CreativeDominant
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mnottertail
Which religious leaders were gone after the IRS for saying 'vote your conciense'. I call massive horseshit.
Swim in it:
This is an example of what is being said in churches:
Vote Your Conscience
“Conscience is like an alarm. It warns you when you are about to do something that you know is wrong. It does not itself determine what is right and wrong. For your conscience to work properly, it must be properly informed—that is, you must inform yourself about what is right and what is wrong. Only then will your conscience be a trusted guide.”
Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics
Yesterday a church member brought me a voter’s guide a grown child of theirs received from the Catholic church they attend. Looking it over I was struck by the importance of the paragraph quoted above. On several occasions (in Bible studies and Sunday school classes) I’ve taught the very same thing about conscience.
Conscience is an alarm. The key to right use of conscience (the alarm) is to set it correctly. For us Protestants that means setting the alarm of our conscience by the word of God.
There are big issues this election, issues about right and wrong. Voting your conscience means weighing the issues. Not all issues have the same moral weight. Some issues are more important than others.
We will probably not agree with all the policies of a given candidate. That’s okay. In a sinful and broken world we often have to choose the lesser of two evils. That’s life. But choose we must. To not vote is to contribute to the advancement of the greater evils.
How do you go about weighing moral choices? The Ten Commandments are a big help here. There seems to be an obvious order to the commandments. Respecting a person’s right to life (commandment six) comes before respecting another person’s property (commandment eight). Likewise, the family comes before material things (commandments seven and eight).
If you believe that abortion is murder, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the well-known German theologian did, then that issue will come before economic issues and issues related to marriage.
Bonhoeffer wrote,
“Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder” (Ethics, Touchstone Edition, 174).
I find it hard to resist Bonhoeffer’s logic (given my worldview shaped by God’s revelation in Jesus Christ). Accordingly I will vote for the candidate most likely to advance the cause of ending abortion. My conscience is bound. I must vote my conscience.
Likewise, if you see divine purpose in our creation as males and females it should affect the way you vote. You should want to advance marriage between one man and one woman. It should be a high priority.
Sometimes people complain that traditional Christians focus merely on these two issues (life and marriage). There may be some truth to that complaint. Christians should be active and engaged about the whole range of issues. We should care about the breadth of human need, but this doesn’t change the fact that we must weigh the relative importance of the issues. Some things are clearly of greater importance than others. Some political policies are more clearly right (or wrong) than others.
I encourage you as a believer to vote your conscience, but be sure your conscience is being formed by the word of God. God alone deserves your ultimate allegiance, and he alone defines what’s right and what’s wrong.
http://theprotestantpastor.blogspot.com/2012/08/vote-your-conscience.html?m=1
And THAT has led to this:

