Clerics Resist Bush Strategy to Seek Aid of Churchgoers
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By Alexandra Alter
Miami Herald
Sunday 18 July 2004
A 22-point plan by the Bush-Cheney campaign to marshal support from churchgoers has met resistance from some religious leaders.
As the Bush-Cheney campaign mounts an offensive to solidify a religious base for the November election, the Episcopal bishop of Southeast Florida has joined a chorus of religious leaders denouncing the campaign's plan to obtain church directories for electioneering purposes.
To Bishop Leo Frade, the Bush-Cheney strategy violates the separation of church and state.
"Handing over names for partisan politics to any party would be an infraction of our tax-exempt status as a religious institution," said Frade, who heads 82 Episcopal churches in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe and Martin counties.
Frade, who was born in Cuba and came to the United States in 1960 as a college student, went further in a July 2 diocesan letter.
"I'm alarmed by any suggestion of providing the names of church members to any particular political group," he wrote. "I saw this request made by Fidel Castro at the beginning of his regime, and his persecution of churches that refused."
Frade's warning echoes other religious leaders who have decried the campaign's detailed 22-step program, outlined in a document given to thousands of campaign volunteers across the country. The memo lists 22 duties for "coalition coordinators," including:
By July 15, 'Host a coffee/pot luck dinner/`Party for the President' with church members."
By July 31, "Send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney '04 headquarters or give to a BC04 Field Rep."
By Aug. 15,"Recruit 5 more people in your church to volunteer for the Bush Cheney campaign."
Cries of Protest
Cries of protests are coming not just from mainline churches and civil liberties groups. Christian evangelical leaders say such activities violate the trust of congregations and could jeopardize churches' tax-exempt status.
"I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way," Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said recently in a statement, noting that such efforts would likely 'rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way."
The Bush-Cheney campaign said last week that it would move ahead, despite the backlash.
"Of course we're moving forward," said Reed Dickens, a campaign spokesman. "The social conservatives and the evangelicals are an incredibly valuable and active part of our grass-roots base. Everything we're doing is in full compliance with the law."
Dickens said the campaign is enlisting volunteers, not pastors. But religious and civil liberties groups have cautioned congregations against cooperating.
Rabbi Mitchell Chefitz of Miami's Temple Israel said his congregation had been warned against becoming entangled in partisan politics by the American Jewish Committee, a national Jewish organization, which sent a letter protesting electioneering in houses of worship to the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign on June 4.
"Temple Israel is very careful not to take sides on behalf of any particular parties," Chefitz said. "If the candidates are looking to the churches for mailing lists and for the organizing space, then it confuses the separation between church and state."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has not issued a statement on the campaign document.
Threat to IRS Status
The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a watchdog group in Washington, said the Bush campaign is inviting churches to endanger their Internal Revenue Service status by appearing to endorse a particular candidate. "The Bush-Cheney efforts to involve churches in partisan politics are unparalleled in history," Lynn said. "I would hope that there's not one pastor in this country who would cooperate."
Scholars say that while the campaign appears to be overreaching, enlisting voters in churches is nothing new. "Churches are magnets for politicians during the election cycle," said Melissa Rogers, visiting professor of religion and public life at Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C. "They know that they can find a captive audience and one that is likely to go to the polls and vote."
Both parties have sought endorsements from pastors and addressed church audiences, Rogers said, noting that Democratic candidates traditionally addressed black congregations, which tend to vote Democratic.
"This had been standard operating procedure in African-American churches for quite some time," said Luis Lugo, director of the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. "It is fairly new in conservative white evangelical churches."
Dos and Don'ts
Churches can hold voter registration drives, issue nonpartisan voting guides and even invite politicians to speak, provided they offer equal access to both candidates - all without risking their tax-exempt status.
But endorsing a particular candidate or raising money for a campaign poses a clear violation of IRS regulations, said John Whitehead, president and lead attorney of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization that recently issued guidelines on churches and political involvement.
While the Bush-Cheney document doesn't mention endorsements or fundraising, it could lead to a violation if volunteers use church property or funds in support of political activity, said Milton Cerny, a tax lawyer in Washington and former IRS agent.
Legal risks aside, most churches don't want to politicize their houses of worship, Rogers said: "They don't want to create partisan division, because that can tear a church apart."
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