Churches Are the Conscience of the Nation

Churches have long been a vital part of the conscience of this nation. The Revolutionary War was fomented in the pulpits of the American colonies. Churches complained loudly about the mistreatment of the Indians and Presidents like Lincoln and Grant pressed the disloyal opposition to keep the treaties we agreed to, and to stop slaughtering whole native American villages. Churches drove the abolition movement and church people held together the underground railroad. Churches pressed the WWII government to accept Jewish refugees (which good Democrat FDR resisted). Wilson segregated the military during WWI and it took church-going Harry Truman to desegregate the military in 1946 after black soldiers, sailors and airmen served honorably on the front lines. White and black churches lined up behind Martin Luther King, himself a minister and outspoken political activist, to march for Civil Rights in the 60s against powerful resistance by the Democrat party. 

Today churches are still a powerful voice for the right to life of unborn children which many organizations, politicians and the IRS violently oppose. Such leftist organizations are free shout to the skies about the right of women to kill their unborn children in the womb. In this day and age Christian church organizations (the church triumphant which spans all Christendom) is just about the only unified voice rising in protest. The churches of America provide equal time voices to such tax exempt organizations and yet find their tax exempt status constantly threatened if their moral exhortations conflict with the dominant political narrative.

The Sierra Club, 501(c)5 and partly 501(c)3, and Black Lives Matter a 501(c)3 (same as churches) are both clearly political. Sierra Club does offer tax deductible donation options, but cash donations are fungible and all of its political activities do come under the Sierra Club banner, political or not. Black Lives Matter's website still claims 501(c)3 status despite sponsoring violent political protests and led by avowed communists who use the money to buy themselves mansions.

Pressure on churches to sit down and shut up is growing. A Houston Mayor, a few years ago, demanded that church pastors submit their sermon notes or tapes of the sermon to the mayor's office for review. In Texas that didn't go over so well, but she certainly tried to force churches to testify against themselves in that manner. She threatened area churches with the IRS investigations.

I worked with nonprofits for 40 years and hardly a one did not skirt the no politics rule in one way or another. I know. I taught them how to get their messages to legislatures by being careful how they did it. I worked with coalitions to address a wide variety of community issues - bipartisan coalitions for the most part. I had to teach my progressive brethren to speak Republican and talk them into not chaining themselves to things at the capital. We were practically the only initiative to get what we asked for from the new Republican majority. They were so glad we weren't picketing outside their offices or chaining ourselves to statues of Stephen F. Austin that we found them to be grateful allies.

A pastor here in Washington is in trouble for providing a list of people to vote for to his congregation. It's not the least of his problems. Questions about money and treatment of women makes it look like there are lots of other things for authorities to worry about other than his politics. That's NOT his biggest problem here it appears. So to frame this situation as another example. Concern that the church is meddling in things political seems disingenuous. Liberal churches aren't drawing the same sort of heat these days. Seems if you have a coven meeting in the all purpose room on Thursday nights and an abortion rights group having potlucks in the kitchen, nobody is worried about that.

Had the church folks of my generation remained silent and uninvolved, how far would the Civil Rights Bill got? Southern Democrats took a lot of heat from church folk over how they were treating our black brothers and sisters back then. That heat is why LBJ managed to get enough of them to sign on to the Civil Rights Bill to pass it and he only did that because, as he told fellow Democrats, he thought the party could position itself as the savior and author of Civil Rights in America and "...have those n!@@#%$ voting Democrat for the next 200 years."  He actually said that. Somehow nobody noticed that Johnson didn't have to persuade the Republicans to vote for it.

There's no question that there is a strong conservative lean to Christian churches. Gagging them would be a really effective way to silence the influence of Christianity in the nation's halls of power. That would be a shame. You may not agree that we are a Christian nation, but there's no denying that religious freedom is in the bones of our system of government. We should be careful before we excise that bone in order to get a little peace and quiet while some of us work out our political agendas.  On a Nextdoor discussion thread, someone who was restricted for his political comment said, "I'm a conservative sure, but I don't call people names, lie about them or engage in personal attacks. The people who reported my post cannot say the same. I just present facts and reason."

This may not stay up on Facebook, but I've got several more social media accounts among the dwindling number of conservative friendly social media. Parlor and Realtalk are gone and others are looking feeble. Twitter did come over from the dark side, but even they are facing organized attacks.

If I didn't sufficiently skirt the line of what is now deemed acceptable speech, simply ignore this post and go your merry way. I assure you that I meant no harm to anyone's delicate sensibilities, which I seem to do without intending to. I suspect it will get worse for people like me as the generation whose parents did little to correct them as children and gave them whatever they squealed for rises in influence.

Thank God Jesus is coming. I expect it will happen before the Almighty has to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Just Sayin'

© 2023 by Tom King