While it appears no New Mexico clergy members took up a conservative group’s encouragement to endorse a political candidate on Sunday, nearly three dozen pastors across the country did endorse someone and flouted a federal tax law, the Washington Post reports.

 

The paper highlights a pastor in Indiana who told his congregation that voting for Barack Obama would be evidence of ”severe moral schizophrenia.”

 

The pastors appears to have taken up Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund on its offer. Leading up to Sunday, the ADF encouraged pastors across the nation to endorse political candidates in violation of IRS rules set out for 501c3 non profits, a provision that churches fall under. In turn, ADF had promised to provide participating churches with attorneys to 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.