How pastors can preach about the important matters of the day — without becoming too political or risking a church’s tax-exempt status.

This article first appeared in March 2016 at ChurchLawandTax.com, a website of Christianity Today. 

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Christianity Today

Nationally, nearly 90 percent of pastors believe they should not endorse candidates for public office from the pulpit, according to the latest figures from Lifeway Research, an evangelical polling group based in Nashville, Tennessee.

That finding came in a 2012 survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors, said Ed Stetzer, Lifeway Research’s executive director. “Since Jesus is not coming back riding an elephant or a donkey, I’d suggest that pastors be known for Jesus and not politics,” Stetzer said. (Updated figures from September 2016)

Speaking up for Jesus, though, may take pastors into territory claimed by Caesar.

The expansion of government’s role in society has made preachers’ balancing act more difficult, said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, who hosts “The Briefing,” a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

“To talk about any number of issues today is to involve politics in a way that would not have been true in generations past,” Mohler said. “Talking about healthcare or an adoption ministry or a ministry to orphans — none of that would have been overtly political even 30 or 40 years ago. But it is today because of the state’s increasing role in those areas.”

Every pastor must be careful to identify issues on which all Christians must stand together — and those on which legitimate differences of opinion could exist in terms of public policy, the seminary president said.

Continue reading “Avoiding the elephant (or donkey) in the pulpit”