Mr. William J. Federer, a Missourian, is one of the most cheerful
people I have met. Despite this, Bill Federer’s writing always has a
serious message. His latest book is entitled Endangered Speeches. In
it, he traces the effort during the 20th Century to assure that
preachers were not involved in the political process. Federer points
out that prior to 1913 preachers never gave the Internal Revenue
Service or their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status a thought because there
was no mechanism which applied to them. From 1913 until 1954, most
preachers simply ignored the IRS, as there was no reason for them to
be concerned.

In 1954, President Lyndon B. Johnson, running for re-election, heard
that a large group of Texas preachers would oppose him. So he hastily
had Congress enact a law which forbade churches from involvement in
politics. That was enough to silence preachers and LBJ was re-elected
comfortably.

One might think that LBJ would have been content to leave well enough
alone. However, when he found out that the American Enterprise
Institute (AEI) had assisted Senator Barry M. Goldwater’s candidacy he
scared William Broody, Sr. into political uselessness so that AEI
required years to recover.

Meanwhile, the IRS, which traditionally had been reluctant to
interfere with churches, this year cracked the whip so that most
pastors were afraid of losing their church’s loss of tax-exempt status
and thereby stayed out of the 2008 elections even though there were
moral issues on many state ballots.

Given the incoming presidential administration’s announced effort to
reinstate the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which some suggest should
be renamed the “Censorship Doctrine,” this attack upon churches is
frightening. Senator A. Mitchell (Mitch) McConnell, Jr. (R-KY) said he
immediately would file litigation contending that reinstatement of the
Fairness Doctrine constituted unconstitutional censorship and an
abridgement of our First Amendment rights. However, such a lawsuit
likely would take two years to work its way through the courts. There
is no question that our First Amendment is under assault. Read
Federer’s book to understand how American churches fit into the
political process. Then gear up for the fight on the re-christened
Censorship Doctrine and the Internet.

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