In yet another chilling use of churches as mouthpieces to do the state’s bidding, federal regulators directing the U.S. digital television transition have enlisted ministers to push their case.
This isn’t the first case of ministers being employed as mouthpieces for non-religions organizations. Last year, Conservative legal advocates The Alliance Defense Fund recruited pastors across the U.S. to defy an Internal Revenue Service ban on preaching about politicians, in a challenge they hoped will abolish the restriction.
The Department of Homeland Security also enlisted clergy to quell public unrest if martial law should be declared, such as in the case of New Orleans, when gun confiscation was conducted along with forced relocation – often conducted by U.S. troops, a development that is even easier to do now thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.
Such dangerous blurring of church and state sets up a situation where more political messages, such as the Right To Life message, can be trumped from pulpits across America to audiences who’s mind-sets will be relaxed from the religious setting and who will receive such messages will all the authority of the pulpit they believe in.
There’s a clear separation of church and state of good reason. When churches become mouthpieces for government and legal organizations, as we’re increasing seeing, and when government becomes a platform for religious figures as we’ve disturbingly seen in the Bush administration and now Obama’s administration starting right off from his inauguration and "prayer breakfasts", the First Amendment, Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, and James Madison’s letter to Edward Livingston are severely diminished.