c. 1999 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ A new wrinkle in the religion and politics debate flared in the Louisiana governor’s race this week 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.

The other three major gubernatorial candidates _ Gov. M.J.”Mike”Foster, state Sen. Tom Greene and Baton Rouge businessman Phil Preis _ said they had not asked church congregations to donate to their campaigns.

Churches are as free as individuals to speak out directly on any subject. But as religious organizations they risk forfeiting their exemptions from income, property and other taxes if they directly engage in partisan political activity.

Moreover, said Thomas,”their timing couldn’t be worse.””In denying the Christian Coalition a tax exemption and imposing fines on (the Rev. Jimmy) Swaggart and (the Rev. Jerry) Falwell for their political activity, the IRS has served notice it will go after ministries they feel have gone over the political line,”Thomas said.

Jefferson’s invitation, dated Oct. 7 under the Jefferson campaign letterhead, told recipients that”many ministers across our state are helping us to raise funds for our campaign for governor by asking the members of their congregations to contribute whatever they can. “I am asking you to join in this effort by setting aside the second or third Sunday of the month of October as `William Jefferson for Governor Day”in your church to solicit funds for our campaign. “We have prepared envelopes to use for this purpose which will arrive shortly.” The Rev. C.S. Gordon, pastor of New Zion Baptist Church, said he would speak up for Jefferson from his pulpit Sunday and direct congregants’ attention to the envelopes, which the campaign sent to his church late this week. “They’ll be out there for those who want them, but it’ll be strictly voluntary,”he said.

The Rev. Zebadee Bridges, an old friend of Jefferson’s and pastor of Asia Baptist Church, said he spoke up for Jefferson last week and directed congregants to the envelopes. “Most people didn’t put in but a dollar or so,”he said.”We probably collected only $200.” But there was a psychological ploy at work too, he said. “People who give a dollar will vote,”said Bridges.”And that’s what we’re trying to do, too, get people out to vote.” It was not clear what denominations, if any, were targeted or how many letters went out. “We certainly don’t mean to put any churches in harm’s way,”a Jefferson campaign spokesman said.”I don’t know, maybe we should’ve been more sensitive to certain concerns, but it just didn’t come up.” He said the campaign expected pastors that took up the invitation would do so in a way that protected their churches.

But it was not clear how that could be done.

Even if pastors merely directed congregants’ attention to the envelopes on the occasion of a worship service,”I think you can fairly attribute that to the church,”said Melissa Rogers, a lawyer with the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, a Washington, D.C.-based religious liberty agency.”I’d urge churches not to accept this invitation for this reason.” 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.

Many African-American pastors, however, and especially Baptist pastors who are autonomous in their own pulpits, view themselves as successors to giant figures who provided their communities more than spiritual leadership in the century after the death of slavery.

As leaders of virtually the only black institution Jim Crow laws permitted to flourish, black pastors became civic and social leaders. They nourished the civil rights movement in the cradle of their pulpits, where preaching the gospel led naturally to voter registration drives.”In the African-American church we’ve always supported candidates to some degree, because historically African-Americans have depended on a pastor to lead them on the direction they need to go,”said Bishop Paul Morton of Greater St. Stephen. Morton said he would have assisted in the solicitation if asked, but would have considered carefully how best to safeguard his church. “The churches have always been involved in doing something political,”Bridges said.”This is the first black congressman we’ve had in the state of Louisiana,”he added, referring to Jefferson.”We’ve never elected a black governor; might never have one. … But if churches don’t help people get together to elect somebody, we’ll never have one.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)”I’d put it in its historical context,”said Jay Lintner, a public policy expert at the National Council of Churches.”Black churches have been blurring this line for some time. But they have not had the political clout that other parts of the religious community have had”and thus have not drawn the attention of the IRS, he said. “But when the religious right began developing real muscle in the early 1980s, operating at power levels neither had approached, they were so blatant they forced IRS”into challenging their tax exemption, Lintner said.

As African-American churches gather more political clout,”if they start emulating the more blatant tactics of the religious right and the Christian Coalition right and religious coalition, then at some point they’re going to attract the ire of the IRS,”he said.”I think this is a crossing of that line.”

DEA END NOLAN/GRACE