In an NRO article yesterday, Quin Hillyer asked the question “Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty?”
Unfortunately, for Christians, the answer appears to be an unequivocal “yes.”
Not content to bypass the Constitution by intimidating conservatives, the IRS now seeks to ignore the First Amendment and stop churches from actually practicing their faith. Under the guise of keeping “politics” out of the pulpit, the agency has determined that certain churches must be closely “monitored.”
This bullying action comes primarily at the instigation of the atheist group known as the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) which had filed a now-dismissed lawsuit that essentially demanded that churches be denied free speech ~
… by prohibiting clergy from making pleas for protecting religious liberty at the ballot box, FFRF would make churches the only institutions in America denied free-speech rights on their own behalf. Anybody, from any platform, including a pulpit, should be able to argue for generic support of candidates who support the freedom the speaker is utilizing. But FFRF would trample that — dare I say it — God-given right, by forbidding the church and its personnel from advocating for religious liberty.
Apparently the IRS is now fully behind the atheists’ crusade against God because they’re urging the Department of Justice to spy on conservative-leaning churches ~
According to a June 27 IRS letter to the Justice Department, 99 churches merit “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal electioneering activities.
Presumably these neo-totalitarians want to stop incendiary rhetoric such as that of Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wis., diocese in a letter he sent to his flock prior to the 2012 election which stressed the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and homosexual marriage ~
The letter said that “no Catholic, in good conscience,” may vote for candidates who are “pro-choice,” who support same-sex marriage, or “who would promote laws that would infringe upon our religious liberties and freedom of conscience.”
In other words, 2000 years of church doctrine is now what? Illegal?
Indeed ~
It would mean that not only that pastors could be forbidden from candidate endorsements but also that they could not even inform their congregants about the real-world tenets of their faith.
Folks, it’s not just conservatives the IRS is gunning for. Now it’s God himself.
Michael Youssef makes a profound observation with his book “When the Crosses Are Gone,” explaining what it will truly mean if the light of Christianity is extinguished here in America.
When the crosses are gone we will have lost everything: the protection of the Constitution. Our history. Our American heritage. Our liberty. And I think there is something else that is lost when the crosses are gone: We lose our ability to think clearly, to reason with one another, and to live together in an orderly, rational society.
