Politicizing Churches

Dear editor: 

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, added in 1791, states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  This was a pillar the framers of the Constitution demanded, and has served us well for 226 years, and has always been known by all as the “separation of church and state.”  But now we are at a time in our history where our government might be endangering that precious freedom. 

On Thursday, Sept. 13^th, the House of Representatives passed a spending bill that could transform churches and other houses of worship into entities closely resembling political SuperPACs.  Quietly tucked into a $1.2 trillion “megabus” spending bill was a rider with a provision that would make it difficult to enforce the so-called Johnson Amendment, a part of the tax code that prohibits churches and other houses of worship from endorsing political candidates. According to tax law a 501(c)(3) organizations, if a church or other non profit, gets politically involved they would jeopardize their tax-free status. The House’s new spending bill would stop attempts by the IRS from penalizing churches that violate tax law by engaging in explicit political action, and tear up the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution that has served us so well.  Why this rider? Because the extreme religious right is being served. 

In addition, a U.S. Air Force chaplain who ministers to thousands of men and women at an Ohio base has written and is asserting that Christians in the U.S. Armed forces “serve Satan” and are “grossly in error” if they support members’ rights to practice other faiths.  He criticized Christian service members at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base who rely on the Constitution “and not Christ.” He continued, “Christian service members who openly profess and support the rights of Muslims, Buddhists and all other worldviews to practice their religions because the language in the Constitution permits, are grossly in error, and deceived.”  And this is a member and officer in our military who took an oath “to swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.” 

What is this man doing in our Armed Forces? He has violated his Oath of Office as a commissioned officer, as well as Title 18, U.S. Code’s criminal prohibitions against counseling or urging insubordination, disloyalty, or “refusal of duty” to other military members.   

We are at a crossroad in our history if we allow actions such as these to continue just to serve the unbridled tidal wave of Fundamentalist Christian persecution as promulgated in the House of Representatives and in our armed forces.  It can only be prayed that this rider to the spending bill be struck by the Senate and this chaplain be brought up on charges and kicked out of the Army without a pension. Let us not go down the road of religious domination of our political system.