July 28, 2004
THE SECOND CONTRACT:
Kansas group monitors sermons (AP, 7/27/04)
A recent Sunday found Tina Kolm changing her morning routine. Instead of attending a Unitarian Universalist service, she was at the Lenexa Christian Center, paying close attention to a conservative minister's sermon about the importance of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage.Kolm is one of about 100 volunteers for the Mainstream Coalition, a group monitoring the political activities of local pastors and churches.
The coalition, based in suburban Kansas City, Kan., says it wants to make sure clergy adhere to federal tax guidelines restricting political activity by nonprofit groups, and it's taking such efforts to a new level.
There's another wedge issue: the Left wants to use the federal tax code to attack religion. We see an advertisement where Martin Luther King, Jr. is being led away in cuffs... Posted by Orrin Judd at July 28, 2004 9:21 AM
"Monitoring churches" by a leftist group. Talk about a chilling effect. I wonder if they will go to the AME Churches that host Democratic candidates?
Posted by: pchuck at July 28, 2004 9:47 AMCould this monitoring be seen as a violation of the "free exercise thereof" clause of the First Amendment. If it ever became a public activity (from the article it looks like a private group is doing the monitoring) I believe it would be a violation.
The Sunday prayers at St. Monica's in Kalamazoo always refer to "elected officials, that they may realize that life begins at conception and ends only with natural death". Would THAT be considered "political activity" by this group? Probably so.
Posted by: John Barrett Jr. at July 28, 2004 9:56 AMThe Sunday prayers at St. Monica's in Kalamazoo always refer to "elected officials, that they may realize that life begins at conception and ends only with natural death". Would THAT be considered "political activity" by this group? Probably so.
However, a prayer for "an end to AmeriKKKa's wars of conquest in the middle east" would be the very soul of nonpartisanship.
Posted by: Mike Morley at July 28, 2004 10:49 AMMcKnight said Mainstream Coalition volunteers visit houses of worship of all types.
Really? How many Mosques full of radical Muslim Clerics so far?
Posted by: John Resnick at July 28, 2004 12:37 PMAnd who gets to monitor the Scientologists, Wiccans and Unitarians?
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at July 28, 2004 2:30 PMProbably none - if you believe some Web sites, it isn't safe to monitor Scientologists.
Posted by: John Barrett Jr. at July 28, 2004 2:42 PMOne of the nice thing about the law--American law, anyway--it that its rules are to be of general application: Goose and Gander get the same sauce. Vide the way in which the majority in Bush v. Gore stuck in the precedents dealing with federal jurisdiction over state election decisions theretofor established a in Negro voting-rights context, and twisted the blade.
Black churches, many of them, hold partisan political rallies during devine services. The Congress knows these things; the President sees them--and yet it goes on. What we should do is to advance litigation in one context or another. A rule restraining political activity, set down in a Catholic context, would kick out one of the main legs of the Gay/Black/Government-worker Democrat tripod. Conversely, a rule in a case arising in a Black-church context will certainly allow us to read the Bishop's letter from the pulpit or hand out voter advisories identifying the ~~~~-killers running for office.
Posted by: Lou Gots at July 28, 2004 4:27 PMAs always, I blame LBJ.
As it happens, I'm right this time.
Posted by: Chris at July 29, 2004 12:26 AM