Last weekend, hundreds of conservative churches participated in \u201cPulpit Freedom Sunday\u201d, during which pastors preached about electoral politics and sent recordings of their sermons to the Internal Revenue Service. It\u2019s a provocation: these pastors and their legal counsel hope to challenge the rarely-enforced IRS rule prohibiting candidate endorsements by tax-exempt organizations, including houses of worship, and take it all the way to the US supreme court.<\/p>\n
A new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life , which confirms previously observed trends of Protestant decline, accompanied by a rise in religiously unaffiliated Americans, casts serious doubt on whether the self-styled church freedom warriors are fighting a politically popular battle. Among the survey\u2019s findings, two thirds of Americans (66%) believe churches shouldn\u2019t endorse candidates. And 54% say churches should stay out of political matters entirely. Even a majority (56%) of white evangelicals agreed that churches should not endorse candidates.<\/p>\n