ALBUQUERQUE — First Unitarian Church Minister Christine Robinson decided months ago that “Christine for President” would be the theme for her two Sunday sermons this week. She says she was inspired by Smothers’ Brothers comedian Pat Paulsen, who satirically ran for president in a succession of elections, starting in 1968, and garnered a following because “he was actually free to speak the truth.”

But after learning Wednesday that pastors around the nation may be committing an act of civil disobedience by endorsing candidates from the pulpit this Sunday, she decided she’d add a “happy face” symbol to the title to make sure the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) knows her candidacy is a joke.

“I was going to ask them to endorse me,” Robinson told the New Mexico Independent of her original plan for her congregation on Sunday. But what was initially a “wacky” premise is now “getting more and more serious.”

In writing her sermon Thursday morning, she added an introductory section that goes like this:

It is completely not OK for a tax-exempt organization like a church to support a candidate or participate in electoral politics. This church chooses to be tax exempt, which means that we can comment on and take sides on the issues of the day, but we can never support, reject, or endorse candidates for electoral office.

That introduction resulted from an NPR report Robinson heard Wednesday about the so-called “Pulpit Initiative,” an effort by the conservative Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), based in Arizona and founded by James Dobson and Focus on the Family in “defense of family values.” ADF is encouraging pastors to pointedly endorse political candidates this Sunday. In turn, ADF promises to provide participating churches with attorneys who will defend all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court what ADF says is the pastors’ First Amendment right to “speak freely” from the pulpit.

As ADF says on its Web site:

The sermons are intended to restore a pastor’s right to speak freely from his pulpit without fearing censorship or punishment by the government. By standing together and speaking with one voice, it is our hope to recapture the rightful place of pastors and churches in American life.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Alliance “contacted ‘hundreds’ of ministers, rabbis and priests, seeking a range of political views for Sunday’s action. But most of the churches it managed to recruit appear to be evangelical Protestant or Pentecostal congregations, whose pastors and members tend to be right-leaning.”

The handful of religious leaders contacted by the New Mexico Independent for this story either had not heard of the initiative or said they did not plan to participate.

“We strongly believe in First Amendment rights, just won’t be able to participate on the 28th as plans have already been made for the services,” Senior Pastor Wayne C. Barber of Hoffmantown Church wrote NMI in an e-mail.

Pastors at two southern New Mexico churches, Pastor Melvin Suttle at the First Assembly of God in Roswell and Pastor Jack Brock at Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, said they had not heard of the initiative.

Pastor Timothy B. Smith at the Sonoma Springs Presbyterian Church in Las Cruces told NMI he was “familiar with the Alliance Defense Fund’s Pulpit Initiative and I am generally supportive, which makes me a distinct minority among the churches in my denomination.”

But he added, “I have chosen not to preach on candidates for government office. I believe it would be incredibly divisive in my particular congregation.”

Smith said he would, however, “spend a few minutes this Sunday urging everyone eligible to register to vote before the deadline.” He said he also intends to devote five to 10 minutes the Sunday immediately before the election to “talking with my congregation about the importance of voting and participating.”

“I will at that time also talk about the moral values and world view central to the teaching of Scripture,” Smith said, “and I will urge them to consider those values and world view when casting their ballots.”

A number of other churches, including one of the state’s largest, Calvary of Albuquerque, did not respond to NMI’s inquiry for this story.

While Robinson told NMI she would not endorse the Pulpit Initiative, at the same time, she added, “I’m not really sorry they’re doing this. I’d like the law to be clarified.”

The “law” is the IRS tax code as it applies to churches, which are prohibited “from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.

Violation can result in revocation of tax-exempt status, which is where the ADF would step in.

A decidedly different view is offered by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which says on its Web site that some clergy are confused about federal tax law “due to misinformation spread by advocates of church-based electioneering.”

