Would Jesus Christ sport a "Yes We Can" Obama '08 button on his tunic? Or would the Prince of Peace prefer a "Country First" McCain T-shirt?

Your pastor might tell you at church today, shortly before he lets you know which political candidates deserve your vote.

Then, if their prayers are answered, the right politicians will be elected and the reverends will get busted by federal agents.

Today, more than 30 ministers from across the country plan to purposefully violate federal law by endorsing political candidates during their church sermons.

Religious people, like the rest of us, can say what they want. It's a free country.

But under a federal law that has existed for more than 50 years, religious organizations cannot engage in political speech while they also accept deductible contributions. If they do, they risk losing their tax-exempt status.

Today's protest is being organized by the Scottsdale-based Alliance Defense Fund, an advocacy group made up of Christian lawyers. (Which sounds like an oxymoron on the scale of "business ethics," "airline food" and "adult male.")

I spoke last week with Gary McCaleb, an attorney with ADF, about what the group is calling "Pulpit Freedom Sunday."

"This is an issue that needs to be addressed in federal courts," McCaleb said. "Fifty-four years of censorship is enough."

The pastors plan to send copies of their sermons to the Internal Revenue Service to instigate some type of legal action. The ADF won't announce which pastors would participate until after they preach their sermons.

To McCaleb and the attorneys at the defense fund, forcing a tax-exempt organization to clam up is a violation of First Amendment rights.

"The government has danced around the edges of this issue for a long time," he said. "People on both sides of the spectrum like to use it (the IRS threat) as a tool to silence pastors. But the bottom line is that religious speech should be able to take place without the IRS sitting in the pews waiting to hear code words."

He's right. The restrictions are a farce. Not only because they fly in the face of the Constitution, but also because they don't work. Even when forced to parse their words, most pastors make it clear which candidate they support.

Churches have had an impact on American politics from the moment the continent was colonized. Some good. Some bad.

Religious leaders were among the first abolitionists. The civil-rights movement of the 1960s owed much of its success to church support. The movement's most famous leader and figurehead was a reverend, after all.

In the 1980s, I attended a federal trial in Tucson in which a group of religious people was being prosecuted for having assisted illegal refugees from Central America. They called themselves the Sanctuary Movement.

The same type of religious folks work today with programs such as Humane Borders.

And so, at this week's church service, some pastors in America will preach about what the ADF describes as "the moral qualifications of candidates seeking political office."

I know, another oxymoron.

But these are people who believe in miracles, which is what it would take to produce a politician who has "moral qualifications."

I can't imagine how a pastor could adhere to biblical theology and endorse any political candidate, but they should be allowed to try without fear of losing their tax-exempt status.

Besides, I'd guess that the King of Kings would not be intimidated by the IRS.

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.