Speaking truth to power is easy—or easier, anyway, than speaking truth to money. We might resist a sovereign who commands us to preach his favored doctrines. But a sovereign who slips us a little cash on the side, just for a sermon or two on something we maybe don’t really disagree with all that much? Harder. Much, much harder. It was true back in 1717, for example, when Benjamin Hoadly preached a famous Anglican sermon in front of a receptive King George I—a sermon that called for church government to be taken away from the bishops and given directly to the king.
And it isn’t a surprise now in 2014, when Maryland’s Prince George’s County, just outside Washington, D.C., began issuing tax rebates to local churches. As it happens, those tax rebates do require a little something from the churches—a nod to the king, as it were. All the churches need to do to get the rebate is perform a little environmentalist ministry, according to a well-reported story in the Washington Post on November 16. All they need to do is preach a little green.
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