Free Exercise questions

Here is a fictional situation: A parishoner of a local Christian Church votes for the Democratic candidate for governor. The problem is that the minister and a majority of the church council (elders + deacons) publicly endorsed the local Republican candidate. The parishoner has just disobeyed the decision of the church's ruling body. Under most normal church guidelines the parishoner has sinned because of his action. When confronted with his error, he refuses to repent. Following the procedure of church gov't he is eventually excommunicated. Who is right in this circumstance?

Joe Hallet in the Aug 30, 2005 Cleveland Dispatch (paid sub. req.) explains that the groundwork for such a possibility is ever so slowly being laid in the Rev. Rod Parsely's World Harvest Church and the Rev. Russell Johnson's Fairfield Christian Church. Both pastors, while urging their members to register 400,000 new voters who support the moral side of conservativism re: homosexuality, abortion, cloning, embryonic research, pornography, etc..., have publicly refrained from endorsing Blackwell.

Hallet also writes

" Meeting for the fourth time in a year under the banner of Reformation Ohio, a four-year initiative to infuse state politics with conservative values and morality, 1,320 pastors were handed thousands of mail-in petitions to distribute to their congregations urging U.S. senators to quickly confirm John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court."

While Robert's may be a good church-going guy, who is being unfairly slimed by those on the Left, National Review has described him as being center-left on abortion. This would seem to mean that those above-mentioned 1300+ pastors just might possibly support abortion. Plus Roberts has not ruled on abortion. If he makes a pro-abortion ruling, this would also imply that the churches support abortion.

The problem with this church-originated activity is that if the IRS decides to get involved about, many churches could lose their 501.c.3 status. While I support the policy positions of these church-members, I think that better methods could have been chosen.

Politics is temporal while the preaching and the gospel are about things eternal. Charles Colson has written a column Sept 16, 2004 column about ministers who need to refrain from endorsing Democratic or Republican political candidates. Cal Thomas has written a 1987 book about his mistakes in the Jerry Falwell-led Moral majority . This requires care.

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