What US law is there, if any, to control preachers who use their sermons to endorse or support any particular candidate or party?
It happens, as shown by the priest mocking Hillary Clinton. There must be other examples. Abortion has long left the Church and entered politics in the US.Do preachers tell their flock not to vote for a pro-abortion candidate?
Churches are charities in the US, as in Britain.[The reason here is as stupid as anywhere. It's that a law was passed in the reign of Queen Anne (reigned 1702-1714), a law in the spirit of the common law, which said so.It has no more relevance now than do the continuing provisions of common law that make a trust or Will charitable because it provides for pet cats and that which makes private schools which charge parents £30,000 per pupil per year 'charities'].Your Revenue must be able to argue that a body is not charitable or that certain activities are not chargeable as charity but that must be hard to do if the church is a genuine church in all other respects, as well as it being ineffective in the short term as a control of clerical pronouncements.
Is the only answer within the particular church? Does the Catholic Church reprimand or punish preachers who enter the political arena when sermonising ?
There must be a law against this preaching in Britain ( though I'm temporarily at a loss to find it. It'll be in one of our many electoral laws concerning e.g. interference in elections.It's even illegal for a radio disc jockey to say, on air, who we should vote for ) Curiously we've now (in 2001) removed the automatic disqualification whereby ordained ministers were prevented from election to, or sitting as members of, the House of Commons (The reason was that the existing law was a mess, with strange exceptions and provisions)
Loss of tax-exempt status is, I think, the only measure that can be used against crossing the line, but it is rarely used. The Religious Right, including the Catholic church has often been guilty of injecting politics into sermons, as have some black churches, as recently seen.
However, you must remember that the US celebrates the Pilgrims coming to the new country as part of its founding. The story sold here is that they came seeking religious freedom. Of course, the opposite was true. They left England to seek such freedom and went to Holland, where they had that freedom. But they were isolated there and felt out of place, so they went back to England. When they came to North America, they finally found the freedom they wanted, which was to pass laws in accord with their particular brand of Christianity. It seem that religious freedom meant something different than we today think.
I offer this condensed history to show that the US has a long tradition of churches involving themselves with governmental matters. I don't like it, but that is how it is. In my opinion, the solution is to let any church preach what it wants (without violating other laws, of course). But remove the tax-exempt status from them. Doing this would relieve the taxpayer of supporting, to a small measure, political preaching. It would also provide, in varying degrees, cities with additional revenue. The taxes that should be paid on real estate in New York City alone would amount to millions of dollars annually. (Lest some think I overestimate, let me point out that one sect owns quite a few apartment buildings, yet pays no property tax on them because they are "church property." I am also sure that other sects have similar holdings.)
Posts: 17475 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
I have an even better idea. Honi, if you are going to be passing out bikini pics, why not just have it posted in the AP pictures section. That way everybody here can see it
Posts: 2277 | Location: Martinsville, IL | Registered: 06-03-02
When the people of Batesburg, South Carolina were being nice, they called Cooter "slow."
One day Cooter was roaming around town, as was his habit, and came across a backhoe crew digging a hole by the side of the road. "What's 'at hole fer?" he asked.
The crew foreman said, "Why, Cooter, we're gonna take all the fools in this town and put 'em in the hole."
So Cooter asked, "Who gonna be 'round to fill it back up, then?"
Posts: 8061 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
) Curiously we've now (in 2001) removed the automatic disqualification whereby ordained ministers were prevented from election to, or sitting as members of, the House of Commons (The reason was that the existing law was a mess, with strange exceptions and provisions)
