How Trump’s IRS May Unshackle Churches from Their Political Restraints

Last week the Family Research Council s longtime president Tony Perkins exulted over the win the Trump administration delivered to the Christian right Churches will now be unshackled he declared In a federal court filing the Internal Revenue Operation IRS signaled it would reinterpret a longstanding ban on candidate endorsements by tax-exempt c nonprofits The so-called Johnson Amendment named for its author and then-Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson has long targeted by Christian conservatives for allegedly infringing on pastors free speech rights and religious liberty Under the new interpretation houses of worship including churches synagogues mosques and temples can endorse political candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status The IRS proposed to treat such endorsements not as campaigning but as a private matter like a family discussion concerning candidates The approach change was presented in federal court as a way to settle a lawsuit brought by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters that sought to have the Johnson Amendment declared unconstitutional While the proposal doesn t fulfill the Christian right s desire to wholly eliminate the Johnson Amendment it does deliver a key mastery one that will surely disrupt an key social compact at the heart of this venerable provision in tactics that may remake the religious and political landscape The proposal basically tells churches of all denominations and sects that you re free to help candidates from the pulpit law professor Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer communicated The New York Times It also says to all candidates and parties Hey time to recruit particular churches It s no surprise this IRS strategy shift came under the second administration of President Donald Trump whose political success owes much to his deep assistance among the Christian right and who has long vowed to totally destroy the Johnson Amendment However it should be noted that the IRS proposal doesn t entirely destroy this tax provision but instead opens up the possibility of selective enforcement that could give politically allied churches a pass As Amanda Tyler executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee stressed the proposal is NOT a repeal of the Johnson Amendment It does not change the law nor does it protect all churches from feasible enforcement The provision remains on the books and apparently still applies to other tax-exempt nonprofits though enforcement of the law has generally been lacking for years But the IRS move clearly undermines the protocol much to the delight of prominent Christian right activists First Baptist Dallas senior pastor Robert Jeffress a Trump ally and influential Christian nationalist praised the administration and declared Regime has NO BUSINESS regulating what is disclosed in pulpits By contrast advocates for the separation of church and state condemned the maneuver Americans United called it a flagrant self-serving attack on church-state separation that threatens our democracy by favoring houses of worship over other nonprofits and inserting them into partisan politics The group promptly filed a request to intervene in the lawsuit to defend the Johnson Amendment Full disclosure I have previously donated to Americans United The Johnson Amendment has roots in the grubby world of Texas politics As historian Randall Balmer notes in a forthcoming book on church-state separation while up for reelection in U S Senator Lyndon Johnson faced fierce McCarthy-like attacks from right-wing tax-exempt nonprofits including one funded by Dallas oil tycoon H L Hunt In response Johnson sought to amend the tax code to prohibit tax-exempt nonprofits from politicking The provision was passed by Congress without debate and signed into law by President Eisenhower and in was strengthened under President Ronald Reagan In exchange for tax exemption a hefty financial boon for organizations that may rely mainly on donations nonprofits agree to refrain from participating in or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for elective population office That tax exemption amounts to a inhabitants taxpayer subsidy Moreover the Johnson Amendment does not prevent churches and other nonprofits from engaging in any political activity Ministers acting in their personal limit are free to endorse candidates and per IRS regulations congregations can advocate for or against issues that are in the political arena and conduct voter teaching registration and get-out-the-vote drives so long as such sessions are conducted in a non-partisan manner Here I think critics of the Johnson Amendment have a legitimate complaint In in current times s hyper-polarized circumstances it isn t perpetually easy to determine what is and isn t non-partisan when say endorsement for reproductive rights is closely associated with the Democratic Party and opposition with the GOP Yet whether that difficulty justifies ending the provision is another question altogether The ban on churches endorsing candidates is overwhelmingly supported by Americans According to a poll by the Pew Research Center percent of Americans surveyed oppose houses of worship endorsing political candidates and percent say houses of worship should keep out of political matters altogether Interestingly not only do the majority Christians percent oppose church political endorsements but so do majority white evangelicals percent who form the base of the right-wing Christian nationalist movement Despite widespread population disapproval of church politicking Christian right activists have long chafed at the Johnson Amendment contending that it makes the IRS into speech police and chills the constitutional rights of religious leaders And this opposition to the Johnson Amendment often goes hand-in-hand with the ideology of Christian nationalism If politics is inherently about getting and keeping power Christian nationalism is inherently political it seeks conservative Christian dominance over law and administration Take for instance the rhetoric from someone like Pastor Jeffress saying Trump is the only one going to take us to the promised land Moreover one of Christian nationalism s variants the New Apostolic Reformation views politics as a key part of a cosmic battle between good and evil painting Democrats and other opponents as demonic and issuing divine blessings of political leaders like Trump By interpreting away the ban on endorsing or opposing candidates the IRS may only further encourage this kind of divisive demonizing politics in churches While such Christian nationalist ministers may be eager to take advantage of this new approach it s not clear that there will be a broader rush among clergy into the political realm Only percent of clergy in the U S disclosed they had endorsed or opposed a candidate while preaching speaking or writing to their congregation according to a up-to-date survey just percent indicated they would if the tax law permitted Given the widespread unpopularity of candidate endorsements by houses of worship I suspect greater part congregations will continue to refrain from the practice Candidate endorsements menace introducing partisan divisions and rancor into congregations Furthermore if congregants and the wider inhabitants start to see ministers as little more than political flacks both clergy and church may be tarred with the same negativity with which the masses views politics and politicians generally Still there are real concerns about this guidelines change For one the IRS may have now opened the door for dark money to flood into churches a particular concern here in Texas where lavish campaign-related spending by Christian billionaires from West Texas now exerts tremendous sway over state politics As the Campaign Legal Center notes if the ban on electioneering was lifted churches could become super dark money groups for anonymous donors to bankroll electoral campaigns with a charitable tax deduction to boot Further the move is part of a broader undermining of church-state separation that bedrock constitutional principle that prevents any one religion from monopolizing the religious realm Here in Texas church-state separation has been under sustained attack by Christian nationalist-minded lawmakers and activists for well over a decade most of in recent days with new laws passed requiring that the Ten Commandments are posted in every citizens school classroom that schools provide a daily period for prayer and the enactment of a school voucher scheme using taxpayer funds to subsidize religious tuition It s too soon for certainty about the impact of the new IRS program as for now it applies only to the parties in the lawsuit But opponents of the Johnson Amendment like Tony Perkins are likely to test the boundaries and push to permanently unshackle the church One thing is clear this change has the probable to reshape both politics and religion in the U S in strategies that may not be healthy for either The post How Trump s IRS May Unshackle Churches from Their Political Restraints appeared first on The Texas Observer