Churches are breaking the law and endorsing in elections, experts say. The IRS looks the other way.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Thie IRS needs to enforce the law on these churches

Link to tweet

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/30/johnson-amendment-elections-irs/

Six days before a local runoff election last year in Frisco, a prosperous and growing suburb of Dallas, Brandon Burden paced the stage of KingdomLife Church. The pastor told congregants that demonic spirits were operating through members of the City Council.....

What Burden said that day in May 2021 was a violation of a long-standing federal law barring churches and nonprofits from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, tax law experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Although the provision was mostly uncontroversial for decades after it passed in 1954, it has become a target for both evangelical churches and former President Donald Trump, who vowed to eliminate it.

Burden’s sermon is among those at 18 churches identified by the news organizations over the past two years that appeared to violate the Johnson Amendment, a measure named after its author, former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Some pastors have gone so far as to paint candidates they oppose as demonic.

What Burden said that day in May 2021 was a violation of a long-standing federal law barring churches and nonprofits from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, tax law experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Although the provision was mostly uncontroversial for decades after it passed in 1954, it has become a target for both evangelical churches and former President Donald Trump, who vowed to eliminate it.

Burden’s sermon is among those at 18 churches identified by the news organizations over the past two years that appeared to violate the Johnson Amendment, a measure named after its author, former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Some pastors have gone so far as to paint candidates they oppose as demonic......

Lawrence Swicegood, executive director of Gateway Media, said this month that the church doesn’t endorse candidates but “inform(s) our church family of other church family members who are seeking office to serve our community.” Page told ProPublica and the Tribune that “these candidates were named for information only.”

Eleven days after responding to ProPublica and the Tribune in October, Morris once again told his church that he was not endorsing any candidates during the last Sunday sermon before early voting. Then, he again displayed the names of specific candidates on a screen and told parishioners to take screenshots with their cellphones.

[RockRaven]

1. If the IRS attempts to enforce the law, this SCOTUS will eviscerate the law, and any adjacent laws.

So all the outcomes are bad. Lawlessness, or lawlessness. Scylla, or Charybdis.

[unblock]

2. This is easy to get around, just like campaign bribery.

It's illegal to pay a politician to put loophole into legislation. But it's legal to talk about wanting the loophole at one meeting, then walk across the street to a different venue, then have another meeting that, gosh, is completely unrelated, in which money is contributed to the campaign.

Similarly, it's perfectly legal for a church leader to sermonize about an issue (say, abortion) then say god wants you to vote with that issue in mind. Then they call up a member if the church who holds no official position -- just a member of the congregation -- who then tells people where the candidates and parties stand on that issue. Since it's not a church officer talking the church can say that officially they take no position on who to vote for, they just allow members to talk about it.

But of course, the only select certain people to speak about the candidates,...

Do it that way and it's perfectly legal.


Really the law accomplishes next to nothing. Too easy to get around. Which in turn makes the blatant violations all the more ridiculous.

[NullTuples]

3. Thanks to a number of Republican mechanisms...

The IRS has not enforced the Johnson Amendment since 2007 thanks in large part to a Republican judge who said the agency had to have a designated person to sign off on each and every investigation. Said position was then never filled.
It's a long story, but in 2012 Bishops were taking out full page paid op-eds with their endorsements. In 2014 they openly dared the IRS to try to stop them. Some of the You Tube videos are still up.

[JI7]

4. That's been true forever in this country

[Samrob]

5. There is no respect for the law in this country any more, by anyone since Trump made it ok to

worship him. It will all change once we get a new SCOTUS that itself respects the law. Not until then. They don't even respect the laws they have passed in the past.

[303squadron]

6. Quotes by Barry Goldwater and Robert Heinlein

"Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. " ~ Barry Goldwater

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.” ~ Robert Heinlein

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. The Heinlein quote describes where we are today.

[BigDemVoter]

8. I am so FUCKING tired of this. . . .

So many of them want to ram their religious beliefs & practices down everyone's throat, and they get a tax break to do so. . . . Sickening.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

9. K&R