Chances are Catholic bishops won’t want priests to endorse candidates during Mass. Despite expectations, evangelical Protestants might not rush to endorse, either. By strong tradition, they desire sermons on biblical teaching, not politics, and they need no special prodding from pastors in order to vote Republican.

(ANALYSIS) Unless a federal court challenge succeeds, American clergy are now free to endorse political candidates in sermons during worship. The Internal Revenue Service has just erased the pulpit prohibition that for 71 years was among conditions to obtain federal tax exemption on income and donor gifts.

The impact is tough to predict. Is this a tempest in a Trump era teacup or a switch that’s “toxic for both churches and our politics,” as law professor Brian Galle warns? How many and which sort of pulpits will turn political? Can sermons really reshape campaigns? Which party benefits more? Most important, whatever the political boost, will pulpit endorsements help or hurt American religions?

Existing tax law grants exemption if a non-profit organization “does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” When Sen. (later President) Lyndon B. Johnson introduced this as an amendment to the tax code’s section 501(c)(3), it was non-controversial and adopted without debate.

That language does not prevent non-profits from taking stands on political issues. But some religious activists have consistently decried the endorsements ban as violating free speech under the Constitution, and Republicans have taken up the cause. At the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast, newly-elected President Donald Trump promised he’d “totally destroy” the ban, and issued an executive order against enforcement by the IRS.

This past April, House and Senate Republicans introduced the Free Speech Fairness Act, which would allow partisan statements by all non-profits, not just religious ones. But the Trump Administration presumably calculated legislative repeal cannot pass and so, as on many matters, is bypassing Congress and employing executive action.

On July 7, the IRS entered a joint consent decree to settle a free-speech complaint filed by two Texas churches along with National Religious Broadcasters and Intercessors for America. Using legal legerdemain, the IRS said the 1954 “Johnson Amendment” remains intact. But its new reinterpretation says no unlawful campaign intervention occurs “when a house of worship in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith.”

Read More