Every election season, various groups try to intimidate churches and pastors to be silent on the great social and moral issues of our time. But churches and pastors have a God-given right—protected by our Constitution—to speak to the issues of our day and to be, as Scripture commands, the “salt and light” for our culture. Recently, we have seen organizations such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State send letters to churches in an apparent effort to suppress the speech of churches and pastors on critical social issues. Churches are implicitly or even directly threatened with the loss of their tax-exempt status if they don’t “toe the IRS line” as to permissible speech. Some groups go so far as to file complaints with the IRS, occasionally leading to IRS investigations. The resulting (although very remote) chance that a church could lose its taxexempt status is used to silence Christians inside their own churches. (read more)