Bush re-election intrusion into churches disturbs Land
- Jun 15, 2004
ERLC President Richard Land has expressed his disagreement with an effort by President Bush’s re-election campaign to mobilize churches. That effort includes an attempt to gain possession of the membership directories of churches.
Bush-Cheney ’04 has sent coalition coordinators a sheet instructing them to give their church directories to the campaign, talk to church groups about the re-election effort and distribute “Voter Guides” in the churches. The instructions consist of 22 responsibilities and the deadlines by which they should be completed prior to the Nov. 2 election.
“I’m appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way,” Land said. “It’s one thing for the church to have a voter registration drive, to seek to inform church members on public policy issues, to encourage church members to fulfill their Christian duty and vote, and to encourage them to vote their values, beliefs and convictions. It’s another thing entirely for a partisan campaign to ask church members to bring in church directories for use as contact lists by the campaign and to seek to come into the church and do a voter registration drive and distribute campaign literature.”
The request for church directories to be given to the campaign disturbed him the most, Land said. If he were a pastor, Land said, he would tell members from the pulpit that for them to give their directories to a campaign is a “violation of the trust of your fellow church members and of the body collectively, just as it would be inappropriate to share it with a marketing group.”
Land supports church involvement in voter registration and education. The ERLC is promoting its own effort and Internet site, iVoteValues.com, to encourage Christians to register and vote, as well as churches to sponsor nonpartisan voter registration and education efforts.
“The bottom line is—when a church does it, it’s nonpartisan and appropriate. When a campaign does it, it’s partisan and inappropriate,” Land said.
“I suspect that [the Bush-Cheney effort] will rub a lot of pastors’ fur the wrong way,” he said. “Many pastors may consider this a totally inappropriate intrusion by a partisan campaign into the nonpartisan voter education and voter registration ministries of local churches. I am fearful that it may provoke a backlash in which pastors will tell their churches that because of this intrusion the church is not going to do any voter registration or voter education, and that would be tragic.”
Further Learning
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