“A conservative legal-advocacy group is enlisting ministers to use their pulpits to preach about election candidates this September, defying a tax law that bars churches from engaging politics.”

—The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2008

That Journal article was tucked away on Page 5A of Friday’s editions, but if a provincial North Texas newspaper may be allowed to hazard a guess, the matter will be on front pages all across the country before the issue is decided.

It seems that the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative, nonprofit group in Scottsdale, Ariz., is spoiling for a fight with the federal Internal Revenue Service over a 54-year-old law that prohibits churches from endorsing political candidates less they face fines or loss of their tax-exempt status. The ADF is encouraging clergymen to deliver just such proscribed sermons on Sept. 28 this year, just weeks before the November general election, in hopes that complaints will be filed with the IRS and the ADF can attack the law in court as unconstitutional.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an organization that is generally opposed to any position the ADF takes, has vowed to pick up the gauntlet and file complaints against any church and pastor that does as the ADF requests.

Thus, we are apt to see a full-fledged court fight on the issue this fall, just as a presidential campaign is roaring to a close. The timing of the ADF’s request in the home stretch of a hotly contested presidential campaign, strongly suggests that it is a typical “silly season” strategy, a last-minute ton of argle-bargle dumped into a campaign to obscure more substantive issues.

But timing aside, the issue itself is not a trivial one, and the outcome could have political and financial repercussions from storefront churches in Denton to cathedrals in Washington, D.C.

Back in 1954, when the avuncular Dwight Eisenhower was president, most churches left politics strictly alone, and most of the country was absolutely comfortable with that. The IRS was simply mirroring the temper of the times when amending its codes to bar political endorsements by churches or pastors who wished to maintain their tax-exempt status. “Religion and politics don’t mix,” was the accepted attitude of the day.

That began to change with the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement in the late ’50s, when many pastors began taking stands on that issue from their pulpits. That did not violate the IRS dictum — opinions on issues weren’t proscribed, just endorsement of candidates. But as civil rights began to shape the debates in individual political campaigns, many clergymen, particularly in southern churches, began to speak out either for or against certain candidates.

Even then, the protests were few, and seemed to be half-hearted, as did the IRS’s enforcement of the law. There were a few complaints filed, but the general practice seemed to be on the order of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Politicos seemed to be afraid that if they ratted on your preacher, you might rat on theirs.

Then came the emergence of the Religious Right, and the issue has been simmering ever since. The ADF’s gambit might bring it to a boil.

This, of course, will be a First Amendment fight, with both free speech and religious establishment provisions in play. We are not in the habit of predicting how judges will rule, but given the current makeup of our Supreme Court, the Alliance Defense Fund may have reason to feel optimistic.