Parsing the Pulpit Freedom stories: Testing the Meaning of “Intervene”

GetReligion.org has this discussion of the Pulpit Initiative in a post by Terry Mattingly. It includes a series of links to various articles and several reader comments along with this observation: 

Now, it is true that the 1954 amendment to the tax code, as the Post notes, states that nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not “participate in, or intervene in . . . any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.” Part of what the ADF is testing is the meaning of the word “intervene,” which could affect behavior broader than open, corporate endorsements. That’s the key, you see, and that would affect a wide variety of behaviors that have taken place in the past on the left as well as the right.

An earlier GetReligion.org post by Mattingly posed these questions: “What does it mean to say that clergy are going to ‘deliver political sermons or endorse presidential candidates.’ What is a ‘political sermon’ and what, precisely, makes a ‘political sermon’ a violation of U.S. law?”