The
Senate has stripped language from a House spending bill that would have
stopped the Internal Revenue Service from revoking the tax-exempt status
of non-profit organizations that engage in campaigning for political
candidates.
As passed by the House of Representatives on July 19, 2018, by a vote of 217 to 199, Section 112 of H.R. 6147,
the “Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
Appropriations Act of 2019” would have taken away funding for the IRS to
enforce the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations
from engaging in political campaigning for or against candidates.
Non-profit organizations may address current legislative or policy
issues in a non-partisan manner.
Although members of the House had attempted to remove the language,
they failed to do so, but between July 19 and August 1 the Senate
reviewed numerous amendments and ultimately removed Section 112. The
revised bill overwhelmingly passed the Senate by a vote of 92 to 6.
While the IRS has rarely attempted to enforce
the Johnson Amendment, it is widely thought that its elimination would
open the floodgates for non-profit organizations to begin to divert
non-traceable tax-deductible “dark money” donations to political
campaigning on behalf of political candidates and strike against the
non-partisan nature of non-profit charities.
Last year, a similar attempt to revoke the Johnson Amendment failed after Democrats invoked the “Byrd rule,” which prohibits reconciliation tax bills from including “extraneous” provisions not related to federal revenue and spending.
In a May 4, 2017, executive order, President Trump ordered that the
IRS limit enforcement of the Johnson Amendment “to the extent permitted
by law.” Despite claims to the contrary, the order did not alter or eliminate the Johnson Amendment, and it remains in force.
Eliminating the Johnson Amendment plays well with "the
base," but most non-profits really don't want it eliminated because they
do not want the pressure from donors to deal with electoral politics.
So the repeal language passes in the House version of a spending bill
and gets kicked from the Senate due to the obscure ByrdRule.
This happened last year as well. The Trump administration issued an
executive order about it in 2017, but avoided making any substantive
changes. If Congress were really serious about eliminating the Johnson
Amendment, it would be done in a separate piece of legislation.
By a Large Margin, Majority of Americans Want Johnson Amendment in Place
Sep 12, 2018 | BJC news
Written by Don Byrd
In a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll conducted in August,
only 13% of respondents favored “allowing religious leaders to endorse
candidates while retaining their tax exempt status.” 57% opposed the
idea, including 38% who strongly oppose.
The law that prohibits tax-exempt organizations (including houses of
worship) from endorsing candidates, commonly referred to as the “Johnson
Amendment,” has been under fire in recent years by politicians, despite
the strong and consistent public opposition to repealing it. Most
recently, President Trump assured a group of evangelical leaders at
a White House dinner that he had removed that hurdle prohibiting
politics in the pulpit, even though the Johnson Amendment remains the
law of the land. Efforts to repeal it, which would require an act of
Congress, have been rejected.
In other interesting tidbits from the poll, by a 48-43 margin,
respondents said that when they vote, it is “important that a candidate
has strong religious beliefs.” Less important (42-47) to respondents is
that the candidate shares their religious beliefs, and even less
important (36-51) is that the candidate is supported by the respondent’s
religious leaders.
Republicans’ attempts to repeal the Johnson Amendment aren’t over yet.
For nearly two years now, Donald Trump has promised the Religious Right that he would sign a repeal of the rule, which forbids places of worship from endorsing political candidates if they want to keep their tax exempt status. If he were to rescind it, Christian churches be one step closer to essentially becoming fundraising arms of the Republican Party. We have no idea how much dark money would start flowing to campaigns via churches when that day arrives.
Those efforts began right after Trump took office, when he signed an executive order claiming to repeal the rule… but it had no teeth. It was more of a performance than anything substantive.
Since then, Republicans have attempted to do the job legislatively by putting the repeal into various spending bills… to no avail. The latest attempt, in March, involved an omnibus spending bill. But when the $1.3 trillion bill was finally released, the Johnson Amendment repeal wasn’t included. (More specifically, there was no language prohibiting the IRS from using its time and money to go after churches that violate the rule by telling the congregation who to vote for.)
That doesn’t mean they’ve stopped trying. After that failure, Faith and Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed announced at the Road to Majority Conference that he was working with congressional Republicans in another attempt to rescind the rule by putting the repeal in the next “must-pass” bill.
Looks like that announcement is finally coming true. Yesterday, the House voted 217-199 to ban the IRS from taking away any church’s tax exemption for backing a political candidate unless the agency’s commissioner gave special permission. As POLITICO notes, this comes “only days after the Treasury Department announced it was dropping requirements that most charitable organizations disclose their big donors to the IRS.”
None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Internal Revenue Service to deny tax exemption under section 501(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 with respect to a church, an integrated auxiliary of a church, or a convention or association of churches for participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office unless —
(1) the Commissioner of Internal Revenue determines that the exemption should be denied…
It’s not a done deal yet. Republicans on the Senate didn’t include the repeal in their own version of the IRS funding bill, so the difference will have to be settled.
Targeting the prohibition through the budgetary process is sure to be controversial in the Senate. Republicans there did not include the proviso in their draft of the IRS’ budget, and Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax committee, pledged Thursday to “use every tool at my disposal to prevent that from happening.”
The irony in all this is that thousands and thousands of religious leaders don’t want to see the rule repealed. They’ve already signed a letter urging Congress to keep the Johnson Amendment in place. They want politics out of religion. They understand that they’re already free to speak about issues that matter to them, but they have no desire to tell their congregations who to vote for.
While atheist groups aren’t represented in that letter, the Secular Coalition for America and 10 of its member groups sent a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations last year saying roughly the same thing (even though we don’t have houses of worship). The atheists also pointed out that the likely repeal would be problematic because it gives churches — but not secular non-profits — a way to endorse candidates without losing tax exempt status. In other words, this would be a potential lawsuit waiting to happen.
With media attention focused on the national debate raging over health care, it would be easy to ignore the spending bill quietly making its way through the House of Representatives. Such proposals often dwell in the largely mundane machinations of the federal government, and technical disputes over its complicated provisions can fly under the radar.
But if you care about the separation of church and state, this year’s bill might be worth paying attention to.
Tucked deep inside more than 200 pages of text is a tiny provision, recently added by the House Appropriations Committee, designed to defang the so-called Johnson Amendment — a section of the tax code that bars churches (a broad legal term that includes most faith groups) and other tax-exempt nonprofits from explicitly endorsing political candidates.
In its current form, the bill would effectively defund attempts by the IRS to take action against churches who violate the amendment by engaging in explicit political action. Any movement on the issue would necessitate a 90-day waiting period and require agents to notify two congressional committees and get sign-off from the head of the IRS. Nonprofits that lack a faith affiliation, meanwhile, would still be beholden to the amendment.
Trump’s Lawyer helped birth the GOP Effort to Politicize Churches. Now his dream may come true.
Jay Sekulow once represented a church that lost its tax-exempt status for running ads against Bill Clinton.
This isn’t the first attempt to hobble the statute. President Donald Trump has promised to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment, and weakened its enforcement in an executive order he signed back in May. The move, in turn, was celebrated by Religious Right leaders who have long championed repealing the provision as part of their “religious liberty” agenda, arguing it inhibits their free speech.
But experts say the GOP-led effort may be about something else, as the law is almost never enforced to begin with. Instead, the impetus for repealing the Johnson Amendment — especially quietly — may have less to do with ‘religious liberty’ and more to do with using religion as a means to create a new form of political power.
Repealing the Johnson Amendment is a solution in search of a problem
The debate over Johnson Amendment is relatively new, but the law has been around for more than half a century. Inserted into a 1954 tax bill by then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson, the provision prohibits nonprofits — both faith-based and others — from endorsing candidates or being explicitly partisan in their work. Groups that violate the ban risk losing their tax-exempt status.
