PARTISAN PREACHMENT

TV Preacher Falwell Pushes Churches Toward Politics, But Americans United Is Fighting Back

Jerry Falwell Jr. may not be as bellicose as his televangelist father, but he still offers up some of the same warped understanding of the First Amendment.

After researching what Thomas Jefferson really believed about the separation of church and state, Falwell Jr. said recently, he discovered that the Founding Father did not believe in the "type of separation of church and state that is being promoted today." Speaking at the "Super Conference 2004" hosted by his father's Thomas Road Baptist Church, he encouraged churches to aggressively support candidates for political office, despite federal tax law barring electioneering by houses of worship.

"Thomas Road Baptist Church has never had any problem, and we've probably been more politically active than most churches," Falwell Jr. told the gathering of fundamentalist ministers and church officials. "So if you just do what we're doing, you'll be OK."

The Falwells' conference was held in late September at the TV preacher's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Scheduled only weeks before Election Day, the event drew a few hundred Southern Baptist pastors and other evangelical leaders to hear Falwell Jr. urge them to become more involved in the political fray. He did so despite clear provisions in the IRS Code that prohibit nonprofit groups, including churches, from endorsing candidates for political office or supporting their campaigns.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State says the Falwells are on the wrong track, and since the early 1990s, the church-state watchdog group has urged churches and other houses of worship not to betray their religious missions by becoming apparatuses of political parties. During the 2004 election season, Americans United has also urged pastors and religious leaders to reject appeals from Falwell Sr. and other Religious Right leaders to merge churches with political campaigns.

Falwell and other Religious Right figures are waging a relentless crusade to help President George W. Bush and other conservative Republicans achieve victory on Nov. 2. They repeatedly say that only Bush and GOP conservatives will work to outlaw reproductive rights, same-sex marriage and all other types of actions that run counter to the Religious Right's values.

In a last-ditch effort to push churches into partisan politicking, Falwell Jr. along with Mat Staver, leader of the Liberty Counsel, a Religious Right advocacy group, conducted a "politics and the pulpit" session at the Super Conference. The conference was held over a three-day period, and according to the Associated Press, drew around 2,000 ministers and other church officials.

The majority of the conference workshops and sermons focused on expanding church membership and outreach. The three back-to-back politics-and-the-pulpit sessions, however, drew fewer than 200 attendees. They were added in a transparent attempt to draw publicity following on the heels of a widely publicized complaint filed by Americans United with the Internal Revenue Service over Falwell's endorsement of Bush's re-election in a July "Falwcll Confidential." (See "Busted!" September 2004 Church & State.)

Falwell announced the sessions in an August e-mail to supporters under a headline that called "for an uprising of courageous pastors in America."

"In the progressively more hostile environment we are witnessing against Christians, I believe it is high time that conservative pastors become enlightened as to their rights in the pulpit," Falwell's message read. "I am urging pastors and church leaders to prayerfully consider attending this essential conference on the rights of pastors and churches."

Falwell also started giving what he calls "pastors' policy briefings" throughout the country to spur more church-based politicking. In a Sept. 24 e-mail to supporters, he said that within the past 10 days he had given such briefings at "15 events in Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Kansas." He claimed he would continue to sponsor such events "in most of the 'battleground' states" in the remaining days before Nov. 2.

On Sept. 22, Falwell appeared at an evangelical church near Kansas City, Mo.

According to a Kansas City Star report on the event at First Family Church in Overland Park, Falwell sounded "Republican themes opposing abortion and same-sex marriage" and urged pastors not to be afraid "to offend people who disagree with them."

Falwell said "godly men and women" must be elected to public offices in November.

"When righteous people are in authority, the people rejoice," Falwell proclaimed.

The televangelist's partisan actions come as Americans United has conducted a high-profile educational project to keep churches and other houses of worship from becoming shills of the major political parties.

In anticipation of Falwell's church politicking summit, Americans United sent a mailing to Southern Baptist denominational leaders and state conventions, warning that electioneering by churches could result in loss of their tax exemptions.