Aliance Defense Fund, a Phoenix-based group, organized a form of clerical protest yesterday, encouraging a number of pastors across the country to use their sermons to explicitly express views as to how members of their congregation should vote in this year's presidential election.
The purpose of this organized demonstration is to bring a challenge to the 54-year old law which prohibits charitable and tax-exempt groups from openly supporting any candidate for public office. The hope is the government will bring a lawsuit against one or more of these pastors and their churches, a suit which the ADF hopes to win.
The Post article has several quotes from participants, including "The point is the IRS says you can't (openly support a political candidate during a sermon). I'm saying you're wrong."
The entire affair has been portrayed as a matter of "Free speech". However, you don't get free speech without also assuming some responsibility. In this case, the ADF and the 33 pastors who participated in the protest yesterday want the right to express themselves in the political arena without the associated responsibility of actually contributing money (taxes) to support the political structure.
Gosh -- I'd like to have all the privileges of being a citizen without paying any taxes too. Doesn't mean it's going to happen, or should.
There is no suppression of speech here. Any pastor and church which wishes to participate in the political process is free to do so at any time ... with the proviso they pay taxes on the income they receive (and, I believe, property they hold). There is no Constitutional right to tax-exemption. The courts have continuously held, in cases such as Branch Ministries v. Rossotti and United States v. Christian Echoes National Ministry such exeptions exist at the grace of Congress. What Congress provides, Congress may also restrict, or remove altogether.
The ADF should be granted what it wishes for -- all 33 ministries which participated yesterday should be immediately slapped with tax assessments for the full 2008 year on all taxable incomes and properties. When the suit is challenged, appealed, and lost, the ADF and all 33 ministries should be forced to pay the costs the government incurred in defending the the suit.
After all, with the bang-up job all those deregulated corporate financial geniuses have done, we're going to need every extra dollar we can find.
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Freedom and Religion
In his speech last week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney quoted founding father and former President John Adams, saying "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom."
It's clear religion can exist without freedom, as, for example, the Taliban have illustrated in Afghanistan in the past. However, if one wants to interpret this as saying open, free practice of religion requires freedom, then of course this statement is true - it's impossible to freely exercise anything, including one's religious views, without freedom.
As to whether or not freedom requires religion, on a theoretical level it clearly does not. As I noted in a thread at Arizona 8th, consider the possibility everyone in our country wakes up tomorrow and decides they no longer have a belief in religion. Nothing prevents them from practicing religion, they simply and freely choose not to. In such a situation, no religion exists, yet freedom has in no way been abridged.
Whether this is possible in a practical sense is a different matter. Clearly spritualism and faith is deeply ingrained within nearly all cultures (I'm not actually aware of any exceptions, but I am hedging my bets). Yet, is it necessary? Certainly, one of the benefits of religion is its promotion of some set of standards for individuals to lead moral lives. It's hard to see where freedom can exist for all in a society without such standards.
Still, ultimately creating a free society depends on enforcement of socially agreed laws, not on religion. You often hear concerns expressed about how our nation is becoming increasingly secular, and certainly demographic trends support those views - roughly 1/5 of Americans now self-identify as atheist/agnostic.
Somehow, freedom has managed to withstand the assault.
For anyone interested, or looking for a means to be lulled to sleep, Framer and I had a fairly lengthy exchange of views about this topic in comments to this post.
It's clear religion can exist without freedom, as, for example, the Taliban have illustrated in Afghanistan in the past. However, if one wants to interpret this as saying open, free practice of religion requires freedom, then of course this statement is true - it's impossible to freely exercise anything, including one's religious views, without freedom.
As to whether or not freedom requires religion, on a theoretical level it clearly does not. As I noted in a thread at Arizona 8th, consider the possibility everyone in our country wakes up tomorrow and decides they no longer have a belief in religion. Nothing prevents them from practicing religion, they simply and freely choose not to. In such a situation, no religion exists, yet freedom has in no way been abridged.
Whether this is possible in a practical sense is a different matter. Clearly spritualism and faith is deeply ingrained within nearly all cultures (I'm not actually aware of any exceptions, but I am hedging my bets). Yet, is it necessary? Certainly, one of the benefits of religion is its promotion of some set of standards for individuals to lead moral lives. It's hard to see where freedom can exist for all in a society without such standards.
Still, ultimately creating a free society depends on enforcement of socially agreed laws, not on religion. You often hear concerns expressed about how our nation is becoming increasingly secular, and certainly demographic trends support those views - roughly 1/5 of Americans now self-identify as atheist/agnostic.
Somehow, freedom has managed to withstand the assault.
