In the neck-and-neck Missouri Senate race, liberals are looking for any possible advantage they can find. But if a "gotcha" moment was what the McCaskill campaign was hoping for when Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) defended religious liberty, then they'll be disappointed to learn that the side actually benefiting from the comments happens to be the candidate who made them!
When Josh Hawley spoke at one of FRC's regional pastors' briefings, he wasn't expecting someone to tape him. Not that it mattered. The things he said about the Johnson Amendment are hardly new. Since he became attorney general in Missouri -- and even before -- Hawley's been an outspoken defender of religious liberty. But suddenly, now that he's running for a U.S. Senate seat, the far-Left tries to paint him as an opportunist just trying to win votes. In a column for the Kansas City Star, the editors actually accused Hawley of "shilling for votes" by trying to "inject politics into the pulpit." They quoted the audio from FRC's event, where the attorney general reiterated to pastors that he was fighting to give them their voice back on cultural issues.
"It's just absolutely unconstitutional..." he said of the half-century old amendment. "Religious liberty is under attack in this country, and it's a terrible thing. It's a dangerous thing." Hawley, who used to specialize in religious freedom cases as an attorney before winning his job two years ago, agreed with President Trump: "There is no excuse to silence churches and to silence pastors. That needs to end right now."
On "Washington Watch," I joked with Josh that he'd finally been caught -- defending the Constitution. He laughed and said, "That's right... The Johnson Amendment is unconstitutional. I've said that for years, and I have not changed my mind. And I would challenge Senator Claire McCaskill... to start standing up for churches and start standing up for the religious liberty of our people... Believers know that our religious liberties are on the line, and they want to have their constitutional right... to speak freely and preach freely."
What is the media so afraid of, anyway? This entire debate (which shouldn't even be a debate, given the plain text of the Constitution) is rooted in the lie that the First Amendment is about the freedom of worship -- not the freedom of religion, which is the ability to live your life according to your faith. The media is okay with pastors preaching and teaching, as long as it stays within the confines of the church and deals with only theological matters that only impact their congregants. But history shows us that for faith to be real, it has to be vibrant, invading every area of our lives. As Abraham Kuyper said, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!"
What if pastors like Peter von Muhlenberg who stirred the hearts of the colonists for freedom and independence had been silenced? What about pastors like Lyman Beecher and his son, Henry, who preached political sermons advocating for the abolition of slavery? What if they'd been censored? Where would America be today? What our country needs are not a few pulpits delving into the controversial issues of our time, it needs more pastors willing to declare that there is, in fact, truth -- and challenge people both inside and outside their churches to live accordingly.
