“If we allow
the churches to have freedom of speech, it will cause X-number of problems.”
(A North Carolina Representative speaking
to church visitors in his office in
Dear Pastor,
We have a real big problem and I need your help to fix it.
The U. S. Congress is NOW discussing whether or not your church
should have free speech and free exercise of religion as
guaranteed by the First Amendment. What do you think, Pastor? Is it
ok with you if you have to preach only government-approved sermons? Our government is progressively politicizing Biblical,
moral issues and forbidding churches to speak out against the process and
against politicians who offend our conscience. The IRS has stepped up its
visits in conservative churches looking for code words such as “liberal,
conservative, abortion, homosexual” and other words that could be
offensive to government policy.
We are facing the issues of: abortion-infanticide-euthanasia,
redefining of marriage, hate speech-hate crimes, the salute to the American
flag, the Ten Commandments, In God We Trust on our money, the runaway Supreme
Court that uses foreign law or no law for its legal inventions, and more.
I was SHOCKED and ALARMED when one of my church members who had joined
me in March to lobby for HR 235 (Houses of
Worship Free Speech Restoration Act), reported back to me that a
senior congressional aide of one of North Carolina’s delegation said
“If we allow the churches to have
freedom of speech, it will cause X-number of problems.” Their solution is to tax the churches
that defy government ideas and policies. Taxing churches is like taxing widows
and orphans, and does not compare with taxing the news media that is connected
to a vast ocean of advertising revenue from industry and commerce.
I am not making
this up – several of our Congressmen believe and are actively pursuing
this philosophy of keeping the church in its place! I have a lot of material
for you to use to reach your congregation about this attack on our church
freedoms. Just click by www.FireBuilders.org to read through the letters,
call-to-action, and phone scripts. WE ARE NOT
ASKING FOR DONATIONS! I’m just letting you know personally of
what’s going on and how we as church leaders need to respond!
In fact, D. James Kennedy,
James Dobson
and other fundamentalist and evangelical Christian leaders are calling for us all to help. I’ve
put this package together for you to download to give to your church people as individual citizens. Please click
over to the web site we’ve created (www.FireBuilders.org) to
distribute a letter to your congregation as
private citizens, phone scripts to use to call Representatives now(and perhaps Senators later),
and a list of resources.
Please click
through this link to the House Ways & Means Committee to read testimony
of how the IRS is using a decades old law to quash churches who don’t
agree with their point of view. This testimony was given during the last
Congress when the Bill had a different number. Please
read carefully and understand what this attorney-specialist with the
The solution to our problem is the passage
of HR235. To read the text of the Bill click here. One Representative said: “Why
should I vote for this Bill since there’s no clamor?” (Translation:
“Why should I vote for restoring free speech to churches since the
pastors and churches care nothing about it?”)
After you have studied the materials, you
can click here to: One: find the names and phone numbers YOU
SHOULD CALL in your State. (They are printed in red.) Print the list
and call them; Two: To send an email to your Representatives
through their individual Web sites; Three:
To find the U.S. Mail address for the Representatives in your State. (On some Web sites, the HR235 information
has not been updated since Nov. 2004. We’ve updated as far as we can.)
Please take just a few minutes and look through the links. I look
forward to your response if I can be of help.
Warmest Regards,
Pastor Daniel D. Carr
Southern Pines, NC
Contact me: dancarr@firebuilders.org
(Ordained 1953 at