For anyone interested, or looking for a means to be lulled to sleep, Framer and I had a fairly lengthy exchange of views about this topic in comments to this post.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Romney hates me
X4mr beat me to the punch, and has a good post up explaining why a "secularist", a category into which I would unquestionably fall, might be very concerned by Romney's speech. I'd like to take a moment to note as of 2001 15% of Americans, minimum, fell into that category, with the numbers growing rapidly.
To put that in perspective, that's more than 10 times as many secularists as Mormons. Secularists would be second only to Christianity in terms of their views vis-a-vis religion in this country (a very distant second, admittedly). If you were to view secularists as their own religious sect (which Romney, incorrectly, does) it would rank third, behind only Roman Catholics and Baptists ... and given trends, secularists have likely moved past Baptists since the linked survey was completed and into second place.
In other words, that's a pretty big minority of people Romney is expressing intolerance for. There are considerably more secularists in this country than Blacks or Hispanics.
X4mr also does an excellent job of explaining why the John Adams "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom" quote doesn't mean what Romney would like everyone to interpret it as meaning. Sadly, he'll get away with it - the vast majority of his intended audience will seize on it as evidence our revered founding fathers always intended our government to be steered by religion, regardless of constraints built into the Constitution. "Oh, they really didn't mean that."
There is another statement out there, Article XI of this document, a document Adams very publicly avowed his support for and signed into law, supported unanimously by Senate, the opening clause of which states in no uncertain terms:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion ..."
Oddly, Romney didn't see fit to include that Adams statement in his address.
To put that in perspective, that's more than 10 times as many secularists as Mormons. Secularists would be second only to Christianity in terms of their views vis-a-vis religion in this country (a very distant second, admittedly). If you were to view secularists as their own religious sect (which Romney, incorrectly, does) it would rank third, behind only Roman Catholics and Baptists ... and given trends, secularists have likely moved past Baptists since the linked survey was completed and into second place.
In other words, that's a pretty big minority of people Romney is expressing intolerance for. There are considerably more secularists in this country than Blacks or Hispanics.
X4mr also does an excellent job of explaining why the John Adams "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom" quote doesn't mean what Romney would like everyone to interpret it as meaning. Sadly, he'll get away with it - the vast majority of his intended audience will seize on it as evidence our revered founding fathers always intended our government to be steered by religion, regardless of constraints built into the Constitution. "Oh, they really didn't mean that."
There is another statement out there, Article XI of this document, a document Adams very publicly avowed his support for and signed into law, supported unanimously by Senate, the opening clause of which states in no uncertain terms:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion ..."
Oddly, Romney didn't see fit to include that Adams statement in his address.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Presidential quotas
Apparently, at a recent fund raiser, Mitt Romney answered a question about the possibility of including a member of the Muslim faith within his cabinet by saying he “cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified” based on the percentage of Muslims in the U.S.
I wasn't aware any positions within our government were alloted by religious belief (or lack thereof - atheists will want their seats in the cabinet too), and in fact I thought the Constitution explicitly prohibits such calculus (although apparently the US Attorney General's office didn't get the memo).
Still, leaving aside such trivial items as our nation's founding document, as well as the fact Republicans are allegedly against the used of quotas in hiring, school admissions, etc., one could certainly make a pretty strong case, based on the fact that only about 1.4% of the US self-identifies as Mormon, that one "cannot see that a Presidential position would be justified" for Romney, based on the percentage of Mormons in the US.
I wasn't aware any positions within our government were alloted by religious belief (or lack thereof - atheists will want their seats in the cabinet too), and in fact I thought the Constitution explicitly prohibits such calculus (although apparently the US Attorney General's office didn't get the memo).
Still, leaving aside such trivial items as our nation's founding document, as well as the fact Republicans are allegedly against the used of quotas in hiring, school admissions, etc., one could certainly make a pretty strong case, based on the fact that only about 1.4% of the US self-identifies as Mormon, that one "cannot see that a Presidential position would be justified" for Romney, based on the percentage of Mormons in the US.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Bad Christians! No donuts!
Yesterday, for the first time ever, a Hindi religious figure, Rajan Zed, presented the morning prayer in the Senate. Here is the text of his prayer:
It reads to me as if Zed bent over backwards to present a non-denominational prayer. Do you see anything there that threatens our American Way Of Life? Anything that threatens Christianity? Anything at all?
If not, you must not be working hard enough. A family of conservative Christian protesters felt the need to burst in and interrupt the affair shortly after it began, yelling and shouting until they were hauled off in handcuffs. I'm sure they think of themselves as martyrs rather than intolerant idiots they actually are.