The law went largely unchallenged for decades. In recent years, however, conservative (especially evangelical Christian) leaders have drummed up opposition to it, arguing it detrimentally impacts faith-based institutions. Since 2008, the right-wing group Alliance Defending Freedom has organized “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” in which more than 1,000 pastors deliver political sermons and mail recordings of their remarks to the IRS, daring them to take action. The effort appeared to crescendo earlier this year: In February, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) introduced the Free Speech Fairness Act in the House, which would strike down amendment.
But while the IRS has sent sternly worded letters to churches that preach partisan politics from the pulpit, experts say only one church — Church at Pierce Creek in Conklin, New York — is known to have lost its tax-exempt status for violating the provision over the past three decades. After a lengthy legal battle, the church was punished for taking out a full-page ad against Bill Clinton in USA Today during his 1992 campaign for president. (In a twist, the church was represented by one Jay Sekulow — who now serves as one of President Trump’s many lawyers.)
“There have been very few organizations that have lost their exemption…The typical answer was to slap people on the wrist. There’s a real problem when the answer is ‘you lose exemption’ — the IRS would look for any way it could get around making that choice.”
“There have been very few organizations that have lost their exemption,” Philip Hackney, a LSU law school professor and the former IRS attorney, told ThinkProgress. “The typical answer was to slap people on the wrist. There’s a real problem when the answer is ‘you lose exemption’ — the IRS would look for any way it could get around making that choice.”
Hackney listed several possible reasons why the IRS doesn’t expend more energy cracking down on violations. The agency likely doesn’t have enough staff and resources to prioritize the issue, for example, and generally considers such violations to be a small problem. The bar for enforcing the rule is also unusually high: Investigating a church requires approval from high-level IRS officials, which Hackney said makes the process “very costly.”
Another equally important factor, however, is the threat of political blowback.
Most religious Americans don’t want more politics in their pulpit
Not a single major U.S. religious denomination supports it.
“There is a real danger to enforcing a provision on churches, particularly one that is such a salient issue on so many people,” Hackney said. “It’s politically problematic [for the IRS commissioner]…there is a natural tendency, because of the danger of touching this, to not do a ton of enforcing.”
Indeed, the IRS has faced political strife over similar disputes in the past. In 2013, the agency was accused of unfairly targeting conservative Tea Party groups for audit during the 2012 election.
“It’s politically problematic [for the IRS commissioner]…there is a natural tendency because of the danger of touching this to not do a ton of enforcing.”
Meanwhile, the exact number of churches investigated by the IRS remains a well-kept secret. When ThinkProgress asked IRS officials for data on churches or faith-based nonprofits who have been audited or had their tax-exempt status revoked for violations of the Johnson Amendment, they demurred. Spokespeople argued revealing such information would violate various tax laws. (Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, for example, prohibits the IRS from disclosing returns or return information.)
The IRS seems to have been less concerned about such laws in 2008, however, when the agency released a report on the “Political Activities Compliance Initiative” conducted under the George W. Bush administration. An alleged copy of the report, pointed out to ThinkProgress by Loyola University Chicago school of Law professor and issue expert Sam Brunson, reported that the IRS investigated 44 churches (in addition to other nonprofits) for violations of political action in the 2006 campaign season, but only sent four “written advisories” for “political intervention.” None appear to have been audited or stripped of their tax-exempt status.
The report appears to have been posted on the IRS website in 2008 and has since been referenced in several academic articles on the subject, but links to the document were seemingly scrubbed from IRS.gov around 2014 — shortly after the Tea Party targeting scandal.
The IRS has yet to respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry about the veracity of the report or why it has gone missing from their website.
Allowing Churches to Endorse Candidates is really, Really Unpopular
Although Trump and a few conservatives have championed repealing the Johnson Amendment as something of a legislative Holy Grail, you’d be hard pressed to find many Americans who would say the same.
Why? Because the idea is wildly unpopular, including among faith groups.
A 2016 PRRI poll found that not only do 71 percent of Americans oppose allowing churches to openly back politicians while maintaining their tax-exempt status, but majorities of every major American faith community also feel the same way. White mainline Protestants, Catholics, and black Protestants all reject the idea in sizable numbers, as does the group whose leadership keeps pushing it anyway: 56 percent white evangelical Protestants oppose further politicizing their pulpits, according to the poll.
Some faith groups are even actively lobbying against a Johnson Amendment repeal. In April, 99 faith groups — including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Episcopal Church — sent a letter to Congress speaking out against “any effort to weaken or eliminate protections that prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, including houses of worship, from endorsing or opposing political candidates.”
“They’re doing this through a budget bill because they don’t think people notice budget bills. As a supporter of democracy … something this important deserves to be debated in public.”
The Los Angeles Times also published an editorial statement on Tuesday accusing Republicans of “engaging in stealth tactics” to gut the provision, which they say “could violate the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment.”
Groups like the Center for Inquiry — which pushes for a more secular society “based on reason, science, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values”— have also been working to draw attention to the GOP’s actions. “They’re doing this through a budget bill because they don’t think people notice budget bills,” Nick Little, the Center for Inquiry’s legal director, told ThinkProgress. “As a supporter of democracy… something this important deserves to be debated in public.”
Nevertheless, the issue remains a focus of groups like ADF, who have incorporated activism around the Johnson Amendment into a larger fundraising strategy.
“As a practical matter, the ADF has found this issue to be very salient,” Brunson told ThinkProgress. He pointed to ADF’s website, which flanks its Pulpit Freedom Sunday page with donate buttons.
Churches as havens for “dark money?”
If the Johnson Amendment is almost never enforced — a fact acknowledged even by groups like ADF — and is deeply unpopular with the American public, then why repeal it?
Granted, Trump and Republican lawmakers would likely be showered in praise from the Religious Right if the provision gets passed. But the real drive may be about something else: money.
“There are groups, often among the evangelical right, who want to funnel large sums of money to political candidates,” Nick Little said.
As The Atlantic’s Emma Green pointed out last year, repealing the Johnson Amendment could prove catastrophic to political transparency efforts. If faith groups are allowed to retain their tax-exempt status but act in political ways, an individual may be more likely to contribute to a church or house of worship (which is tax deductible) than a political campaign (which isn’t tax deductible).
According to Philip Hackney, this tactic might quickly run into legal challenges, as other provisions of the tax code prohibit receiving deductions for political activity. But he added that churches still might play “fast and loose” with legal definitions.
“There are groups, often among the evangelical right, who want to funnel large sums of money to political candidates,” Little said.
And both Little and Hackney pointed to a larger issue that could arise in the absence of the Johnson Amendment: The influx of so-called “dark money” — political funds whose sources remain undisclosed — into churches. Churches are not required to publicize their large donors, meaning an individual could pump money into a church during an election cycle without ever having to make their donation public. The difference between a church and a Super PAC — neither of which are beholden to finance laws used to reign in campaign donations — would effectively vanish.
“You could have unlimited dark money flowing to a campaign if this gets passed, and there is nothing the IRS could do about it,” Little said. “They would be getting a double benefit.”
Sam Brunson was slightly less concerned about the potential impact of dark money, saying there are other parts of the tax code that would prevent a church from spending most of its money or time on political activities. The exact parameters of that hypothetical limit are a bit unclear, he said, but he doesn’t expect an “apocalypse” of dark money to overtake churches.
Still, Brunson acknowledged the Johnson Amendment helps protect faith communities that would prefer to remain apolitical, insulating them from political entities who could entice them with deep pockets. And even if dark money only has a limited impact on campaigns, he said, politicized megapastors with large churches in swing states could still turn the tide on Election Day.
“It probably doesn’t cost a church anything for a pastor to preach a sermon,” Brunson said.
The piece has been updated to clarify that Church at Pierce Creek’s lawyer was Jay Sekulow, now Trump’s lawyer.
