Faith-In-Action

“We the People of Faith” must recruit and mobilize like-minded parishioners within our communities of faith to have them exercise their civic responsibilities and become more involved in the political process. Only by electing political candidates who believe in limited government, free markets, and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms can we protect our constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms and stop the government enabled assault on our religions and beliefs.

If “We the People of Faith” do not engage in our civic responsibilities at this time, we will witness an accelerated decline of religion within our country as religion is replaced by an omnipotent socialist government. Evidence of this abounds in socialist Europe where churches are empty. Even the Catholic Church appears to have come to the realization of the importance of civic involvement. In late 2007, the Catholic Bishops started a “Faithful Citizenship” initiative as a call to political responsibility. The Bishops state that: “In the Catholic Tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation”. Pope Benedict XVI calls political activity, “social charity”.

At minimum, people-of-faith must address the “Social Justice” groups in their congregations and their unfounded economic arguments. The left is now infiltrating churches in an effort to organize and mobilize the religious base against the Tea Party. We must counter them with specific, common-sense economic principles. THE CHURCH AND THE MARKET, by Thomas Woods, Jr., is one of the best books to explain these economic principles, many of which we share on the “Economic Principles” tab on our website. Discussed topics include: Wealth Creation & Standard of Living, Prices/ Profits/ Wages, The Socialist Nanny State, and Social Justice.

History has shown that religious leaders cannot be counted on to lead this defense. Their behaviors and actions have shown that they are more concerned about preservation of power and collection-basket receipts. Some even aspire for a more socialistic government with a hope of finally achieving their communist leaning, utopian vision of “social justice”. This belief appears quite prevalent within the Catholic Church, despite Pope John Paul II writings on economic initiative, which states: “It is the right which is important not only for the individual but also for the common good. Experience shows us that the denial of this right, or its limitation in the name of an alleged ‘equality’ of everyone in society, diminishes, or in practice absolutely destroys, the spirit of initiative, that is to say the creative subjectivity of the citizen. Reason and experience make clear that the means to achieve the well-being of all members of society is not through central planning by the state, but instead through political and economic freedoms.”

Many church leaders cite the IRS restrictions on churches as an excuse for lack of political involvement. This argument is flawed, since only candidate endorsements are prohibited. Specifically, churches, like other organizations that are exempt from federal income tax under 501(c)(3), may not “participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” This restriction was introduced in 1954 by the then-Senate Minority Leader, Lyndon Johnson as a floor amendment to an overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code in an apparent retribution to charities who had opposed his election in 1948. Church leaders have also been compliant in allowing the government’s enabled and funded assault on religion in the “public square”. It is incomprehensible that organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who file lawsuits to eliminate religion and morality from the “public square”, have their legal fees reimbursed by the government under provisions of the 1976 Civil Rights Attorneys Fee Act, as civil right has moved well beyond the original context of race.

“We the People of Faith” call to action is nicely captured by A.D. Lindsay in his classic 1943 study, The Modern Democratic State. Through the centuries, writes Lindsay, the Church as a distinct society, for all its frequent corruptions, provided a corrective and challenge to the ambitions of the state. The following passage deserves quotation at length: “It was perhaps equally important that the existence and prestige of the Church prevented society from being totalitarian, prevented the omnicompetent state, and preserved liberty in the only way that liberty can be preserved, by maintaining in society an organization which could stand up against the state.”