January 18, 2008

Pastor's Political Limitations and Tax Exempt Status

Mat Staver is the Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and the Dean of the Liberty Law School.

Mat opened with a review of a recent gathering of about 500 California pastors at a day and a half event. The purpose was to discuss how spiritual issues have political consequences.

Mat speaks at the end of these events, encouraging pastors to get involved, explaining to them what churches can do in regard to political issues with respect to campaigns, people running for political office, lobbying or marriage petitions.

A DVD is available at no cost from Liberty Counsel for pastors and church leaders that features Mat speaking on these issues. It's also available for viewing online.

Also discussed was the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment. Originally 611,000 petitions were needed to get the Amendment on the ballot in 2008. They had more than this number as of November 2006 but the State of Florida conducted an unprecedented audit of the petitions just two weeks before the final deadline of February 1. The result is that just a few days ago, 30,000 petitions were thrown out which drops the effort 22,000 short of the goal for ballot placement and now this shortfall needs to be made up.

During the call-in portion of the program, Mat clarifies some of the fallacies regarding what churches can and can't do within the political process, along with clarifying the issue of church tax exempt status.

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