In 2017,
Trump ended the “Johnson Amendment” that restricted political speech from the
pulpit of US churches. He did it with an Executive Order to Treasury to “not
enforce” that part of the IRS Code. The Johnson Amendment was an amendment to
IRS Code Section 501c3 that banned non-profits from engaging in partisan
political activities. Unless the Code is actually corrected by the Congress,
the ban will be subject to change back when Trump leaves office.
But there
is no evidence that churches have taken advantage of this restoration of their
free speech.
Many
churches have members who are split between being Conservative and Liberal and
Pastors don’t want to offend anyone, so they stick to their doctrine and stay
away from other topics.
Before
the 1960s, churches were much more conservative in their leanings and religion
played a major role in the popular culture in the US in movies, radio and TV.
Everson
v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1
(1947) was a landmark decision of
the United States Supreme Court which applied the Establishment
Clause in the country's Bill of Rights to State law.
Prior to this decision the First Amendment words,
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion" imposed limits only on the federal government, while many
states continued to grant certain religious denominations legislative or effective privileges.
The
Everson decision was a misinterpretation of the Constitution and was an act of
sabotage and marked the beginning of the US war on Christianity. The US
Congress has failed to correct this error since 1947.
Karl Marx
said ‘religion is the opium of the people” and the Soviet Union banned religion
in 1918.
After the
devastation of World War I and World War II, Europe seemed to abandon its
churches.
There is
little support globally for religion and the churches all seem to take actions
that reflect their lack of usefulness and accelerate their decline.
To become
useful, churches need to return to “Applied Christianity”, where they describe
how to live a Christian life in the world we have today. Churches need to help
members in all decisions they make and only endorse things that are true, like
the laws of economics and the family as the valid unit of society and
fact-based history. Matthew 7 15:20 says we will know false prophets by the
fruit they produce. It’s time for churches to begin to identify popular culture
themes that are false and dangerous.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Loud AMEN! from the choir.
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