You'll never guess who I ate lunch with yesterday

Yesterday the Lord set before me a table in the presence of my enemies. Not really. But that familiar part of Psalm 23 did come to mind when I found myself sitting at a table eating lunch with Barry Lynn's staff.  For those of you who don't know, Barry Lynn is the president of American's United for the Separation of Church and State here in Washington DC.  Barry himself was at the table right next to ours.

Would you eat with people who are happy to turn you into the IRS for tax code violations?  I would, and did.  We aim to challenge the Johnson Amendment and Barry Lynn told us he hopes we are penalized. On this issue, the IRS is a paper tiger intimidating those who can be intimidated and ignoring those of us who aren't . The IRS doesn't want this to end up in Federal Court.  We do.

I wasn't going to blog on this but my new friend at American's United already described our time together on the AU blog. Check out the pictures and read of our time together from her vantage point.

It's always good to be in DC and be reminded of the rich Christian heritage of our nation. Like the Declaration of Independance.  Did you know that many of the phrases in it were taken directly from sermons from pastors like John Wise?  Imagine that, pastors were giving the talking points which defined our nation.  27 of the 56 signers of the Declaration had seminary degrees.  These guys made sure Congress printed Bibles for American schools. Wow, have we ever shifted off our foundation as a nation.

Barry Lynn is a reverend and so he should know the framework for our republic was based on the Bible; like the separation of powers taken from Isaiah 33:22 and representative government from Exodus 18:21.  Here's an interesting one… did you know Article II, Section 1 of our Constitution says our President must be a natural-born citizen and the founders drew this from Deuteronomy 17:15?  Here's one that is quite relevent to the purpose of our lunch yesterday… the founders got the notion of tax-exemption for churches from Ezra 7:24.

I know I know, what about Jefferson's separation of church and state??  It was a one way wall.  He meant the state should never in any way restrict free religious expression. Did you know Jefferson was excited at the suggestion to turn the capital building into a church on Sunday.  He even ordered the Marine Band to lead worship.  And he rarely missed a Sunday.  And he was one of the least religious of the founding fathers. 

Thank God for the First Amendment which grants me freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion. A 1954 tax code stipulation that is written to buy up my rights and silence my voice is unconstitutional.