danivon wrote:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

Looks like a Press Release to me.

March 20, 2009

VIDEOTAPED REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

IN CELEBRATION OF NOWRUZ

THE PRESIDENT: Today I want to extend my very best wishes to all who are celebrating Nowruz around the world.

This holiday is both an ancient ritual and a moment of renewal, and I hope that you enjoy this special time of year with friends and family.

In particular, I would like to speak directly to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nowruz is just one part of your great and celebrated culture. Over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place.

Now, as to your alleged only focus, the pastor, I'm not at all surprised that a pastor in the USA might mention race and racism.

You complain (erroneously) that what you want to say is being censored. But what is it when you try and proscribe what a pastor says in his own church?

Doctor Fate wrote:All non-liberal pastors are restricted from talking politics. That's a given as a tax-exempt organization.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:All non-liberal pastors are restricted from talking politics. That's a given as a tax-exempt organization.

Umm, I doubt that's true. I suspect that there may be a restriction on using tax-exempt status in order to run political campaigns, but religious people are allowed to (and do) make political statements all the time. Regardless of their political stance.

After all, you are a pastor, and I'd guess you consider yourself to be non-liberal. Are you trying to say you never talk politics, ever? Not one issue comes up in a sermon or teaching or discussion that has a political angle?

Doctor Fate wrote:The actual issue is whether a man who represents himself as post-partisan and post-racial ought to be a bit more careful about where he goes to church.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:All non-liberal pastors are restricted from talking politics. That's a given as a tax-exempt organization.

Umm, I doubt that's true. I suspect that there may be a restriction on using tax-exempt status in order to run political campaigns, but religious people are allowed to (and do) make political statements all the time. Regardless of their political stance.

On Sunday, a group of 100 preachers nationwide will step into the pulpit and say the only words they're forbidden by law from speaking in a church.

They plan to use the pulpit as a platform for political endorsements, flouting a federal law that threatens churches with the loss of their nonprofit status if they stray too far into partisan politics.

While other church and nonprofit leaders cringe at the deliberate mix of the secular and the religious, participants in the annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday protest hope this act of deliberate lawbreaking will lead to a change in the law.

"For governor, I'm going to encourage people to vote for Bill Haslam," said David Shelley, pastor of Smith Springs Baptist Church here, one of seven Tennessee religious leaders who plan to take part in the pulpit protest. He also will throw his support behind a Republican congressional candidate and a Republican statehouse candidate and urge his congregation to skip the spot on the ballot where a Democratic state senator is running unopposed.

"My support for these candidates has nothing to do with their party or their skin color or any other nonbiblically related issue," he said.

Shelley knows he runs the risk of provoking the Internal Revenue Service into revoking his 60-member church's tax-exempt status. In fact, he's hoping the IRS will try. But this is the second year he's baited the IRS from the pulpit, and still the agency has not risen to the bait.

"We're not trying to get politics in the pulpit. We're trying to get (government) out of the pulpit," said Erik Stanley, spokesman for the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based nonprofit that maintains linking a church's nonprofit status to its nonpartisanship is an unconstitutional restriction on the free speech of the clergy.

"This is about a pastor's right of free speech," Stanley said.

Participants in the defense fund's pulpit protest send audio or videotape of their sermons to the IRS, but so far the agency has ignored them. The agency declined to comment on the issue, other than to share a copy of its regulations for tax-exempt religious organizations.

For the past 60 years, the IRS code has drawn a line. Places of worship can hold forums on political issues, or distribute voter guides or mobilize voter registration drives. But they cannot endorse candidates or engage in partisan political activities.

Hunter was appointed in 2004 to the storied church, historically the city's epicenter of African American political and social activism. With 19,000 registered members and a $25-million budget encompassing more than a dozen corporations, the church has been a de rigueur stop for Democratic political candidates over the years, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore and President-elect Barack Obama.

geojanes wrote:The President's a black man who goes to a black church (I guess from your description, I don't know). That makes perfect sense to me.

"[Pastor Smith] talked about how his baby grandson's gurgling is actually "talking" because he is saying 'I am here ... they tried to write me off as 3/5 a person in the Constitution, but I am here right now ... and is saying I am not going to let anybody from stopping me from being what God wants me to be.'"

geojanes wrote:

"[Pastor Smith] talked about how his baby grandson's gurgling is actually "talking" because he is saying 'I am here ... they tried to write me off as 3/5 a person in the Constitution, but I am here right now ... and is saying I am not going to let anybody from stopping me from being what God wants me to be.'"

That is not racial hatred.

geojanes wrote:

"[Pastor Smith] talked about how his baby grandson's gurgling is actually "talking" because he is saying 'I am here ... they tried to write me off as 3/5 a person in the Constitution, but I am here right now ... and is saying I am not going to let anybody from stopping me from being what God wants me to be.'"

That is not racial hatred.

“Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!… We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

“Anytime you can have the kind of hate-mongering that continues in the hallowed halls of talk radio it show that Barack’s presidency has not solved the problem,” Smith said in 2010.

“Now Jim Crow wears blue pin stripes … and he doesn’t have to wear white robes anymore, because now he can wear the protective cover of talk radio, or can get a regular news program on Fox. He doesn’t have to wear his white garments anymore.”

He continued: “Even such venerable saints as Rush Limbaugh know the lines they are not to cross. But any of their constituency can hear clear the same vile filth spewing forth in their statements that was once the purview of Robert Shelton and members of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Council.”

danivon wrote:I still doubt that there are not issues that come up in church that have a political aspect as well as a religious or community one. Indeed, I'd be shocked if a church had nothing whatsoever to say about things going on outside its doors. A little irrelevant, perhaps? Nothing wrong with that.

But churches are not forced to be registered as non-profit, and so are not forced to abstain from overt political activity like urging people to vote for one person or party.

You are playing the victim card again.

GMTom wrote: Nowwwwww, if Steve can find several more such sermons, he can go with that, but this lone "incident" too much is being made of this.

Doctor Fate wrote:

geojanes wrote:

"[Pastor Smith] talked about how his baby grandson's gurgling is actually "talking" because he is saying 'I am here ... they tried to write me off as 3/5 a person in the Constitution, but I am here right now ... and is saying I am not going to let anybody from stopping me from being what God wants me to be.'"

That is not racial hatred.

It ain't racial love.