Politically liberal organizations warn church-goers of what they characterize as a sinister plot by fundamentalists to flaunt the U.S. Constitution. This sounds very like what Hillary Clinton famously termed “a vast rightwing conspiracy.” This “plot” took place yesterday. Did you notice all over America fundamentalist preachers thundered from their pulpits, instructing the faithful to vote for John McCain? I’m required to file my copy earlier but I predict it never happened.

What has been called “the Pulpit Initiative” or “Pulpit Freedom” is, in fact, a challenge to all preachers and churches to address public issues boldly according to the teachings of their churches.

I learned of the event at my deadline from the liberal Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Freedom that opposes the event rather than from the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which promotes it. The Joint Committee warned me, but if the ADF had appealed to me, I missed it.

I had long ago learned I cannot trust the Joint Committee to be honest or, at least, accurate. What is accuses ADF of saying, it did not say. The Committee’s executive director J. Brent Walker asserted: “An effort to recruit dozens of pastors to endorse political candidates from the pulpits on Sept. 28 is a misguided idea and a brazen attempt to blend the worship of God with electoral politics.” I searched for such a statement and found not anything like it but things distinctly different from it.

What I found from ADF is a declarative, not an imperative, statement: “Churches and pastors have a constitutional right to speak, truthfully from the pulpit—even on candidates and voting—without fearing loss of their tax exemption .”

I agree that many pastors, priests, and rabbis have fallen into the misunderstanding that the prohibition of all political speech from religious organizations or by clergy individually is somewhere in the Constitution. It is not.

The fact is that for the first 178 years of our nation, pulpit declarations were as American as the Fourth of July. In point of fact, colonial preaching about independence made a major contribution to our national independence. This preaching also included appeals for loyalty to Britain. Preachers had enjoyed this freedom from before the beginning.

It took Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson to introduce what came to be known as the Johnson Amendment to IRS Code 501(c)3 in 1954. This was adopted by the Congress without the usual staff analysis or committee and floor debate. On the surface it appeared to be a harmless piece of routine legislation by the Senate’s ruthless arm-twister. After all, none could recall a preacher endorsing a man for the presidency, anyway.

So, rather than being a constitutional prohibition, it is nothing more than an IRS regulation but five decades old.

ADF does not encourage pastors to endorse candidates, but wants them to have freedom to apply biblical teaching and church theology to the election of public officials.

Sponsors of the initiative put it this way: “Our goal is simply to restore a right pastors have always had since the birth of our country, one that was ripped away only in the last few decades. Our goal is not to make churches political or encourage pastors to advocate one particular point of view.”

Lest the public misconstrues, or such as the Joint Committee misrepresents this, they clarify: “What we are saying — all we’re saying — is that what a pastor does and does not talk about is an issue to be worked out between himself and his congregation. Pastors should have the freedom to teach the entire counsel of God’s Word without government intrusion.”

Tax exempt status was not given to religious bodies in agreed exchange for being silent about politics. They already had this status, but a post-constitution rule imposed a new restriction. Historically, churches have been exempt for good reasons. One is to avoid limiting the free exercise of religion, keeping politics out of religion. Another is to compensate churches for their public services, saving taxes that would otherwise be necessary for government to provide them.

If current IRS regulation does not violate the “free exercise” (of religion) clause of the Constitution, it has come so to be applied by IRS and intimidates religious leaders. Moreover, there is no end to how far this intrusion might yet proceed.

Despite ADF’s measured restraint, I have no doubt yesterday some preachers did specifically endorse particular candidates and they did so in defiance of IRS. But, then, is this not the “civil disobedience for the sake of conscience” so highly praised by liberals?

I have already written here I consider it unwise for a pastor to endorse any person for any public office. Nonetheless, I feel there must be the freedom to speak his or her conscience to uphold the constitutional provision of the free exercise of religion as well as freedom of speech.

Whatever they did yesterday, let our preachers “speak the truth in love”—even about politics. Someone has to.