For example, some religious leaders might wonder what constitutes an endorsement of a candidate. Prohibited activities include letters of endorsement printed on the letterhead of the church, synagogue, temple or mosque. Distribution of campaign literature, pulpit endorsements of candidates, display of campaign signs on religiously owned property and other similar activities also clearly indicate partisan involvement in an election. (It should be noted, however, that clergy may endorse candidates as individuals in forums outside the church or work on behalf of candidates during their personal time.)

The site also says the regulation is “designed to protect the integrity of the election process. Special types of organizations already exist to help political hopefuls win public office. Those groups, such as Political Action Committees, have a different tax status and are organized under a different set of rules than 501(c)(3) groups, rules designed to ensure that the nation’s campaign-finance laws are followed. Blurring the distinction between these two types of organizations would harm both religion and politics.”

Americans United also says most Americans oppose politicization of houses of worship. “Survey results released in March 2002 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 70 percent of Americans said churches should not endorse candidates,” its site says.

Three former IRS attorneys have written the IRS alerting the agency to the initiative, questioning whether the nonprofit ADF is jeopardizing its own tax-exempt status by organizing an “inappropriate, unethical and illegal” series of political endorsements.

Robinson thinks the Pulpit Initiative is “pretty in-your-face” and that the preachers are likely to end up losing the battle. “I think they’re likely to lose — at least temporarily lose — their (tax-exempt) status.”

A Minnesota pastor who plans to endorse on Sunday told NPR it’s no big deal if his church loses its status as he will have it back the next day “because churches are automatically tax exempt.” (The pastor also told NPR electing “Godly people” is more important than money.)

In her remarks prepared for next Sunday, Robinson refers to that pastor as “clueless” about the seriousness of the initiative, and in that regard, says the initiative is fraught with danger for those who participate.

At the same time, however, she told NMI she thinks the IRS “is definitely out of line” in its enforcement of the tax code, targeting “small-time, poorly educated pastors” who don’t understand the subtle difference between actually endorsing and taking positions on issues. Many, she said, don’t realize they are breaking the law.

In a preview of her upcoming sermon provided to NMI, Robinson says:

Let me comment that the IRS has been both negligent and out of control on this subject, ignoring pastors who have flaunted the law and also harassing some pastors who have stayed on the right side of the ‘issues-not-candidates’ rule. To their credit, these pastors are trying to attract the attention of the IRS this week — they are not sneaking around. I admire people who are willing to challenge the law and take the consequences of doing so. That’s one way the law of this land is refined, after all.

However, I want to express my opinion as a preacher, that any preacher who can’t figure out a way to let his or her congregation know who to vote for without naming names isn’t a very clever preacher. It doesn’t take much perfectly legal preaching about issues to make it clear in this polarized world who you think should win an election.

In talking to NMI, she recalled the 2006 case in which the IRS “took a liberal Episcopalian church to court and scared everyone to death.” In that case, the IRS said the preacher was so obviously negative about the war that he was therefore against President Bush. A court ruled in favor of the church and against the IRS.

In her own church, she said it gets sticky when “our more politically involved members” pass out campaign materials or want to invite certain candidates to functions. It is difficult for a church to stay politically neutral, she said.

Which is why she’s having fun wistfully remembering the comic candidacy of Pat Paulsen, who could look presidential and with a straight face describe himself as “Just a common, ordinary, simple savior of America’s destiny.” Paulsen, by the way, is still “running” for president even though he died in 1997, and a story just this week in the Hartford Courant recalls another classic slogan: “I’ve upped my standards, so up yours!”

Here’s more of Robinson’s text from “Christine for President”:

So what’s the title of the sermon mean? Looks suspiciously like electoral politics from the pulpit, but it’s a joke, a device, a literary technique to get you excited about a sermon which is going to be about issues. … Since you are not able to vote for Christine on any ballot, the whole thing is a joke. OK?

And when Robinson takes off her clerical robe on Sunday and becomes a “candidate,” her congregation will hear the real sermon, the issues sermon which, from the way it starts out, makes it clear this “candidate” is serious about the issues.