“For all of these years we have honored the God of our Founding Fathers. It was not a group of Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims that came here. It was Christians,” said, Rev. Flip Benham, head of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, speaking to The Hill. As if that somehow gives Christians the right to act like asses toward representatives of other religions.
Lets be clear -- our founding fathers definitely came from cultures where Christianity was the dominant religion. However, most of them arrived here (or their ancestors did) because they were looking to escape from religious intolerance. They favored the idea of people being able to practice religion as each best saw fit (and assuming it wasn't directly harmful to others ... human sacrifice being right out for example).
There's a reason that, despite the predominantly Christian backgrounds of the signers, our Constitution doesn't mention "God" or "Creator". There's a reason we don't have an official state religion (despite what some people, including Rev. Benham, appear to believe).
Many of our founding fathers, to which such people so readily leap to apply "Christian" values, were not, in fact, good, practicing Christians. George Washington would leave church prior to receiving the sacrament. When the church pastor pointed out he was setting a poor example for the other attendees, Washington agreed ... and stopped attending church entirely.
With that attitude, George Washington could never be elected to any serious political office today, much less President. Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence and our 3rd President, was unquestionably not a Christian. He would be lucky to be elected to a school board these days.
We are becoming a theocratic nation, and that's not a good thing. Most people who claim to be "religious conservatives" don't believe in many of the main tenets of science (evolution being the prime, but not sole, scientific matter they dispute). You could say the same about Islamic conservatives, and look where that stifling of research and questioning has left most Islamic cultures today -- what had been a thriving, intellectual culture, the forefront of human existence a millennium ago, is now broken and backward, scrabbling to come to terms with the modern world.
After barging into the room, the protesters interrupted Zan's prayer by shouting "this is an abomination". Ironically, that part they got right, if not in the sense they meant.
Let us pray. We meditate on the transcendental Glory of the Diety Supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky, and inside the soul of Heaven. May he stimulate and illuminate our minds.
Lead us from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality. May we be protected together. May we be nourished together. May we work together with great vigor. May our study be enlightening. May no obstacle arise between us.
May the Senators strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world, performing their duties with the welfare of others always in mind, because by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life. May they work carefully and wisely, guided by compassion and without thought for themselves.
United your resolve, united your hearts, may your spirits be as one, that you may long dwell in unity and concord.
Peace, peace, peace be unto all. Lord, we ask You to comfort the family of former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. Amen.
It reads to me as if Zed bent over backwards to present a non-denominational prayer. Do you see anything there that threatens our American Way Of Life? Anything that threatens Christianity? Anything at all?
If not, you must not be working hard enough. A family of conservative Christian protesters felt the need to burst in and interrupt the affair shortly after it began, yelling and shouting until they were hauled off in handcuffs. I'm sure they think of themselves as martyrs rather than intolerant idiots they actually are.
“For all of these years we have honored the God of our Founding Fathers. It was not a group of Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims that came here. It was Christians,” said, Rev. Flip Benham, head of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, speaking to The Hill. As if that somehow gives Christians the right to act like asses toward representatives of other religions.
Lets be clear -- our founding fathers definitely came from cultures where Christianity was the dominant religion. However, most of them arrived here (or their ancestors did) because they were looking to escape from religious intolerance. They favored the idea of people being able to practice religion as each best saw fit (and assuming it wasn't directly harmful to others ... human sacrifice being right out for example).
There's a reason that, despite the predominantly Christian backgrounds of the signers, our Constitution doesn't mention "God" or "Creator". There's a reason we don't have an official state religion (despite what some people, including Rev. Benham, appear to believe).
Many of our founding fathers, to which such people so readily leap to apply "Christian" values, were not, in fact, good, practicing Christians. George Washington would leave church prior to receiving the sacrament. When the church pastor pointed out he was setting a poor example for the other attendees, Washington agreed ... and stopped attending church entirely.
With that attitude, George Washington could never be elected to any serious political office today, much less President. Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence and our 3rd President, was unquestionably not a Christian. He would be lucky to be elected to a school board these days.
We are becoming a theocratic nation, and that's not a good thing. Most people who claim to be "religious conservatives" don't believe in many of the main tenets of science (evolution being the prime, but not sole, scientific matter they dispute). You could say the same about Islamic conservatives, and look where that stifling of research and questioning has left most Islamic cultures today -- what had been a thriving, intellectual culture, the forefront of human existence a millennium ago, is now broken and backward, scrabbling to come to terms with the modern world.
After barging into the room, the protesters interrupted Zan's prayer by shouting "this is an abomination". Ironically, that part they got right, if not in the sense they meant.
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