Rambling post to follow. You’ve been warned.

September 28 is apparently going to be a day of infamy featuring several pastors endorsing political candidates in similar manner as this one did.

The downside for the congregation is that they lose their tax-exempt status. This would wreck many churches, especially larger ones.

What gets me, though, is the week of prayer about this amongst the church leadership. After a week, the team agreed that God had instructed the minister to do this. (Either that or the minister disregarded the team) The minister is also a delegate to the National Republican Party convention. He insists that God told him, not the powers that be in the party. He also was not instructed by anyone at the ADF.

So what is the benefit of this? If the congregation wins, preachers will be able to endorse candidates from the pulpit on Sunday. If the congregation loses, they may cease to exist or live on in a largely debilitating state of being a tax paying entity.

Seems to me that despite considering it for a month, the idea to avoid doing this was never really given much thought. In the end, the minister says a whole lot of “I” statements and very little about his congregation. In the end, he doesn’t trust his congregation to figure out certain things for themselves – you cannot vote for a pro-choice, pro-LGT candidate and remain a Christian.

I suspect that on Sept 28, that message will be repeated all over the country. I imagine very few will support Obama, and none will threaten their salvation if they support McCain.

Still, I do not believe that the GOP chair or even Karl Rove has orchestrated events to bring this into place. This is not a vast conspiracy with roots in the GOP. It’s a moral failing of our culture that is so consumed with our rights, we look past the rights of others. As much as Christianity is about being a part of the culture without conforming to the culture, all of us get tempted to be selfish. All of us get tempted to be upset when any of our rights (real and imagined) are threatened, but passive when others are deprived of their rights. Reverend King was concerned with the rights of the many, but we are not like Reverend King. We look only to our own personal affairs.

Back to the pastor in the story, I really believe that one must choose to be a minister or a political activist. Delegates have some political power. I do not know how someone can minister to their congregation and wield political power at the same time. As far as I understand, Jesus did not espouse a political solution. Jesus’ message was a personal one. His way of life requires relationship – relationship to God and relationship to each other. In other words, man cannot serve two masters, politics and God.

In fairness to this minister, I believe this is not limited to the GOP. This is the consequence of the admixture of politics and religion. It’s why I believe in the Establishment Clause of the Constitution and the limit of government to establish religion. Even the best and most golden-hearted of us (including King and others) lose our religion in politics. Politics is rooted in the world while faith is rooted in Jesus.

Again, we should be in the world and be politically active to a certain extent. Some may choose to not be politically active, that’s fine, too. But we should not be of the world. There are more important things that the platform of the DNC.