BORN 1955-AGE 61?
ATHEIST ACTIVIST GROUP SUES TRUMP OVER ORDER ALLOWING ELECTIONEERING FROM PULPIT
BY HEATHER CLARK
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
MADISON, Wisc. — A prominent professing
atheist organization has filed suit against President Donald Trump over
his religious freedom executive order, which directs the IRS not to
enforce the federal Johnson Amendment, a law passed in 1954 that
prohibits electioneering (favoring or disfavoring any political
candidate) from the pulpit.
The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)
asserts that Trump’s order is unfair because it only applies to
religious nonprofits and not secular organizations.
“Trump is communicating to churches that his administration
will not enforce the Johnson Amendment,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie
Gaylor said in a statement. “The IRS needs clear direction that it must
enforce the law equally.”
As previously reported,
Trump signed the order on Thursday—the National Day of Prayer—in the
White House rose garden in front of a diverse interfaith audience
including evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, Muslims and Sikhs.
“No one should be censoring sermons or targeting pastors,”
he declared during his speech. “America has a rich tradition of social
change beginning in our pews and our pulpits. … [And] we must never
infringe on the noble tradition of change from the church and progress
from the pew.”
“Under my administration, free speech does not end at the
steps of a cathedral or synagogue, or any other house of worship,” Trump
proclaimed. “We are giving churches their voices back. We are giving
them back in the highest form.”
However, FFRF says that Trump lacks the constitutional
authority to “selectively veto a legitimate statute” signed into law
more than 50 years ago, and asserts that the president is in violation
of the Fourteenth Amendment in that his order is not applied equally to
both religious and secular groups.
“The intended policy of selective non-enforcement of
electioneering restrictions against churches and other religious
organizations was designed and intended for the purpose of advancing the
interests of churches and religious organizations above the interests
of similarly situated nonreligious organizations, by allowing the former
to engage in electioneering activities while the latter cannot,” its
lawsuit contends.
The group also argues that the order chills FFRF’s First
Amendment right to free speech while allowing religious entities to
speak freely during election season.
It therefore is asking that the court declare Trump’s
executive order unconstitutional, being a violation of the Take Care
Clause requiring that presidents “take care that the laws be faithfully
executed,” as well as an ultra vires act flouting the separation of
powers.
The U.S. Department of Justice is vowing to defend the
order, however, which it believes to be in line with the First
Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.
“We will vigorously defend the order and the exercise of
religious freedom in America,” spokesman Ian Prior told the Chicago
Tribune on Friday.
According to historical documents, Election Day sermons were
common in early America, beginning in the days of the Puritans and
continuing after the official founding of the nation.
“The ancient advice dictated to Moses, by the priest of
Midian, and approved of God, is admirably calculated, civil fathers, for
your direction on this occasion. Tis a significant compendium of the
qualifications of the persons whom you ought to favor with your
suffrages: ‘Thou shalt provide out of all the people, able men, such as
fear God, men of truth, and hating covetousness, and place such over
them,'” Gad Hitchcock
preached in 1774, pointing to Exodus 18:21.
“[A]bove all, suffer me to remind you that you act for God,
and under his inspection, by whose providence this trust is committed to
you, and that you must one day give an account to Him whose eyes are as
a flame of fire, of the motives of your conduct,” he declared.
