Rubbing the Baptists' Fur

[arisbe]

"I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

"The bottom line is, when a church does it, it's nonpartisan and appropriate. When a campaign does it, it's partisan and inappropriate," he said. "I suspect that this will rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way."

Comments

[contentlove.livejournal.com]

I love it. I hope a lot of fur is ruffled, and the memory of that sticks until November. Go, team, go!

[lilburne.livejournal.com]

As for myself, I hope that religious groups, including houses of worship, participate in the political process to the extent that their principles require it, without worrying about the unconstitutional, and rarely-enforced, law that allows the IRS to censor religious free speech.

For example: I notice that a bunch of left-wing religious groups have set up an outfit called the Faithful Citizenship Project (http://www.nicwj.org/pages/issues.FCP.html), which involves various left-wing denominations and seeks to register people to vote. If you think that this is merely a nonpartisan outfit, bear in mind that the effort is sponsored by the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.

It appears that there’s a parallel campaign called Faithful Democracy (http://www.faithfuldemocracy.org/), which also focuses on registering new voters in traditionally leftist congregations: Quakers, Epicsopelians, Unitarian Universalists, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church USA and other "progressive" religious outfits.

Does Faithful Democracy have a partisan purpose? Consider this item on the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Web site, explaining the UUA’s participation in Faithful Democracy (http://www.uua.org/news/2004/voting/). There’s an interesting quotation from UUA President William Sinkford:

"There is work to be done. I'm not talking about simply affirming the importance of voting, nor of simply promising to vote ourselves. I'm talking about mobilizing to get out there and work to prevent the travesty of the last election from recurring. We want to see this nation's promise of democracy restored, and to do what we can to ensure that everyone's vote gets counted."

Let’s see . . . preventing a repeat of the 2000 Presidential election, which was a “travesty.” Nothing partisan about that!

I looked up “Faithful Democracy” and “Faithful Citizenship Project” on the search engine of Americans United For Church and State. Guess how many hits I got? None! But I’m sure Americans United would *never* turn a blind eye to outfits like Faithful Democracy just because it agrees with their partisan orientation!