For example, the pastor at Warroad (Minnesota) Community Church said, “We need to vote for the most righteous of candidates..the most righteous is John McCain.” And from Edmond, Oklahoma comes Fairview Baptist Church’s pastor Paul Blair telling the faithful that “as a Christian and an American citizen, I will be voting for John McCain.”  The Wall Street Journal reports additional pulpit endorsements in California, Texas, and Pennsylvania.  You get the picture.

In your last posting, Jay, you noted that you had defended the Church at Pierce Creek in its challenge to the prohibition on partisan politicking by churches.  Why didn’t that church try to “take its case to the Supreme Court”?  Do you think it was a smart tactic for the Alliance Defense Fund to have multiple churches disobey the law yesterday?  Do you think that even with the more conservative Supreme Court of 2008 that any members believe you can’t attach this non-politicking prohibition to a grant of tax-exemption?

It seems to me that all this posturing is just one more effort by the so-called “Religious Right” to gain more clout.  It is about its incessant effort to tell how Americans should act from the moment of conception until the moment of death (which you guys also want to define, by the way).  I’m willing to have preachers, pastors, priests and all other religious figures tell me how they think I should act in the most intimate areas of my life.  If I don’t want to pay attention to their thoughts on intimate matters, though, I don’t want them heading off to the legislature for a “moral bailout”.  What’s that?  It is when the clergy says: “we just don’t seem to be able to use our powers of moral suasion to change people, so let’s get the government to force them to change.”

The aforementioned Pastor Gus Booth recently summed up his view for Religion News Service: “If we can tell you what to do in the bedroom, we can certainly tell you what to do in the voting booth.”  No further comment is necessary.