Yes, I certainly agree with those campaigners who have been calling our homes here in Jackson metroplex and encouraging us to go to the polls on Tuesday.  This is our Presidential and Congressional primary.  It is but one step in the overall process of electing a President and a Congressman from Chip PIckering's old district.  But it is an important step.  One caller stated that she wanted to come to our service and encourage people to vote on Tuesday.  Of course, she was with one of the campaigns.  That would have been skating very close to the thin ice of the separation of church and state.  You know, there really are some legal limits to what can be done in church.

Neither churches nor representatives of churches can publicly support a candidate for office while they are speaking on behalf of the church.  If that happens, then the church stands to lose its tax exempt status.  Now, you tell me--how many churches should have had their tax exempt status pulled all during the last 40 or more years?  Maybe more?  I told my caller that I would not allow politicking for her candidate or for any other candidate on our property or during church time.  There is another alternative for church participation in the election process.  A church can sponsor a candidate forum to which all candidates for the office or position are invited to come and share their views.  Participation can be opened to the community so that people can ask questions of all the candidates.  But the church cannot endorse a candidate.

We have not hosted a candidate forum here at Alta Woods.  We had a request a few months ago from a candidate to come and meet with members of the community using our facililties.  I had to explain that we had to offer that opportunity to his opponents as well.  It never happened.  It shouldn't have happened here.  I take another approach to elections.  It is very neutral and yet very involved.  I encourage our members to register to vote and then to go to the polls on every election day.  I never endorse a party or a candidate, but I do endorse the political process and urge our members to be involved.  I think that is the proper way for churches to proceed here in the USA.  Our rights to vote were won more than two hundred years ago at a steep price.  We should never ignore this price by neglecting to vote.  So, I say, Mississippi, go vote!