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Monday, April 17, 2006
"Campaigning from the Pulpit"
Shameless self-promotion time: I have an op-ed in today's USA Today, discussing the constraints and considerations that should apply to "political" expression by religious ministers. Here is a bit:
It is the regulation of the churches' expression, and not their expression itself, that should raise constitutional red flags. Religious institutions are not above the law, but a government that respects the separation of church and state should be extremely wary of telling churches and religious believers whether they are being appropriately "religious" or excessively "political" or partisan. Churches and congregants, not bureaucrats and courts, must define the perimeter of religion's challenges. It should not be for the state to label as electioneering, endorsement, or lobbying what a religious community considers evangelism, worship or witness.
Of course, there are good reasons — religious reasons — for clergy to be cautious and prudent when addressing campaigns, issues and candidates.
Reasonable people with shared religious commitments still can disagree about many, even most, policy and political matters. It compromises religion to not only confine its messages to the Sabbath but also to pretend that it speaks clearly to every policy question. A hasty endorsement, or a clumsy or uncharitable political charge, has no place in a house of worship or during a time of prayer — not because religion does not speak to politics, but because it is about more, and is more important, than politics.
Posted by Rick Garnett on April 17, 2006 at 02:43 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Thanks, Marty and Micah, for your comments. Micah, you are right to challenge me to consider whether my instinct in this area -- i.e., ministers can say what they want from the pulpit -- takes too much for granted in terms of a general climate of responsible discourse and political stability. As for your second point, I did not mean to cheat by going after a straw man. You are right, I think, that the more common argument (today, anyway) is that to offer only "sincere religious reasons" to those who "don't happen to share those reasons" is to fail to "respect their claim to be treated as people who are owed a justification for the way the state treats them." It still seems to me, though, that this claim *is* appropriately respected if fellow citizens articulate the reasons that actually move them, *so long* as the treatment in question is, in fact, permissible under the relevant legal, constitutional, and moral norms.
Marty, it is not clear to me that it would (or, I guess, should) violate the First Amendment, correctly understood, to treat religious associations and non-religious non-profits differently, with respect to political activity and (c)(3) status. But, it does seem pretty clear that (as you suggest) my view here does not square with the relevant doctrine. You ask, with respect to my statement, "[i]t should not be for the state to label as electioneering, endorsement, or lobbying what a religious community considers evangelism, worship or witness" -- "Why not?," and add "[a]s long as the state's criteria for labeling something as 'electioneering, endorsement, or lobbying' are entirely secular, and are exactly the same as the criteria used for other 501(c)(3)'s, what's the problem?" For me, the problem here is that even the application of "entirely secular" labeling criteria involves the state in what strikes me as a troubling enterprise, i.e., imposing on religious claims, arguments, expression, and witness certain lines and categories that do, and perhaps are intended to, domesticate and privatize. (Of course, the state *can* do this. But, I'm not sure it should.)
Posted by: Rick Garnett | Apr 18, 2006 3:23:55 PM
Rick: Hope you don't mind if I excerpt here from what I wrote to the listserv:
Rick makes an excellent point, I think, about how debate on public issues -- and even partisan politics -- should not necessarily be checked at the church door. Indeed, I think it is very regrettable, for instance, that mainstream churches have been conspicuously absent from the public discussion regarding torture: The public perception and political salience of that issue might change dramatically if it were to become a major concern of important religious denominations.
Of course, issues such as torture, or abortion, or capital punishment, or poverty, can be discussed in churches, and in sermons, *without* any partisan political expression -- but sometimes it is and will be appropriate for preachers, and congregants, to name names (even when such names are those of persons running for office), and even to urge political change.
So I agree with Rick that there is nothing (necessarily) inappropriate about the insertion of political speech from the pulpit.
But I'm far less certain, Rick, about your major leap to the additional conclusion that churches should retain their 501(c)(3) status even if they engage in political activity -- a status that all other nonprofits would lose if they engaged in exactly the same expression. I know this argument is often made, but I must confess that I just don't see the case for it: An exemption for churches, and churches alone, would strike me as an Establishment Clause violation and, even more clearly, as a violation of the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses. It would be to give churches, because of their religious status, a *preferred* (not equal) place in public political dialogue; to give sermons a preferred status in that public political debate *because* their content is religious as well as political. Imagine, for instance, allowing religious lobbyists to have preferred access to officeholders, or, in the Widmar/Good News line of cases, to give religious assemblies or films *preferred* access to school rooms and auditoria. Fairly unthinkable, it seems to me.
You write, in support of such an exemption: "Churches and congregants, not bureaucrats and courts, must define the perimeter of religion's challenges." Absolutely true. But you then go on to write: "It should not be for the state to label as electioneering, endorsement, or lobbying what a religious community considers evangelism, worship or witness." Why not? As long as the state's criteria for labeling something as "electioneering, endorsement, or lobbying" are entirely secular, and are exactly the same as the criteria used for other 501(c)(3)'s, what's the problem? The IRS is not (in your words) "telling churches and religious believers whether they are being appropriately 'religious.'" The IRS is, or should be, completely indifferent as to whether the political speech of a church is "appropriate" from a religious perspective. But the IRS can, and must, determine whether that speech is the sort of partisan political speech that would disqualify a nonprofit -- religious or otherwise -- from a preferred tax status that is granted in the first instance only on the condition that the corporation *not* engage in partisan political activity.
Posted by: Marty Lederman | Apr 17, 2006 4:58:13 PM
Of course, there are good reasons — religious reasons — for clergy to be cautious and prudent when addressing campaigns, issues and candidates. (quoting from the op-ed)
I was wondering whether this sentence is meant to suggest that only religious reasons can be good reasons for restricting what the clergy say from the pulpit. If so, would you generalize that claim to other countries? I'm particularly curious about India, which restricts religious rhetoric in political campaigns, ostensibly to prevent rather predictable forms of incitement and corruption.
We best respect each other through honest dialogue by making arguments that reflect our beliefs, not by censoring or insisting that religious believers translate their commitments into focus-group jargon or cost-benefit analysis .
I think the argument that precedes this claim may be targeting something of a strawman (or maybe just Richard Rorty?). The political liberal's argument isn't (or shouldn't be) that speaking openly and honestly about one's religious beliefs is disrepectful. The liberal argument is that, when it comes to using the power of the state, respect requires more than sincerity. When your aim is to use the coercive power of the state to enact some policy, it isn't enough to tell people why you want to use the state's power in that way. You have to justify its use to them. And if you only give them sincere religious reasons, and if they don't happen to share those reasons (as many presumably won't in a diverse society), then you haven't given them a good reason from their (presumably reasonable) perspectives to accept the policy. You've been honest with them, but there is a sense in which you don't respect their claim to be treated as people who are owed a justification for the way the state treats them.
The Catholic Church's recent statements about immigration are an interesting example in this context. In addition to expressing the religious commitments that motivate its position on immigration, the Church has also provided many arguments based on public values, arguments that would surely meet the requirement that public policy be based on shared reasons, and not only on religious or sectarian grounds. In this sense, the Church's most recent intervention is a model for how public deliberation can proceed respectfully on both religious and nonreligious grounds.
Posted by: micah | Apr 17, 2006 4:11:48 PM
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