c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For too long, the U.S. government has muzzled an entire category of its citizens because of their common occupation.

This restriction is not part of the U.S. Constitution. It’s a tax law enacted through a legislative maneuver more than 50 years ago by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to silence his political enemies. And incredibly, it’s been used to restrict the First Amendment rights of America’s preachers, priests, rabbis and clerics. At a time when Americans rely on the wisdom and judgment of their religious leaders more than ever before, this restriction is morally indefensible _ and it’s bad public policy.

Under current federal law, religious leaders risk putting the tax-exempt status of their houses of worship at risk if they endorse political candidates from their pulpits. The good news is that there’s a solution to this injustice. It’s called House Resolution 235, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act. This vital legislation would return the First Amendment protection of free speech back to America’s pulpits.

Our founding fathers clearly meant religious faith to be an integral part of public life. Because of the foundation of faith they set for us, we have chaplains in the military, in Congress and in federal prisons. Art and inscriptions on our federal buildings in Washington speak of a Christian heritage, as do the prayers heard at the start of cabinet meetings, sessions of Congress and even a Secret Service detail’s day.

If that doesn’t square with something you were taught about our government, it’s because you were taught incorrectly. The average man or woman will tell you the Constitution requires a separation of church and state. It has the ring of truth because it’s been repeated so often. But it is false. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about the separation of church and state. In fact, the only national constitution that has ever intentionally separated church and state is that of the failed Soviet Union.

King George had tried to force the English state church on the American colonies, so the men who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights wanted to make sure a state church could never be forced upon the people. That’s why the First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion … ”

Clearly, the founding fathers wanted the citizens and states to be as religious as they wanted to be. When they were in power, they printed Bibles, called the nation to prayer and funded missionaries to the Indians. When George Washington was president, he addressed Dutch Reformed, Protestant Dutch, German Lutheran, United Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, German Reformed, Episcopal, Congregational, Quaker, United Brethren, Universalist and Jewish meetings. The Presbyterian Church praised him as a “steady, uniform, avowed friend of the Christian religion.” And during the administrations of all the early presidents, federal buildings in Washington were used as churches on Sundays.

So how did the plain intent of our founding fathers become the justification for a secular society? It traces back to a 1947 case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Everson v. Board of Education. The issue was simple: A school district in New Jersey had reimbursed parents for transporting their children to religious schools. Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo L. Black asserted that the First Amendment erected “a wall of separation between church and State” which “must be kept high and impregnable.”

From this case, over the years, has come the removal of the Ten Commandments from state buildings, the barring of prayer from public schools, the challenging of Bible clubs and religious instruction on state school campuses, and the whole trend toward protecting our government from religious influence. Today, instead of separation of church and state, we have suppression of the church by the state.

But that trend can be reversed, and HR 235 is an important step toward achieving that vital goal. Returning First Amendment protection to our nation’s clergy is critical to reversing our nation’s precipitous moral decline.

MO/RR END RNS

(The Rev. Rod Parsley is senior pastor of World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio. He also is founder and president of the Center for Moral Clarity and the author of “Silent No More.”)

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a photo of Parsley to accompany this story.