Stanley Fish on Tax Exemption for Political Pastoring

In on-line piece for the NYT entitled Politics and the Pulpit (Once Again) (October 5, 2008), Stanley Fish examines the question of whether the prohibition on electioneering by tax-exempt charitable nonprofits, as applied to pulpit speech, preserves or violates the separation of church and state.  Ones answer to the question turns on whether (1) one agrees with Locke’s view, articulated in A Letter Concerning Toleration, that (in Fish’s words) “religion as a private matter, as a relationship between one’s soul and one’s God, and therefore as a practice exercised in the church or synagogue or mosque rather than in the arena of political action;” or (2)  ones “religious beliefs take a more robust form than Locke’s and require that you labor to bring the world into conformity with God’s word and will…”

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