unto-the-taxpayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Render unto the Taxpayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/10\/01\/business\/flouting-the-law-pastors-will-take-on-politics.html\">From<\/a> the <em>New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This weekend, hundreds of pastors, including some of the nation\u2019s evangelical leaders, will climb into their pulpits to preach about American politics, flouting a decades-old law that prohibits tax-exempt churches and other charities from campaigning on election issues.<\/p>\n<p>The sermons, on what is called Pulpit Freedom Sunday, essentially represent a form of biblical bait, an effort by some churches to goad the Internal Revenue Service into court battles over the divide between religion and politics.<\/p>\n<p>The Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal defense group whose founders include James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, sponsors the annual event, which started with 33 pastors in 2008. This year, Glenn Beck has been promoting it, calling for 1,000 religious leaders to sign on and generating additional interest at the beginning of a presidential election cycle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere should be no government intrusion in the pulpit,\u201d said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., who led preachers in the battle to pass California\u2019s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. \u201cThe freedom of speech and the freedom of religion promised under the First Amendment means pastors have full authority to say what they want to say.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course they should, but they shouldn\u2019t get a tax break while doing so. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the New York Times: This weekend, hundreds of pastors, including some of the nation\u2019s evangelical leaders, will climb into their pulpits to preach about American politics, flouting a decades-old law that prohibits tax-exempt churches and other charities from campaigning &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/render-unto-the-taxpayer\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[746],"tags":[847,846,848],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6423"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6425,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423\/revisions\/6425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}