if jesus debated...........

gives me faith in the clergy

The won't-be-bullied pulpit
A Pasadena cleric cited by the IRS refuses to surrender 'the very soul of our ministry.'By George Regas,
THE REV. DR. GEORGE REGAS was rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena from 1967 to 1995.

I CAN'T TELL YOU how surprised and shocked I was — and how disappointed — when All Saints Church was informed that the sermon I preached on Oct. 31, 2004, might have constituted an impermissible intervention into a political campaign under the Internal Revenue Code.I gave the sermon on the Sunday before the presidential election. It was called, "If Jesus Debated Sen. Kerry and President Bush." In it, I took great care to say that I did not want to tell people how to vote, but that I was challenging them to go into the voting booth on Tuesday taking with them all that they knew about Jesus, the peacemaker. To take all that Jesus meant to them and then vote their deepest values.
No one from the IRS attended my sermon, to my knowledge. The agency apparently saw an article about it in The Times the following day. The Times described it as "an indictment of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq" and noted that I had criticized the drive to develop more nuclear weapons and described tax cuts that benefited the rich as "inimical to the values of Jesus." Based on that, the IRS made a subjective determination that the sermon implicitly opposed one candidate and endorsed another.During my 28 years as rector of All Saints Church, I often preached sermons that touched upon what some would characterize as "political" issues. So many of the political issues that we confront today coincide with deeply held, core religious beliefs: issues relating to marriage, family, community and yes, even war and foreign policy. ........