An Open letter to the National Council of Churches Concerning Denial of Religious Liberty

February 2, 2012

Norton R. Nowlin, M.A.
Woodbridge, VA

National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA
Communications Department
475 Riverside Drive
Suite 800
New York, NY 10115

Greetings:

I am a free-lance writer and essayist greatly frustrated by the lack of concerted response of the National Council of Churches (NCC) to an existing federal law that is clearly in violation of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The law that I am referring to is the 1954 amendment proposed by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, which was, for some mind-boggling reason, legislated very quickly through Congress with an express intention of restricting the speech of non-profit tax exempt entities, including churches. This clearly unconstitutional law has been on the books since 1954 without any organized attempt by the rank-and-file American people, and the united American churches, to get it repealed and abrogated.

Just recently, there was a public ecclesiastical outcry against a part of Obamacare that would infringe on the rights of churches and the U.S. religious establishment, which was very justly asserted. Yet, the denial of a church's right to proclaim whatever it wants to proclaim from the pulpit is even more fundamentally grevious than what Obamacare currently restricts in the way of religious freedom. When IRS agents are allowed to egregiously sitting in the back of church assembly meetings, incognito, in order to monitor what church pastors and ministers are saying for, or against, political issues, candidates, and incumbent politicians, in order to determine whether a church should receive tax-exempt status, isn't this the height of tyranny against the free practice of religion by a supposedly free people? Why isn't the NCC as actively seeking to get this unconstitutional law eviserated and regarded as a black blotch that was indiscriminately placed by the federal government upon the integrity of the U.S. Constitution, as it is to get the Obamacare regulation repealed?

I ask you to pause to think about the many Christian ministers who spoke openly against King George III in the years immediately preceeding the American Revolution. These ministers were greatly responsible for creating the patriotic fervor that called the many faithful patriots to enlist in the Continental Army to depose the tyrannical British. It was also because of the fervent efforts of ministers to proclaim from the pulpit God's love for all mankind, that the many young men who fought against tyranny during the First and Second World Wars enlisted to serve in the military. The establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution only regards the U.S. Congress and any attempt that it might make to impose a state religion on the American people, and to restrict the free exercise of religion. It does nothing to keep the People from inserting religion, and its morality, into federal, state, and local government. The separation of church and state, as commonly applied today, is inimical to the meaning Thomas Jefferson placed on it when he coined the statement. The 1st Amendment is very clear when it declares that NO LAW SHALL BE PASSED BY CONGRESS TO RESTRICT THE FREE PRACTICE OF RELIGION!

I sincerely pray that you will, in the name of Almighty God and the inalienable natural law that He has created and ordained for mankind, give serious thought to the foregoing petition; and, after doing so, affirm your vehement committment to opposing this most heinous law.

Sincerely,
Norton R. Nowlin