November 3, 1999
Candidate asks for church promotions
___NEW ORLEANS (RNS)--A new wrinkle in the religion and politics debate flared in the Louisiana governor's race after the William Jefferson campaign asked hundreds of pastors around the state to declare Sunday, Oct. 17, "William Jefferson for Governor Day" and solicit funds for his campaign.
___Church-state experts called it a unique and potentially dangerous merger of churches and partisan politics.
___Pastors of several African-American congregations defended the effort as a continuation of their historic role as political advisers to their congregants. They stressed money from their churches' accounts is not going to the campaign and congregants are free to give or not, as they wish.
___But several church-state experts across the political spectrum said the effort, especially the fund-gathering, raises serious legal questions and could backfire against participating churches.
___It is all the more unusual, said Oliver Thomas, a Tennessee lawyer, Baptist preacher and adviser to the National Council of Churches, because Jefferson's congressional record paints him as a careful guardian of church-state separation. Jefferson is a Democratic member of the Louisiana delegation in the House of Representatives.
___"His staff ought to know what he's asking churches to do is flatly illegal as regards their tax exemption," Thomas said.
___The Jefferson campaign said it has no intentions of putting churches in compromising positions and expects pastors to handle the matter so as to protect their churches.
___Around the state, officials with Southern Baptist, Catholic, Methodist and Episcopal churches said they could remember no candidate approaching them with such a request before. They said they saw the invitation as a dangerous entanglement they hoped their pastors would turn down.
___One New Orleans church that heeded the request for church support now is the subject of a tax complaint filed with the Internal Revenue Service by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group.
___Pastor Zebadee Bridges has acknowledged he endorsed Jefferson from the pulpit of Asia Baptist Church. He also said he told congregants they could contribute to the Jefferson campaign through envelopes placed in the church.
___"Collecting money on behalf of a candidate in church seems like a clear violation of the Internal Revenue Code," Americans United Executive Director Barry Lynn wrote in an Oct. 25 letter to the tax agency.
___Americans United rarely files complaints like the one against Asia Baptist, "but with their fund-raising on behalf of one candidate, that was so far over the line we felt we had to," said spokesman Joe Conn.
___Bridges defended his action. He said his personal endorsement of Jefferson, even if done from the pulpit, in no way amounted to the support of the church, which would require a vote of the congregation.
___By that definition, "the Asia Baptist Church has never been involved in politics since I've been there," he said.Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!