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 Service (IRS) signaled it would reinterpret a longstanding ban on candidate endorsements by tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits. The so-called Johnson Amendment, named for its author and then-U.S. Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, has long been 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 policy 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.
