In case you are not up to speed with this initiative, here’s a brief summary. Pulpit Freedom Sunday was started in 2008 by Alliance Defending Freedom with an aim of challenging the unconstitutional Johnson Amendment that has been inserted into the IRS code. This amendment was passed in an attempt to silence pastors from speaking out on issues deemed political. The IRS and opponents of free speech have since used this initiative to intimidate pastors into silence on critical issues. Pulpit Freedom Sunday is ADF’s attempt to end this unconstitutional amendment by having it challenged all the way to the Supreme Court.
Now, here is what Pulpit Freedom Sunday is not. It is NOT a time to get up and badly about politicians. Plenty of pundits and other sources do that, America doesn’t need pastor’s doing the same. Besides, it’s not biblical slander or speak ill or those in authority; or anyone for that matter. It is NOT a time to preach a “political” sermon. The pulpit is not a place to wax eloquent with your thoughts on taxes, gun rights, or foreign policy.
What Pulpit Freedom Sunday is, is a time to preach a sermon on a biblical, moral issue like marriage. Yes, marriage has been politicized, but that does not change the fact that it is a biblical moral issue and should be taught from Scripture in its fullness. While groups like FFRF and AU try and remove the voices of pastor’s from the discussion surrounding biblical moral issues like marriage and life, the truth is that we need those voices speaking loud and clear. My encouragement to every pastor is to take a Sunday in June or July and be part of this movement to stand for the biblical principles our nation was founded upon. America, now more than ever, needs men of God that are more concerned with what God thinks than what man or the government thinks. If we don’t speak now, we can’t complain when our right to speak is taken away. Click here to learn more.
About Nathan Cherry
Nathan Cherry is the chief editor and blogger for the Engage Family Minute blog, the official blog of the FPCWV. He serves also as the Regional Development Coordinator as a liaison to the pastor's of West Virginia. He is a pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-religious freedom conservative. He is also a husband, father, pastor, author, musician, and follower of Jesus Christ.
Let’s talk a little about prayer. The government wants us all to believe that prayer has no place in the public arena. The Supreme Court decided to remove prayer from our public schools. Various groups are seeking to remove prayer from opening town council meetings or sporting events. All in all, some individuals just want to keep prayer out of the public sector as a tragic homage to a nonexistent “separation of church and state.” (Go ahead; see if you can find it in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or Declaration of Independence.)
I was privileged to spend last week in Washington, D.C. with president’s of Family Policy Councils and pastors from around the country as part of the Family Research Council’s annual Watchmen on the Wall conference (Every pastor should be at this event.) This event is designed to show pastors the importance of being informed and involved on a local and state level with the critical issues of life, marriage, and religious freedom.
I recently had a conversation with a very politically involved and insightful friend on the topic of marriage. He’s a libertarian and I wanted to try and understand his point of view. I won’t profess to be an expert on the libertarian viewpoint of marriage at this time, but I found our conversation interesting. Just days after this thought-provoking conversation articles surfaced that seemed to ask many of the same questions he did, and make many of the same points.
Interesting, isn’t it, that less than two years ago it was the belief of our leading politicians that they would be unelectable if they were publicly in favor of “gay marriage”. In fact, Barack Obama, in running for his first term as a presidential candidate, danced around the issue with great care, proclaiming he was in favor of civil unions only, and would never say he was in favor of homosexual marriage. Of course, as we know, that all changed following the announcement first made by Vice President Joe Biden as he was sent out to test the winds of public opinion for the POTUS, who then within a few days afterwards came out openly in favor of gay marriage. President Obama said his thinking had “evolved”. (Keep that word in mind, by the way.) That in turn, opened up the financial flood gates for his presidential campaign from the homosexual community, and the rest is now well-known history.
Christians are making it harder for people living in open rebellion of God to find true repentance of their sin and enter into a relationship with Jesus. Not all Christians, just those that teach it’s possible to be a practicing, proud homosexual and a Christian at the same time. Such distorted and false teaching is only convoluting an already tense discussion while simultaneously leading many people astray; and they are harming the discussion.
Right now the Supreme Court has heard arguments on behalf of two cases: Perry v. Hollingsworth, and Windsor v. United States. The first deals with California’s Prop 8 ballot measure wherein voters determined marriage to be the union of one man and one woman. The court is seeking to determine whether such a measure is constitutional or not; the obvious implication is that if the court finds Prop 8 unconstitutional then it will effectively nullify every other state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
