Pull quote from this story about an effort called Pulpit Freedom Sunday:

“These are not political issues,” Hice said. “There are moral issues.”

The group of pastors behind the national campaign want their freedom of speech back.

[Rev. Ron ] Johnson also said abortion is the key issue
in the campaign for Christian voters and highlighted the division
between Obama and McCain.

“If a candidate supports something that is evil and wicked from a
biblical perspective,” Johnson said, “then I have the right to call out
the wickedness, and I have the right to say this is what this person
stands for — this is wrong.”

Liberal watchdog groups listen to sermons from the pulpit - and
programming on talk radio on the non-profits, for that matter - to
pounce on anything they can claim as biased toward a particular
candidate (always the ones who stand for conservative social values and
religiously informed voices).

This campaign chose to face that threat squarely.

The effort is intended to elicit an investigation by the
Internal Revenue Service that ADF would then challenge in federal
court, with the ultimate goal of persuading the Supreme Court to
overthrow the 54-year-old ban called the Johnson Amendment that
restricts tax-exempt non-profits, such as churches, from engaging in
political campaigns.

Morally informed church leaders should be in the public square, much
less the pulpit, engaging the issues of the day free from the ‘thought
and speech police’ and a bogus rendering of the Constitution.

After all, it doesn’t require the separation of sense and state. Though that’s often not so clear.

Catholic bishops are clarifying a lot more these days…