An Arizona-based legal group has filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding that the Internal Revenue Service divulge information about an agreement it made with an atheist organization regarding the monitoring of churches.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group based in Scottsdale filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this month.
ADF's complaint charges that the IRS has failed to honor a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Alliance regarding the details of an agreement between the tax collecting federal body and the Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation.
"As of the date of this complaint, Defendant has failed to: (i) determine whether to comply with the request; (ii) notify Plaintiff of any such determination or the reasons therefor; (iii) advise Plaintiff of the right to appeal any adverse determination; and/or (iv) produce the requested records or otherwise demonstrate that the requested records are exempt from production," reads the complaint.
"Plaintiff is being irreparably harmed by reason of Defendant's unlawful withholding of records responsive to Plaintiffs' FOIA request, and Plaintiff will continue to be irreparably harmed unless Defendant is compelled to conform its conduct to the requirements of the law."
In 2012, the FFRF sued the IRS demanding that they enforce the Johnson Amendment, a provision that strips a church or its tax exemption if it is openly involved in political activity.
Last summer, the FFRF and the IRS reached an agreement wherein the federal body would make an effort to enforce the Johnson Amendment when violations are brought to their attention. But the IRS has not disclosed the details of that agreement.
"This is a victory, and we're pleased with this development in which the IRS has proved to our satisfaction that it now has in place a protocol to enforce its own anti-electioneering provisions," said FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor in a statement.
Last November the group Judicial Watch, which is representing ADF in its complaint, filed its own FOIA lawsuit against the IRS demanding "any and all records" relating to the agency's "monitoring of churches and other tax exempt religious organizations."
Judicial Watch had filed a FOIA request earlier that year, but the IRS failed to provide them with a response. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in a statement last November that he found it "troubling that the IRS seems set to rely on a group of atheists to point them toward churches that might have criticized politicians."
"And it is even more disturbing that the IRS would violate federal law, The Freedom of Information Act, in order to keep secret its monitoring of Americans praying together in church," continued Fitton.
Regarding the April complaint brought against the IRS, ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb said in a statement that "Americans deserve to know what the IRS is up to."
"The agency's unwillingness to produce these records only furthers the perception that it makes secret deals with activists that it wishes to hide from the public," said Holcomb.
http://m.christianpost.com/news/irs-surveillance-of-churches-after-secret-agreement-with-atheists-may-go-to-court--137939/
The Internal Revenue Service said it will monitor churches and other houses of worship for electioneering in a settlement reached with an atheist group.
The settlement was reached Friday (July 18) in federal court in Madison, Wis., where the initial lawsuit was filed in 2012 by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based atheist advocacy group that claims 20,000 members nationwide.
The suit alleged the IRS routinely ignored complaints by the FFRF and others about churches promoting political candidates, issues or proposed legislation. As part of their tax-exempt status, churches and other religious groups are prohibited from engaging in partisan political activity.

At the time the suit was filed, the IRS maintained it was not ignoring complaints of electioneering, but had failed to hire an official to investigate church politicking, which it had been ordered to do in 2009 as the result of another lawsuit.
“This is a victory, and we’re pleased with this development in which the IRS has proved to our satisfaction that it now has in place a protocol to enforce its own anti-electioneering provisions,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF’s co-president.
However, under the current congressional investigation of the IRS for improperly monitoring conservative groups, there is a moratorium on all IRS investigations. Still, Gaylor said the suit may be revived if the IRS fails to police what she called “rogue political churches” after the moratorium is lifted.
But Rob Boston, director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a First Amendment watchdog group, was more reserved.
“If the FFRF has managed to wrench some concessions from the IRS over the issue of church politicking, I think that could be very helpful,” he said. “But the fact is, the IRS has been dragging its feet over this matter for some time. What is taking so long?”
Indeed, in 2009, a federal court ordered the IRS to appoint a “high-ranking official” to investigate complaints of politicking by churches and other tax-exempt organizations. A spokesman for the IRS declined to comment on the settlement, saying the IRS does not comment on litigation.

Without IRS confirmation, it is unclear if anyone has been hired.

“I see no signs of progress,” Boston continued. “If the IRS has indeed formulated a new rule for church audits and a process that could lead to a crackdown on the blatant forms of church-based politicking that we have seen, that information must, by law, be published in the Federal Register. I hope to see it there soon.”
Of particular concern to FFRF and other First Amendment advocacy organizations is “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” a project of Alliance Defending Freedom, which focuses on freedom of religion issues. On Freedom Pulpit Sunday — which was last held in June 2013 with the participation of more than 1,100 churches — pastors are encouraged to advise their congregations on political matters, such as marriage and abortion rights, and even endorse or oppose candidates.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation is widely seen as the most litigious of the dozen or so national atheist advocacy groups. It claims to have brought 40 First Amendment lawsuits since 1977 and is currently involved in legal challenges to a Ten Commandments monument, graduation prayers and a Catholic shrine on public land.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/irs-agrees-to-monitor-churches-for-electioneering/2014/07/21/99815d32-1118-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906_story.html
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