Leading up to Election Day, public radio stations across the state are exploring how Texans’ religious beliefs affect the way they’re thinking about voting in November and the greater role of government in general. Want to share a story? Send us a voice memo.
Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, San Antonio Pastor John Hagee warned his 19,000-member Cornerstone Church about the future if "the wrong people” got elected.
“There will be no police force to stop the socialist mob that will come down the street to rob your house. To burn your house. To burn your city. To burn your business. To attack your church. To attack your synagogue,” Hagee said. “Pastors will be sent to jail, just like [what] happens in Russia or China. You think that can’t happen? It’s happening now in America!”
He’s just one of the state’s many influential religious leaders who eagerly jump into the swirling waters of political debate without concern of pushback. Under federal law, churches and nonprofits exempt from taxes are restricted from being involved in political campaigns. But lax enforcement of those rules means that churches — in Texas and across the country — continue to weigh into the political fray more and more, pushing the boundaries of what is allowed.
Churches and political speech
The Johnson Amendment lays out, through the Internal Revenue Service, how churches and nonprofits can navigate political speech and activities. Texas’ own Lyndon B. Johnson, then serving as one of the state’s U.S. senators in Washington, D.C., was the main force behind the 1954 legislation.
According to the IRS’s website, “All section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”
Contributions to political campaigns and “public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office” are also not allowed.
But today, those limits are taken less and less seriously, according to Eric McDaniel, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He also co-directs the university’s Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab.
“You're seeing churches are now challenging [the limits], and a lot of that is really based around the fact that churches realize that if somebody goes after them, that's not politically viable," McDaniel said.
That trend was amplified, in part, by former President Donald Trump. Just weeks after he was sworn in as president, Trump told attendees at the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast that he planned to do away with the Johnson Amendment.
A 2022 Texas Tribune/ProPublica investigation into churches’ political speech found at least 20 across the country, including many in Texas, violated the law during the 2020 election and 2022 midterms.
“At one point, churches fretted over losing their tax-exempt status for even unintentional missteps. But the IRS has largely abdicated its enforcement responsibilities as churches have become more brazen,” the Texas Tribune reported. To be clear, federal law doesn’t prohibit all types of political speech. “The law is fairly narrow in scope. Nonpartisan voter education activities and church-organized voter registration drives are legal. Pastors are free to preach on social and political issues of concern,” reported NPR.
The separation of church and state
The United States might have been founded on the idea that the church and state should be separate. But that concept is not explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution.
McDaniel said that what citizens understand as the separation of church and state comes from the First Amendment, specifically: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
“We've interpreted it as this separation that we will not have a state-sanctioned church. Therefore, the church will not dictate to the state, and the state will not dictate to the church,” he said.
To understand why the founding fathers wrote what they wrote, McDaniel said it’s important to remember what they were rebelling against.
“One of the concerns about the separation of church and state is that you did not want to have a state-sanctioned religion, such as what you saw in the Church of England, where your taxes automatically went to that church to fund that church,” he said.
But why hasn’t the modern U.S. government tried to rein in partisan churches? McDaniel blamed optics.
“They may be breaking the law,” he said, but church leaders know that “going after a church is not going to be well received.”
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