Free Exercise Questions (cont.)

The fictional situation written about below is in reality not a fiction in many African-American Churches and the Roman Catholic Church. In the Evangelical and Mainline Protestant Churches, most of the politicization addresses only policy stances or upcoming laws. There is also a general support for Republican candidates.

The RCC while not generally endorsing national or state candidates does endorse specific policy positions as well as directing its members how to vote. Some of these members are judges (or soon-to-be Chief Justices on SCOTUS), House members, or Senators. Legislators and SCOTUS' have, as a general rule, refused to end the the 501.c.3 status of churches who take sides on a policy debate.

Black Baptist Churches take specific stances on endorsing candidates often times in spite of the fact that Democratic members have differing policy stances than the endorsing churches; eg. abortion. Democrats almost universally support abortion, while a super-majority of black churches and their members oppose it, Jesse Jackson being a counter-example. These Baptist churches do not have their non-profit status revoked because the charge of racism can be thrown at the indicters as well as the fact that some politics is not illegal. Furthermore, there is also a distinction made between the pastor as a leader and the pastor as a citizen.

There is and has always been a close church-state relationship. Churches must remember that their members are universal and that doctrines are eternal. They ought to tread lightly in dictating actions in the temporal sphere, actions which ought the more properly to belong unto the area of Christian Liberty.

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