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C Jul 25, 2004 12:00 AM A A C SHTUARTCEH The line of separation grows thinner as politicians preach to the choir Tax-exempt religious organizations can't get involved in partisan politics. The law's as clear as that. So what was the deputy chairman of the Texas Republican Party doing with 100 Eugene-area ministers last week? Just sharing information about the founding of country and about the importance of voting, of course. Giving a civics lesson. Something wrong with that? Well? Something is wrong ' with GOP party official David Barton's talks to the clergy in Eugene and elsewhere, with the Bush campaign's bald outreach to churches, with the Rev. Jerry Falwell's undisguised politicking from the pulpit, for starters. All are pieces this election year of a sweeping attempt by Republicans to improperly use churches to put President Bush in the White House for another term. Republicans have publicly said they want an addition — million to 4 million evangelical voters at the polls in November. The nationwide get-out-the-vote aimed at Christians includes talks such as Barton's, paid for by the Republican National Committee. Barton framed the talk, which was closed to the media, as almost academic. He said his aim was to explain the country's roots while convincing pastors they should do more to get their congregations out to vote. — Barton is not a civics leader, however. He's an activist walking a hair-fine line. The Internal Revenue Service allows tax-exempt nonprofits such as churches, charities and educational groups to encourage nonpartisan voter participation, but it does not allow them to tell parishioners how to vote. If talks such as Barton's don't violate the letter of the law, they surely trample on its intent. Likewise with the Bush campaign's much-criticized attempts this year to involve sympathetic churches by asking them to organize voter drives, provide membership lists to campaign staffs and find other churches who we can organize for Bush. Then there's the always-political Falwell. A liberal group complained to the IRS this month after the Jerry Falwell Ministries leader used his Web site, falwell.com, to urge followers to vote for Bush. Even though the Web site is labeled Jerry Falwell Ministries, it is owned by his lobbying group, not his religious organization, he told The New York Times. That it's so hard to distinguish between Falwell's lobbying and religious activities helps point to the trouble with the mix-it-up trend. If we mix partisan politics and churches, what distinguishes a church from a political group? Do we want to give political groups tax-free status? Are we ready to throw separation of church and state out the window? Democrats have gone down this road as well, including during Hillary Clinton's 1999 campaign for Senate, when she delivered political messages during dozens of churches' Sunday services. It was no cleaner an approach then than it is now. Yet partisans invariably respond to criticism about their involvement with churches with a Who, me? sort of innocence. It seems that as long as they don't admit what they're doing, they can keep walking the fine line. As Barton put it after his talk in Eugene, he simply encourages ministers to do exactly what the IRS allows them to do.