Monday, July 26, 2004:<\/b> I want to toss an endorsement to the defense of the First Baptist Church of Springdale and its senior pastor, Ronnie Floyd. An self-proclaimed do-gooder group is trying to sic the IRS against them, citing church-state separation, because Floyd in a sermon subtly endorsed the re-election of George II.<\/p>\n
I did not know about these tax rules before. I now can see a need for some form of them so that political groups do not hide under the skirts of religious freedom (and tax exemption) in the United States of America, and understand there must always have been some form of regulation like this.<\/p>\n
But, come on. Any minister of any faith should have complete freedom of speech, from the pulpit or electronically or street corner. Houses of religion don’t do enough to encourage political and social participation among citizens. Floyd and the megachurch he runs — with which I proudly have little in common — must have the freedom to be a full part of this country.<\/p>\n
My childhood memories of reading the old Arkansas Gazette<\/i> as well as Time, Life<\/i> etc. include reading about stunning speeches from the pulpit against the Vietnam War and supporting civil rights, Sloane Coffin, Berrigan, M.L. King. …<\/p>\n
We need more of that now.<\/p>\n
Why didn’t Dr. Floyd just clearly endorse Bush instead of showing his photo on a big screen? If you’re going to get busted, man, light all the fireworks.<\/p>\n
Jesse Jackson did. Heck, so did Gerald L.K. Smith. Use the pulpit fully, that is. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Constitutional separation of church and press Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Monday, July 26, 2004: I want to toss an endorsement to the defense of the First Baptist Church of Springdale and its senior pastor, Ronnie Floyd. An self-proclaimed do-gooder group is trying to sic the IRS against them, citing church-state separation, because Floyd in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":202,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/07\/our-constitutions-bill-of-goods\/","url_meta":{"origin":83,"position":0},"title":"Our Constitution’s Bill of Goods","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock Wouldn't be a lot easier for President Bush and the current Congress to begin the process to repeal the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights? Bet it wouldn't take too long to get the votes their way. Think of how many birds they'd drop\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":78,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/03\/the-passion-of-the-gimmick\/","url_meta":{"origin":83,"position":1},"title":"The Passion of the Gimmick","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Tuesday, March 9, 2004. \"The Passion of the Christ.\" I have not seen the movie, though it's been out a couple of weeks. I am not curious about it, the way I have been about other movies about Christianity, and so may not see it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8189,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2025\/10\/top-ten-list-top-ten-commandments\/","url_meta":{"origin":83,"position":2},"title":"Top Ten List of Top Ten Commandments","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 22, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Top Ten Reasons the University of Arkansas Doesn't Need to Find Places on Campus to Nail 500 Copies of One Translation of the Ten Commandments Editor's Note by Ben Pollock, Local 965 vice president News item: \"U of A Rolls Out Ten Commandments Displays,\" Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Oct. 16, 2025,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"One of the 500 posters of the Ten Commandments donated to the University of Arkansas, mounted at Union Station next to a defibrillator.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/our-ten-commandments.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/our-ten-commandments.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/our-ten-commandments.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/our-ten-commandments.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/our-ten-commandments.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/our-ten-commandments.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":72,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/05\/down-to-the-level\/","url_meta":{"origin":83,"position":3},"title":"Down to the level","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 5, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, May 5, 2004. A note about the U.S. MPs' sexual and general humiliation of Iraqi civilian\/military detainees. Here's The New Yorker's link to photos and articles. Jews are not supposed to make Holocaust comparisons lightly and don't want non-Jews to make any at all.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":249,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/11\/goodwill-gesture-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":83,"position":4},"title":"Goodwill Gesture","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 28, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The incoming president of the Christian Coalition has agreed to withdraw. The Rev. 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(The law and the new plan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}