THE PEOPLE who should be disturbed by Attorney General Phill Kline’s use of church connections to raise campaign money are probably not bothered by it at all.
Kline, who likes to go to churches as a guest preacher, has told his campaign staff in a memo to book him into as many churches as they could and “Get the pastor to invite five ‘money people’ whom he knows can help.”
Clearly, the attorney general intends to use his church connections for political purposes. That is a bad idea. The exploitation of religious belief for political ends is bad for politics. It could be even worse for the churches that allow him to do it.
Politics is a practical art whose sole aim is the acquisition of temporal power. Christianity’s basic doctrines instruct its followers to perfect their personal faith and leave worldly matters to others. The idea of “rendering unto Caesar” is at the heart of the doctrine of separation of church and state. Governments leave churches alone — even exempting them from taxes — and churches leave government alone.
Church members, of course, are allowed to vote and churches are allowed to take positions on political issues. What churches are not allowed to do, by law, is use church services to promote political candidates. Any church that does that risks losing its tax exemption. For many churches, that exemption is the difference between financial health and a sheriff’s auction.
But there are some churches whose members think that the Bible’s injunction to preach the word is an instruction to seek temporal power and compel civil compliance with church doctrine. Members of those churches see the ban on political campaigning at church services as an abridgment of their individual rights as citizens to participate in the political process.
Be that as it may, the law and many other Christians do not agree.
For Kline, the chief law officer of Kansas, to encourage churches to skirt or even break the law for his own political benefit is as cynical a political ploy as Kansas has seen in many years. He does not, as his supporters might think, seek to put politics at the service of the church, but to bind the church to the service of politics.
If he succeeds, it will be bad for politics.
It will be bad for the churches, which will have traded their moral authority and their privileged status before the law for a brief alliance with a politician.
By all means, Kline’s backers should render unto him their personal support. But their churches are intended for the service of God, not the service of Phill Kline.
Confusing the two is a big mistake.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor