Endorsements will challenge law
The socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to endorse political candidates from their pulpits Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.
The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would challenge in federal court. The goal is to persuade the Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on such endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.
An opposing group of Christian and Jewish clergy will petition the IRS today to stop the protest, calling the ADF’s “Pulpit Initiative” an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state.
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