Political pastors offer up Biblical bait to IRS during election season
A nearly 60-year-old tax law prohibits preaching politics from the pulpit, but with just days before the presidential election, dozens of Georgia’s religious leaders are embracing a movement to challenge the rule.
Pastors across metro Atlanta have openly flouted the law in recent weeks, attacking the Internal Revenue Service’s stance as an intrusion of their sacred free speech rights. Others have endorsed a political candidate, and some have dared the federal government to sanction them for expressing their political preferences, eager at the chance of a legal battle over religion and politics. Violating the law could cost a church its tax-exempt status.
“There are risks to be taken and I knowingly take those risks. But I refuse to compromise God’s word and I refuse to be muzzled,” began Jerry Helton, who leads Blairsville’s House of Prayer Interdenominational Church, in a sermon earlier this month.
Helton’s church was among at least 38 in Georgia to participate in “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” a national movement sponsored by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The group says it will enlist lawyers to support churches who were challenged by the IRS, but so far the federal government has steered clear of sanctioning participants.
Political activism in the church is nothing new. Conservative Republicans have long tied their message to the church, and black clergy took to the pulpit to urge voters to the polls amid The Civil Rights Movement.
This dispute, however, stems from a 1954 law sponsored by Lyndon B. Johnson, then a senator, blocking nonprofits from participating in campaigns for public office. In short, churches are prohibited from backing a political candidate. It’s not clear what prompted Johnson’s legislation and whether its impact on churches was intended, though at the time Johnson was sparring with nonprofit groups who opposed his agenda.
Many of the churches involved in the most recent effort appear to be predominantly white and politically conservative, though left-leaning pastors have also expressed frustration with the rule.
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