On July 19, the House of Representatives passed a combined package of two 2019 appropriations bills, one of which includes language that would effectively block enforcement of the Johnson Amendment for churches. This package passed largely on party lines and action now turns to the Senate.
The Johnson Amendment is a decades-old protection of nonpartisanship for the charitable sector, and enacting this language would tear nonprofits away from their missions, erode public trust in the sector, and help political donors dodge taxes at the expense of the federal treasury.
The Senate version of the Financial Services/General Government (FSGG) bill is expected to be on the Senate floor next week, in addition to other spending bills potentially covering Agriculture and Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development. The Senate version does not currently contain any anti-Johnson Amendment language, and Senate leadership has thus far upheld a commitment to keep divisive policy provisions out of this year’s appropriations bills. These bills will eventually go to conference committee, where differences will need to be reconciled.
Similar to the omnibus 2018 spending bill in March, preventing this harmful language from moving forward will need to occur when the bills are in the conference committee. Please stay tuned, as we send continued updates on what to expect next and how you can help keep partisan politics out of our sector.
The House Appropriations Committee is considering a bill that would weaken the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits charities from directly or indirectly attempting to influence an election or defeat of any candidate for public office.
The Financial Services and Government Appropriations Act contains language that undermines the Johnson Amendment by prohibiting the Internal Revenue Service from spending any funds on determining if a house of worship or its affiliate broke the law. The only exception would be if the IRS Commissioner approves the investigation and Congress is notified well ahead of time.
Included in Section 112 of the Financial Service and Government Services Appropriations bill is language that would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from spending any money enforcing the Johnson Amendment when applied to “churches” and their auxiliaries. The only exception is if the IRS Commissioner approves the investigation and notifies Congress. Even in that case, the IRS must wait 90 days to actually enforce the Johnson Amendment.
The bill says nothing about other types of worship, and offers no reductions or lessening of the Johnson Amendment for secular nonprofits.
The Senate has already passed its appropriations bill. Because of action by AFP and other nonprofits, that legislation does not contain any provision to weaken the Johnson Amendment. However, is the House bill is passed in its current form, Section 112 could be included in the final version of the bill.
The Financial Services and Government Services Appropriations Act may be considered this week. AFP members are encouraged to contact their Members of Congress, especially if they serve on the Appropriations Committee, and ask them to support the Johnson Amendment and change the language of Section 112.
Please take a couple of minutes to call your two U.S. Senators today and say:
“I’m calling to urge you to not weaken the Johnson Amendment, which has protected nonprofit organizations from partisan influence for over sixty years. The Financial Services appropriations bill that you will be voting on this week would dramatically weaken these protections for some nonprofits and would do lasting damage to the entire sector. I hope you will protect the Johnson Amendment by removing Section 112 of the Financial Services appropriations bill.”
The Johnson Amendment makes it illegal for tax-exempt religious institutions to make statements in support of political candidates and position.
This is an IRS rule.
Repeal opens the door to people and institutions who claim tax exempt status as religious organizations to enter the realm of politics; essentially campaigning from the pulpit as an advocate for persons or positions.
Since the U.S. Constitution prohibits establishment of state religion, and does not contain any other reference to religion or to god, U.S. lawmakers should uphold the Johnson Amendment.
“President Donald Trump announced [that] he is nominating Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created when Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement June 27.
“In a brief speech after the announcement, Kavanaugh spoke about the importance of his Catholic upbringing and how it has affected his career.”
Apparently, Kavanaugh feels very connected to the Jesuits. In his remarks, Kavanaugh chose to highlight his formative training at Georgetown Prep, an important Jesuit high school near Washington, D.C. “The motto of my Jesuit high school was ‘men for others’,” said Kavanaugh, “I have tried to live that creed.”
“I am part of the vibrant Catholic community in the D.C. area,” he added. He also made special mention of Msgr. John Enzler, President and CEO of Catholic Charities, who was present at the announcement. “40 years ago, I was an altar boy for Fr. John,” said Kavanaugh, adding that they now serve the homeless together through his work with Catholic Charities.
Kavanaugh currently serves on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and has done so since 2006. Previously, he worked in the George W. Bush White House.
Bush said that Kavanaugh “is a brilliant jurist who has faithfully applied the Constitution and laws throughout his 12 years on the D.C. Circuit. He is a fine husband, father, and friend — a man of the highest integrity.”
Kavanaugh clerked for Justice Kennedy, a Roman Catholic whom he is nominated to replace.
He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University. He and his wife, Ashley, have two daughters.
Kavanaugh’s nomination, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, will keep the court mostly dominated by five Roman Catholics, three Jews and one Episcopalian.
While Justice Kavanaugh is not likely a Jesuit, he has certainly learned how to think from them. He was mentored by them during some of his key formative years, and certainly knows them well. He speaks very highly of them. Will the Jesuits provide advice to Justice Kavanaugh behind the scenes on key cases? Rome’s hidden hand will remain quite strong in U.S. jurisprudence.
“Under various disguises the Jesuits worked their way into offices of state, climbing up to be the counselors of kings, and shaping the policy of nations.” The Great Controversy, page 235.
KTF - prophetic Intelligence Briefing
Source References
Brett Kavanaugh nominated to US Supreme Court
Brett Kavanaugh (L) is sworn in as a US Court of Appeals Judge by US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (R), in Washington, D.C., June 1, 2006. Credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images.
(CNA/EWTN News) .- President Donald Trump announced Monday night he is nominating Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created when Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement June 27.
In a brief speech after the announcement, Kavanaugh spoke about the importance of his Catholic upbringing and how it has affected his career.
The July 9 announcement came after much speculation over how Trump will choose to shape the Supreme Court during his first term. This is the second vacancy he has filled; previously, he appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Confirmation hearings are expected to begin shortly in the Senate.
Trump said that Kavanaugh "has devoted his life to public service."
After being introduced, Kavanaugh said he is "deeply honored" to be nominated.
“The motto of my Jesuit high school was 'men for others',” said Kavanaugh, who graduated from Georgetown Preparatory School near Washington, D.C. “I have tried to live that creed.”
“I am part of the vibrant Catholic community in the D.C. area,” he said at his nomination. “The members of that community disagree about many things, but we are united in our commitment to serve.”
Kavanaugh highlighted his commitment to service, both in and out of the courtroom. He volunteers serving meals to the homeless, coaching his daughter’s basketball team, and tutoring at an elementary school.
He made special mention of Msgr. John Enzler, President and CEO of Catholic Charities, who was present at the announcement.
“40 years ago, I was an altar boy for Fr. John,” said Kavanaugh, adding that they now serve the homeless together through his work with Catholic Charities.
Kavanaugh currently serves on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and has done so since 2006. Previously, he worked in the George W. Bush White House.
Bush said that Kavanaugh "is a brilliant jurist who has faithfully applied the Constitution and laws throughout his 12 years on the D.C. Circuit. He is a fine husband, father, and friend — a man of the highest integrity."
Kavanaugh clerked for Justice Kennedy.
He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University. He and his wife, Ashley, have two daughters.
On abortion, not much is known regarding his personal views. Kavanaugh recently wrote a decision that prevented a pregnant undocumented minor in federal custody from receiving an abortion. The decision was overturned by another court.
Kavanaugh has written dissents in the past opposing undocumented persons voting in union elections and was opposed to expanding visas to foreign workers when there were Americans who could do the job.
His 2015 ruling on the HHS contraception mandate was met with a mixed response. While he sided with Priests for Life in their case against the Obama administration, he appeared to acknowledge a “compelling” interest in the availability of government-provided contraception, which had previously been recognized by members of the Supreme Court.
In a case involving the Washington Metro’s prohibition on religious-themed advertisements, including an ad by the Archdiocese of Washington, Kavanaugh was “unrelenting” in his questioning of the Metro’s lawyer, saying that he believed the prohibition was “discriminatory.”
"Large national nonprofits could theoretically be turned into super PACs with candidates writing off 'donations' to their own campaigns,” Emily Cote, vice president of communications and engagement at the New York Council of Nonprofits, wrote for New York Nonprofit Media in May. “Political money would be harder to follow making accurate campaign reporting more difficult. And the public, already fatigued by information overload, would now be forced to try and rectify a nonprofit’s political leanings with their own.”
Editor’s Note: Senators need to hear from every person concerned for nonprofits, house of worships, and foundations in their states, as well as all who believe organizations have greater impact when they remain nonpartisan. Go to this Take Action page of the nonprofit coalition (www.GiveVoice.org) to learn what you can do right now to protect nonprofit nonpartisanship.
This week, the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 6147, the “Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2019,” more commonly referred to as a “minibus” (as opposed to omnibus) spending bill. The House passage of this bill, coupled with the US Treasury Department’s announcement on Monday evening that the IRS will stop collecting donor information from tax-exempt organizations that are not charities, has once again raised alarm bells among those who believe in the nonpartisan nature of charitable activity as well as the importance of donor disclosure for all tax-exempt organizations, regardless of the type of IRS exemption they have received.
Section 112 of the bill curtails the IRS’s ability to revoke the tax exemption of churches that engage in political campaigns.
The relevant paragraph reads as follows:
None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Internal Revenue Service to deny tax exemption under section 501(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 with respect to a church, an integrated auxiliary of a church, or a convention or association of churches for participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office unless—
(1) the Commissioner of Internal Revenue determines that the exemption should be denied;
(2) not later than 30 days after such determination, the Commissioner notifies the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate of such determination; and
(3) such denial is effective not earlier than 90 days after the date of the notification under paragraph (2).
As NPQ reported, the same basic language was used in last year’s financial services appropriations bill. However, the provision was stripped from the Senate version of the bill after intense lobbying by a coalition of faith-based and secular nonprofit organizations and associations. But the House is persisting in its desire to repeal and/or constrain the Johnson Amendment.
NPQ has taken a stand against repealing or weakening the Johnson Amendment, which has been part of the federal tax code since 1954. The National Council of Nonprofits (NCN) reports more than 5,800 signers of a “Community Letter in Support of Nonpartisanship” as well as support for the Johnson Amendment from more than 4,500 faith leaders and over 100 religious and denomination organizations. Focusing specifically on 501c4 social welfare groups often referred to as “dark money” groups, CEO Tim Delaney tied the appropriations bill and Treasury regulations change together and said in a statement that “It’s now impossible for Congress and the White House to deny their objective: to politicize the trusted charitable nonprofit community by authorizing unlimited, unfettered, and untraceable political money to flow through the nonprofit sector to benefit partisan special interests.”
Expect NCN and other advocates for the Johnson Amendment to make their voices heard as the spending bill progresses through Congress.—Michael Wyland and Ruth McCambridge
This article has been altered from its initial form.
Charitable nonprofits do not exist to launder political money but to solve problems in our communities. The collateral damage caused by these governmental actions would be devastating to the reputations of charitable nonprofits, even when they refuse to engage in partisan politicking.
This week or next, before members of Congress leave Washington for August recess and their re-election campaigns, they could decide the fate of attempts to politicize a major segment of the charitable nonprofit community.
The issue is whether the US Senate will agree to undermine the decades-old Johnson Amendment that protects charitable nonprofits, houses of worship, and foundations from demands that they participate in political campaigns for or against candidates for public office. The House has passed anti-Johnson Amendment language three times within the past year, including last week. So far, the Senate has said no to politicizing any portion of the charitable sector, but pressure is building to adopt anti-Johnson Amendment language, and election-year politics could prove to be a wild card. That’s why people who care about the integrity and effectiveness of the charitable nonprofit community need to contact their Senators now to say no. (If you’re already committed, visit the National Council of Nonprofits website for contact information and core messages.)
Last Thursday, the majority in the House passed HR 6147, a 457-page spending bill containing language that would effectively block enforcement of the Johnson Amendment against religious organizations for even the most egregious violations—including pouring charitable church assets directly into political campaigns. If the Senate ultimately agrees, perhaps by yielding to the House in conference committee, this radical change would weaponize houses of worship as political entities and allow secret—and suddenly tax-deductible—campaign contributions to be funneled through “churches.”
The news gets worse. Also last week, as NPQ reported, the administration revoked a regulation requiring many non-charitable tax-exempt organizations to disclose their donors to the IRS. As a result, law enforcement will not have access to the identities of people trying to buy elections through tax-exempt entities such as 501c4 social welfare organizations, 501c5 unions, and 501c6 chambers of commerce.
These parallel actions make it impossible for the US House and White House to continue denying their real objective: to politicize the trusted nonprofit community by empowering unlimited and untraceable political money to flow through charitable and other nonprofits to benefit partisan special interests.
Charitable nonprofits do not exist to launder political money; we are here to solve problems in our communities. The collateral damage caused by these governmental actions would be devastating to the reputations of charitable nonprofits, even when they refuse to engage in partisan politicking.
What makes these controversial actions even more offensive is that the politicians and monied interests trying to destroy this longstanding protection have attempted to disguise the truth from us by claiming with a straight face that they are acting in the name of free speech and religious liberty. In reality, their actions will just make it easier to rig elections by cloaking the identify of those seeking to manipulate our elections and democracy.
But don’t take my word for it; compare what they claim versus the facts:
What They Claim
Facts
They claim that current law restricts pastors’ free speech by not letting them discuss from the pulpit issues of the day like abortion, same-sex marriage, and gun rights, but…
The IRS has issued guidance making it crystal clear that religious leaders can talk about issues of the day from the pulpit.
The language they seek to repeal doesn’t say anything about issues of the day, just that Section 501(c)(3) organizations, to remain eligible to receive tax deductible donations, may “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.”
They claim they are acting on behalf of houses of worship, so preachers can endorse or oppose political candidates from the pulpit, but…
Every religious denomination on record actively opposes this radical change. The politicians voting for it have ignored that not a single religious denomination has taken an organizational position in favor of this legislation!
100+ denominations and major religious organizations signed a joint letter telling Congress they “strongly oppose any effort to weaken or eliminate protections that prohibit…houses of worship from endorsing or opposing political candidates” because, among other things, “people of faith do not want partisan political fights infiltrating their houses of worship” and “current law protects the integrity [and independence] of houses of worship.”
4,500+ faith leaders signed a Faith Voices letter to Congress declaring they “stronglyopposed any repeal or weakening of the Johnson Amendment” because, among other things, “engaging in partisan politics and issuing endorsements would be highly divisive and have a detrimental impact on congregational unity and civil discourse,” “faith leaders are called to speak truth to power, and we cannot do so if we are merely cogs in partisan political machines,” and “current law respects this independence and strikes the right balance: houses of worship that enjoy favored tax-exempt status may engage in advocacy to address moral and political issues, but they cannot tell people who to vote for or against.”
They claim they just want preachers to endorse or oppose political candidates from the pulpit and no money would change hands, and in other settings they claim they want to balance the federal budget, but…
This radical change would make the federal deficit billions of dollars worse, plus allow billions of dollars of secret campaign contributions to be funneled through churches. The politicians voting for it have ignored the $2.1 billion price tag to American taxpayers computed by Congress’ nonpartisan staff tasked with forecasting the costs of proposed legislation (Joint Committee on Taxation), who testified that weakening the Johnson Amendment would incentivize partisan political donors to divert making campaign contributions (currently non-tax deductible) to newly-politicized houses of worship in order—for the first time in history—to claim a tax deduction for dollars spent to influence elections. That $2.1 billion is just a fraction (22–37 percent tax brackets) of the roughly $6 to $8 billion that would be redirected to newly-politicized houses of worship to spend to influence elections.
Back to the Present-Day Threats
The House passed its version of the spending bill with the harmful language; the Senate is scheduled to take up its own version this week. So far, the harmful language has not been added to the Senate bill, and Senators say they are trying to avoid controversial, poison-pill riders such as the anti-Johnson Amendment language. But we all know that what’s considered controversial in the halls of Congress depends on whether politicians are hearing from constituents (with an assist from reporters and social media). I know you are busy and don’t want to waste your time. But the truth is, Senators need to hear from you loudly (at least) twice at these known threat points:
Today, before it comes up on the Senate floor, so they know to guard against anyone trying to slip in the harmful language at this stage; AND
Very soon (timing still undetermined)—because the House and Senate bills likely will differ on multiple issues, a conference committee from the House and Senate will be appointed to iron out differences. Senators will need to hear from you again to keep the House’s harmful language from being tacked onto the bill.
The message both times will be that you strongly oppose and expect them to stop this dangerous and controversial language. Please, for the sake of our missions, our sector, and the people we serve, call and tweet your Senatorstoday.
Remember: Just as elections have consequences when people don’t vote, policymaking has consequences when constituents remain silent.
It keeps getting worse: Lawmakers approve legislation that will effectively repeal the Johnson Amendment, opening the door to corruption, and making every church a potential political weapon.
The House voted Thursday to make it harder for the government to punish churches that get involved in politics.
In a 217-199 vote, lawmakers approved legislation barring the IRS from revoking the tax-exempt status of churches that back political candidates, unless it is specifically approved by the commissioner of the agency.
Politico notes the new legislation “amounts to a backdoor way around the so-called Johnson amendment, a half-century-old prohibition on nonprofits getting involved in political campaign activities.”
Writing for The Humanist, Matthew Bulger explains two significant consequences of repealing the Johnson Amendment for our democratic system:
Political donations to churches, which would eventually be given to candidates or causes, would be tax-deductible, unlike other forms of political giving. Contributions to super PACs and to candidates are not tax-deductible.
Donations to churches for political ends would be anonymous, unlike most other forms of political giving. This is especially concerning because while most 501(c)(3) groups must file a Form 990 with their tax return, which provides some information about the group and its activities, churches are exempt from that reporting requirement. As a result, their political spending would be nearly impossible to track.
In other words, repeal of the Johnson Amendment allows big money donors to make anonymous, tax deductible political contributions through churches, subverting any remaining campaign finance checks and balances, and corrupting at once both the political process and houses of worship that will be turned into little more than money laundering fronts for big money donors.
Responding to the new legislation, National Council of Nonprofits President and CEO Tim Delaney released the following statement:
It’s now impossible for Congress and the White House to deny their objective: to politicize the trusted charitable nonprofit community by authorizing unlimited, unfettered, and untraceable political money to flow through the nonprofit sector to benefit partisan special interests. Through their regulatory action removing the paper trail for 501(c)(4) organizations and their legislative action via a must-pass appropriations bill to weaken the longstanding Johnson Amendment and open the floodgates for getting a tax deduction for their political campaigning, they can no longer hide their agenda to impose partisan politics over public interest.
Charitable nonprofits are not in the business of partisan politics and are not here to be used to hide or launder political money; rather, we exist to solve problems in our communities for the common good. The collateral damage to the reputation of charitable nonprofits, even those that steer far clear of the secret money and pressure to endorse candidates, will be devastating. Is it too much to ask that politicians put this country’s interests above their own? Based on these two actions in Washington this week, it seems the answer is, sadly, yes.
Bottom line: This new legislation passed by the GOP controlled House effectively repeals the Johnson Amendment and will potentially convert every church in America into a dark money super PAC, corrupting an already deeply corrupt campaign finance policy, and moving the country ever closer to a Christian theocracy.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted 217-199 to pass an appropriations bill that includes a provision that would prohibit the IRS from denying or revoking the tax-exempt status of churches that engage in political activity, unless approved by the IRS Commissioner and prior notice is given to the House Ways and Means Committee. This provision would effectively weaken enforcement of the section 501(c)(3) prohibition on charities endorsing or opposing political candidates, commonly referred to as the Johnson Amendment. The appropriations bill, which includes an allocation of $11.6 billion for the IRS for fiscal year 2019, now moves to the Senate.
The provision, buried in a budget measure setting IRS funding for the upcoming year, amounts to a backdoor way around the so-called Johnson amendment, a half-century-old prohibition on nonprofits getting involved in political campaign activities. | Getty
House votes to prevent IRS from punishing churches engaging in politics
The House voted Thursday to make it harder for the government to punish churches that get involved in politics.
In a 217-199 vote, lawmakers approved legislation barring the IRS from revoking the tax-exempt status of churches that back political candidates, unless it is specifically approved by the commissioner of the agency.
The provision, buried in a budget measure setting IRS funding for the upcoming year, amounts to a backdoor way around the so-called Johnson amendment, a half-century-old prohibition on nonprofits getting involved in political campaign activities.
Nonprofits denounced the measure, and noted it came only days after the Treasury Department announced it was dropping requirements that most charitable organizations disclose their big donors to the IRS.
"It's now impossible for Congress and the White House to deny their objective: to politicize the trusted charitable nonprofit community by authorizing unlimited, unfettered and untraceable political money to flow through the nonprofit sector to benefit partisan special interests," said Tim Delaney, head of the National Council of Nonprofits.
"Charitable nonprofits are not in the business of partisan politics and are not here to be used to hide or launder political money," Delaney said.
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The move came as Senate Democrats forced a temporary postponement of a Finance Committee confirmation vote on President Donald Trump's pick to run the IRS, in protest of the Treasury decision to ease the donor-disclosure requirements. Democrats say that will abet the rise of so-called dark money political campaign donations, including from foreign contributors.
Later in the day, the panel approved Charles Rettig’s nomination to head the IRS on a party-line 14-13 vote.
Trump has promised to “totally destroy” the Johnson amendment, named after then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who pushed it through Congress in 1954. Republicans tried unsuccessfully last year to repeal the provision as part of their tax-code rewrite.
Targeting the prohibition through the budgetary process is sure to be controversial in the Senate. Republicans there did not include the proviso in their draft of the IRS' budget, and Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax committee, pledged Thursday to “use every tool at my disposal to prevent that from happening.”
House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady argued that the ban “ought to be fully and permanently repealed.”
"We want our faith leaders to be able to exercise their free speech" without "having to look over their shoulder about what Washington might be intimidating them about," he told reporters.
Among those who’ve lobbied lawmakers on the issue are the Christian Coalition of America, Family Research Council and National Religious Broadcasters, disclosure forms show.
Brady also defended the relaxed disclosure requirements.
“That information was never needed by the IRS to do their job — unfortunately, it had opened up avenues for abuse where the IRS could target Americans based on their political beliefs,” he said.
Under the IRS’ previous rule, nonprofits had to report the names of people giving $5,000 or more. The new guidelines still require the groups to keep that information internally, and provide it to the agency in case of audit.
The House bill would grant the tax collector an additional $186 million next year, increasing its budget to $11.6 billion. That includes another $77 million to help the agency implement the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, H.R. 1 (115), the latest installation of money Congress has provided to execute Republicans’ tax overhaul.
The bill was wrapped into a broader funding measure setting the budgets for the Department of Interior, EPA and other programs for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Senior Treasury Department officials on Tuesday defended the decision to scrap donor-disclosure requirements for most nonprofits, saying it won’t limit what the public can glean from legally available sources.
The IRS will no longer collect names or addresses of those who contribute $5,000 or more to all tax-exempt Section 501(c) groups, some of which donate to political campaigns, other than charitable organizations registered under a different section of the tax code, according to new guidelines released late Monday.
The decision immediately sparked a backlash, with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) saying Tuesday that he’ll oppose the nomination of a new IRS commissioner over the move.
Wyden, the Finance Committee’s top-ranking Democrat, charged that President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have made it easier for anonymous foreign donors to funnel dark money into nonprofits.
“It’s the latest attempt by Secretary Mnuchin and Donald Trump to eliminate transparency and keep officials and lawmakers from following the money,” Wyden said in a statement. “That’s why I’ll be opposing Charles Rettig, nominee to be IRS commissioner, unless Mr. Rettig commits to restoring this critical disclosure requirement.”
Rettig is scheduled for a vote by the Finance Committee on Thursday. Wyden said he’d vote against confirmation at the committee markup but stopped short of saying whether he’d place a formal hold on the nomination too.
“For now I’m going to vote no, and I think I’ll leave it at that,” Wyden said.
Congress in the 1960s required donor-disclosure data to match deductions for charitable giving, and the IRS extended the requirement to all other 501(c) organizations during the Nixon administration, the Treasury officials told reporters on a call. Lawmakers more recently ended the potential need for the information through gift tax changes adopted in 2015, one of the officials said.
“Currently, we have at the IRS no need for the routine collection of donor names and addresses,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The information was filed on Schedule B to Form 990 on 501(c)s' annual return.
But he said publicly available information on 501(c) groups will remain accessible, still showing, for example, whether an organization has received an outsize donation from one or more contributors relative to other donors.
The news was well-received among conservative groups and congressional Republicans, who have said Schedule B has been illegally leveraged for political gain by infringing on First Amendment rights. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) said the IRS simply doesn’t need such taxpayer information.
“This move by the Treasury Department protects the free speech of private citizens and eliminates the use of an unnecessary form that does nothing to increase transparency,” Roskam said in a statement.
Critics disagreed, arguing that the information helps the political and tax administration processes.
Since many of the nonprofits now exempted from the filing engage in political activity, wealthy corporate, individual, foreign and government donors can potentially influence the U.S. political system covertly, said Phil Hackney, a law professor at Louisiana State University. From a tax perspective, the IRS has willingly forgone important data points on where money is flowing in a tax-exempt manner from wealthy individuals, he said.
“Tax oversight will be harmed,” Hackney said in an email to POLITICO.
The Treasury officials dismissed that, saying that 501(c) groups will continue to have to record their donor information in case the IRS needs to audit them. Because such donor data would prove useful only for select examinations, the IRS doesn’t need to systematically collect it any longer, they said.
“The requirement to report such information increases compliance costs for some private parties, consumes IRS resources in connection with the redaction of such information, and poses a risk of inadvertent disclosure of information that is not open to public inspection,” the new IRS guidance says.
Hackney questioned the assertion that the IRS has little use for the information, and added that the agency enforcement rate is very low in the nonprofit area. Allowing 501(c)s to just provide data on audits is a poor substitute given collection difficulties, he said.
IRS audits occur many years after the returns, at which point the audit trail is cold because a 501(c) could have dissolved or the beneficial owners of the shell contributors may be lost, said Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
"Just because the IRS is not currently using the information, they could," he said.
Others could too, Rosenthal said, suggesting special counsel Robert Mueller could be reviewing the National Rifle Association’s contributor list for years past. Treasury announced the IRS policy change soon after the DOJ indicted a Russian national on charges that she was involved in a Russian plan to influence U.S. politics in part through links to the NRA.
"Fortunately, Mr. Mueller did not need to ask the IRS to audit the NRA to identify contributors," Rosenthal said. "That would have taken years."
House Provision Permitting Political Churches Moves Forward
July 17, 2018 Andy Segedin - The NonProfit Times
Attempts by a pair members of Congress to remove language permitting political activity by churches in the House of Representatives’ “mini-bus” appropriations bill will not be considered further as of Monday evening. The bill is now likely to proceed on this week with language prohibiting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from denying tax exemptions due to political activity.
Reps John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) have both proposed amendments to the mini-bus that would have preserved the Johnson Amendment. Named after then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, the Johnson Amendment has prohibited 501(c)(3) organizations from engaging in partisan politics since 1954. The House Committee on Rules decided Monday not to consider the amendments and the amendments are now further blocked from floor debate, according to David Thompson, vice president of public policy for the National Council of Nonprofits.
Requests for comment from Lewis and Wasserman Schultz were not returned prior to publication.
The provision in question, Sect. 112 of the mini-bus, prohibits the IRS from using funds to deny churches, integrated auxiliaries of churches, or associations or conventions of churches exempt status under Sect. 501(a) due to participation or intervention in political campaigns. An exception is carved out for when the IRS commissioner determines that an exemption should be denied and notifies the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Committee on Finance within 30 days.
In such scenarios, a denial must not be effective sooner than 90 days of notification.
The exception’s timeframe would do little to prevent groups from popping up as churches shortly prior to an election, engaging in political activity, and walking away scot free, according to Thompson. This is because churches — a term that Thompson says applies to all houses of worship — are automatically exempt. They need not seek IRS approval.
“They can pop up. You can do your bad deeds and you can disappear,” Thompson said. “And people donating, most likely, will get a tax deduction.”
The National Council of Nonprofits, along with the Council on Foundations, Independent Sector, and National Human Services Assembly, issued a joint statement in opposition of the committee’s choice not to further consider the amendments late Monday. The statement highlights petitions and other opposition members of the religious and larger nonprofit communities have had to any sort of repeal of the Johnson Amendment.
“The Johnson Amendment serves as a critical firewall between political activity and nonprofit organizations,” Daniel J. Cardinali, president and CEO of Independent Sector, said in the release. “Gutting this firewall would tear nonprofits away from their missions, erode public trust in the sector, and help political donors dodge taxes at the expense of the federal treasury.”
Thompson expects for the mini-bus to go to the House of Representatives this week. The Senate has its own bill without a provision similar to Sect. 112. Assuming both bills pass their respective houses of Congress, it is expected that the Johnson Amendment will be an issue that is fought over during conference to combine the two bills.
Efforts are not being made to mobilize nonprofits at the moment. Congressional action has exhausted the sector and many leaders want to focus on mission. Mobilizing now, without the potential payoff of having Sect. 112 removed, would be akin to crying wolf, according to Thompson. Efforts will instead pick up prior to conference between members of the House and Senate, focusing on the sector’s opposition to a repeal or weakening of the Johnson Amendment.
“It’s important to remind Congress that most people don’t want this,” Thompson said.
As faith leaders, we know what it means to speak truth to power. We come from traditions in which we are called to create a more just world by a mandate greater than our own. We pray with our feet by marching on the streets and by organizing in our houses of worship. Our sanctuaries are spaces for quiet introspection and the loud clang of engaged moral action. These are spaces where we speak across lines of difference, unconcerned by the pressures of politicking and money that tarnish the moral and political discourse that takes place beyond our walls.
But we are concerned that this might change if the Trump administration and several members of Congress get their way by repealing the Johnson Amendment, which is the law that prohibits houses of worship, and all 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt organizations, from endorsing or opposing political candidates. This provision in the tax code protects our houses of worship and charitable nonprofits by ensuring that they are not torn apart by partisan campaign politics or used as tools by candidates and parties for their own political gain.
The latest attempt to undermine the Johnson Amendment is tucked into a House of Representatives spending measure—the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill. If passed, the legislation would make it incredibly difficult for the IRS to investigate houses of worship that have violated the Johnson Amendment by requiring consent from Congress before enforcement action can take place. The provision would bring enforcement of the Johnson Amendment to a halt. Yet, the House is poised to adopt this bill in the coming weeks.
We are not the only faith leaders voicing support for the Johnson Amendment. We have joined a letter to Congress from 4,500 faith leaders and our organizations have joined 104 other denominational and religious organizations that support keeping the Johnson Amendment strong. In addition, 5,800 charitable nonprofit organizations have joined letters supporting the Johnson Amendment, and opinion polls show the American public strongly supports the current law.
For us, the issue is simple. We object to any measure that would chip away at the protections that keep our churches, synagogues and mosques places of inclusion and unity, rather than places of division and discord. Houses of worship are meant to serve the needs of the community, not the needs of political operatives. They are spaces where individuals from every walk of life or political affiliation can come together and worship. Our congregations do not want to see partisan campaign politics injected into our weekly services.
We also know that houses of worship and their leaders have robust free speech rights under the Johnson Amendment and can speak out on political and social issues—as we are doing by authoring this very piece. Our commitment to building a better world is not and cannot be partisan. Houses of worship can take positions on issues of moral, social or political concern; lobby on legislation and endorse or oppose non-partisan referendums; host candidate forums and distribute answers to candidate questionnaires; and encourage people to vote, including through voter registration drives and getting people to the polls. Repealing the Johnson Amendment would threaten our ability to engage in these practices by introducing undue partisan pressures that would tarnish the moral ground on which we stand. Regardless of where we stand on the issues, the Johnson Amendment protects our ability to speak from our faith tradition without fear of partisan entanglement or interference.
We, along with thousands of other faith leaders across the country, stand in opposition to this provision. We ask members of Congress to join us and defend the integrity and independence of houses of worship by keeping the Johnson Amendment strong.
Margaret Magee, OSF, is president and board chair of Franciscan Action Network. The. Rev. Jimmie R. Hawkins is director of the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness.
Local View: All Tax-Exempt Organizations Must Remain Nonpartisan
By Rhona Sen Hoss
Published: July 15, 2018, 6:01 AM – The Columbian
Through the years, I have had the privilege to be involved with a variety of charitable, education, and philanthropic organizations. Despite these organizations having different community-focused missions, one common denominator among them is their adherence to the provision in the U.S. tax code that requires tax-exempt organizations to be nonpartisan in their interactions with government.
The provision, known as the Johnson Amendment, has been in place since 1954 and prohibits tax-exempt charitable, religious, and philanthropic organizations from using their resources to support or oppose candidates for public office. The Johnson Amendment is a vital protection that shields the entire nonprofit sector from the pressures of partisan candidates and allows the organizations serving our community to focus on their missions instead of politics.
Quite simply, it positions charitable, religious, and philanthropic organizations above the partisan fray, which enables them to build bridges with officials on both sides of the aisle. This helps to ensure the trust of their clients, congregants, and donors while gaining broad support from across the community.
Anti-Johnson Amendment forces are working to attach a policy rider that would prevent enforcement against tax-exempt houses of worship that engage in flagrantly partisan activities. Their rider is attached to Section 112 of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill that is part of the package of bills that funds the federal government. Johnson Amendment opponents have strategically attached unrelated policy riders to spending bills because often times such an unpopular provision would not pass as its own legislation.
The rider’s current language creates a major exception to long-standing law for a particular subset of tax-exempt organizations. This opens the door for savvy political donors to misuse tax-exempt nonprofit organizations for partisan purposes.
Instead of donating to party committees, PACs, and other entities specifically designed for partisan purposes, donors would use tax-exempt organizations as conduits for their political giving. Worse, their politically motivated gifts would lack disclosure and accountability to the public while simultaneously receiving a federal tax benefit. This would incentivize and increase the presence of “dark money” in our politics, running counter to the spirit of Washington State’s new DISCLOSE Act, which is intended to shine light on dark money.
Reputation on the line
If this rider becomes law, a major concern is that a few donors could easily ruin the nonpartisan reputation and trust that nonprofits have worked tirelessly to cultivate. For the sake of our community, this cannot be allowed to happen.
During a recent House Appropriations Committee vote on the FSGG, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, voted to keep the anti-Johnson Amendment policy rider. Thankfully, there is still time for Rep. Herrera Beutler to change her position. By stating clearly that the Johnson Amendment should remain fully intact and working to remove the policy rider at Section 112 in the FSGG, she would be joining the broad coalition of nonprofit organizations, religious denominations, the National Association of State Charity Officials — and our homegrown, statewide Washington Nonprofits — and many other groups committed to the responsible use of charitable resources.
As a board member of Washington Nonprofits, I strongly encourage Rep. Herrera Beutler to join us in keeping all tax-exempt charitable, religious, and philanthropic organizations nonpartisan.
Rhona Sen Hoss is a Vancouverresident and a board member of Washington Nonprofits.
THE TAX RETURNS … RETURN? It’s not like Democrats have ever stopped wanting to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns out in the open, but Chuck Rettig’s nomination to be IRS commissioner sure seems to have brought that issue back to the forefront.
Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday generally praised Rettig as a solid choice to be IRS chief — before they all voted against him, as a protest of the Trump administration’s decision to stop having the IRS collect names and addresses of big donors to all sorts of political nonprofits.
Those Democrats also escalated their push for Trump’s tax records, tying the president’s recent meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to a disclosure decision they said could funnel more anonymous foreign money into the U.S. political system, Pro Tax’s Aaron Lorenzo notes.
So what does it all mean? Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat at Finance, said he would try to talk to Rettig as quickly as he could about both the nonprofit disclosure issue and Trump’s tax returns. But Wyden declined to offer any clues about whether Democrats would take any of the steps at their disposal to hold up Rettig’s nomination now that it moves to the Senate floor — especially if the nominee can’t or won’t tell Democrats what they want to hear. (For whatever it’s worth: House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady told reporters Thursday he continued to have no interest in requesting the Trump returns.)
So much IRS news: Wyden and Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) weren’t always on the same page Thursday — Hatch called the Democrats’ Rettig maneuvers “cheap politics.” But the Senate’s top two tax writers did team up enough to release a package of proposals to remake IRS operations that differs in some distinct ways from legislation the House passed in the spring — in ways both big (the House legislation has an independent appeals process and language backing an IRS free file program backed by tax prep companies that’s absent from the Senate measure) and small (the Senate wouldn’t change the name of the top spot at the IRS from commissioner to administrator). So again: what’s next? The new Senate measure largely mirrors proposals that passed the Finance Committee in 2016, so the new legislation isn’t likely to get a markup and could go straight to the Senate floor to allow both chambers to hash out a compromise IRS revamp.
But wait, there’s more: As if there wasn’t enough about the IRS’s policies for nonprofits on Thursday, the House also voted to allow for an end around to the Johnson Amendment that bars churches from dabbling in politics, as Pro Tax’s Brian Faler and Aaron Lorenzo reports. The provision, which would ban the IRS from rescinding the tax-exempt status of politically active churches without the O.K. of the commissioner, was included in a spending bill that boosted IRS funding to $11.6 billion for fiscal 2019, including some extra money for tax law implementation. But coming so close to the Trump administration’s Schedule B decision, the idea didn’t sit well with even some in the nonprofit sphere, and Wyden promised to do whatever it takes to protect the Johnson Amendment. Trump himself has vowed multiple times to scrap the current law, which is a priority for host of conservative groups.
Laura Pierce: To Defend Against ‘Dark Money,’ Keep the Johnson Amendment
Sat., June 23, 2018
By Laura Pierce
Washington Nonprofits
During the recent legislative session, the Washington Legislature made it a priority to shine light on “dark money” in our state’s elections by passing the 2018 DISCLOSE Act. The DISCLOSE Act is commendable in its intent to ensure accountability in our elections. Washington Nonprofits, our state association for nonprofit organizations, looks forward to working with state government and community-serving organizations to ensure successful implementation and compliance.
Unfortunately, there is a looming threat in Congress right now to restrict a long-standing federal tax law in a way that would significantly exacerbate the “dark money” problem that the DISCLOSE Act is intended to address.
The Johnson Amendment, a part of the Internal Revenue Code since 1954, requires tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations to be nonpartisan. Specifically, that law declares that, in exchange for the ability to receive tax-deductible contributions, charitable, religious and philanthropic organizations may not “support or oppose any candidate for public office.”
The Johnson Amendment rightfully prohibits tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing candidates for public office and from devoting resources to the election or defeat of a candidate. The Johnson Amendment shields nonprofit organizations from the nastiness of partisan politics and enables us to keep our collective focus on our missions, rather than partisan politics.
Over the past year, the president, vice president, other powerful politicians, and well-funded interest groups have sought to repeal or weaken this important protection. Anti-Johnson Amendment leaders attempted unsuccessfully to repeal it during the tax reform process and to weaken it during the omnibus spending bill debate earlier this year. Now they are trying hard to attach an anti-Johnson Amendment rider to weaken enforcement of the law to an important spending bill. Opponents must resort to this procedural tactic because they know that such a harmful provision would not pass as a freestanding bill. Worse, they are doing so in the face of widespread opposition from charitable, religious and philanthropic groups throughout the country.
Section 112 of the Financial Services and General Government spending bill would effectively block enforcement of the Johnson Amendment against “churches” and their auxiliaries – even when they engage in egregious, partisan activities. The rider offers no reductions or lessening of the restrictions on enforcement against secular organizations and leaders, thus creating a framework that explicitly encourages discriminatory enforcement of the law. All 501(c)(3) organizations and their supporters should recognize that weakening the protections of the Johnson Amendment for any of us weakens it for all of us.
Weakening the Johnson Amendment would be a huge mistake, with serious implications for our communities. When individuals need services or support, the last thing they should have to consider is partisan politics. When donors contribute to an organization’s mission, they should be able to trust that their gift will indeed be used toward mission fulfillment and not partisan electioneering. Repealing this long-standing law would erode the public’s confidence in the nonprofit sector by injecting partisan politics where it does not belong.
Moreover, weakening the Johnson Amendment would unleash a flood of tax-deductible dark money into our country’s political system. Donations to tax-exempt organizations and houses of worship, which exist to provide a public service or benefit, are tax-deductible. Donations to truly charitable works are not required to be disclosed in our state because they are dedicated to the public good. The only exception under the DISCLOSE Act relates to nonpartisan ballot measure advocacy, which the IRS considers a permitted lobbying activity for nonprofits.
If the long-standing Johnson Amendment is repealed or weakened, there can be no doubt that savvy political donors would begin to misuse the nonprofit sector by making contributions to houses of worship and their auxiliaries for partisan political purposes in order to receive a tax deduction. Donors would do this instead of contributing to candidate committees or political parties, or to 501(c)(4)s, political action committees, and superPACs, all of which exist specifically for political purposes but do not provide a tax benefit to their donors or shield from disclosure.
Previous attempts to repeal or weaken the Johnson Amendment failed because nonprofits, houses of worship, state charity regulators, and private citizens raised their voices against this harmful policy proposal. It is time for us to do so again by encouraging our senators and representatives to support preserving the long-standing Johnson Amendment so that all nonprofits and houses of worship can focus on their missions, not politics, and serve communities, not candidates. It is our sincere hope that Washington state’s congressional delegation will stand with the nonprofit organizations that serve their constituents by working to maintain the Johnson Amendment.
Laura Pierce is executive director of Washington Nonprofits.
As the House and the Senate seek agreement on tax reform, they will have to decide the fate of the so-called Johnson amendment. This provision of the Internal Revenue Code prohibits tax-exempt charities from electioneering — that is, from becoming involved in any way in a candidate’s campaign for elected office. The tax reform bill passed by the House last month loosened this prohibition to the point where it would no longer prohibit much. The Senate’s tax reform bill made no change to current law.
Evangelical churches have long objected to the strictures of the Johnson amendment. From the beginning of his candidacy, President Trump promised them that he would repeal it. In fact, as originally proposed, the House tax reform bill would have altered the Johnson amendment only for houses of worship. The House, however, quickly revised its proposal. As finally passed by the House, the provision would permit any tax-exempt charity to support or oppose a candidate as long as “the preparation and presentation of such content” occurs “in the ordinary course of the organization’s regular and customary activities” and does not result in “more than de minimis incremental expenses.”
The breadth of the House proposal is far from clear. When are activities “regular and customary”? When is an expense “de minimis” (meaning insignificant) or “incremental”? If this uncertain standard becomes law, the I.R.S. will need to give charities and potential donors guidance about the meaning of those terms. Whatever rules the I.R.S. announces, they are sure to be fraught with complication.
But no matter what the I.R.S. says, the amendment in the House bill would open the floodgates to politicking by charities. Charities today make enormous use of social media. A charity’s webpage often serves as its most important public gateway. Nothing in the House revision of the Johnson amendment forbids speeches, sermons, policy discussions or other activities that include electioneering from being posted on that webpage, streamed or tweeted. Communicating this way would cost the charity next to nothing and would probably qualify as a “de minimis” expense. In our digital era, the communicative impact of an exception for de minimis financial outlays is far more than de minimis.
The sponsors of the proposed change to the Johnson amendment may have intended to permit only brief, occasional instances of electioneering. We know that established charities, particularly churches, engage in such activity now. But the House proposal, if enacted as written, will do far more than bless current practice. Given that the I.R.S. is already suffering from too few enforcement resources, the I.R.S. may well hesitate to take action against possible violations of this de minimis limit. As a practical matter, a de minimis exception will come close to repealing the Johnson amendment completely.
Other tax-exempt organizations (such as section 501(c)(4) welfare organizations) can already engage in electioneering to a considerable extent. The Johnson amendment does not apply to them. But it is precisely because of the Johnson amendment’s prohibition on electioneering that charities have been a sanctuary in our increasingly partisan world. Over time, permitting charities to engage directly in electoral politics will reduce the respect they have long been afforded. In the long run, it will harm the sector. That is why so many charities, including many religious organizations, have opposed any change to the Johnson Amendment.
Contributions to charities are deductible; contributions to PACs and section 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations are not. Because charities can have enormous influence on political campaigns with very little expense, many who wish to intervene in political campaigns will shift their contribution from PACs and social welfare organizations to charities. Currently, the House proposal operates for five years, from Jan. 1, 2019, to Dec. 31, 2023. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the revenue loss for this five-year period at $2.1 billion. This number probably underestimates the actual cost of the House’s proposed change to the Johnson amendment. Charities that make a decision to electioneer will attract large donations from donors who would like to obtain deductions and influence elections in one fell swoop.
The House proposal also encourages the establishment of new entities to take advantage of the revised rules. These newly created organizations would establish their own norms as to what is “regular and customary.” In short order, organizations would be formed precisely to take advantage of this new electioneering rule.
Under our current campaign finance regime, only dollars that have been subject to income tax can be used for electioneering. A de minimis exception for electioneering by charities will undermine this basic principle. It will harm both the law regulating charities and the law regulating campaign finance. Our country will be far poorer for such changes.
The Senate version of tax reform does not alter the Johnson amendment. Its position should prevail. During reconciliation, the House amendment to the Johnson amendment should be dropped.
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Ellen P. Aprill is a professor of tax law at Loyola Law School.
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 11, 2017
We know that God is on life support because recent polls say so. He, She or it has been around a long time, always, theologians say. But the number of people who believe that is rapidly diminishing. The departure from theological orthodoxy is occurring at the intersection of religion, science and politics, say those who’ve fled the flock. That, in a word, is why subscribing to God and religion is called faith.
But wait! God is about to get a wake-up call. It’ll come in the U.S. Senate, not exactly a reliquary of sainthood, when Judge Brett Kavanaugh appears for confirmation hearings to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s Roman Catholicism, and the weight of the Catholic Church on the Supreme Court, along with his views – past, present and future – on the Rorschach-test of Roe vs. Wade, will be enough to give God heartburn. So packed with Catholics is the Supreme Court that soon it’ll be telling the Vatican what to do.
But the war of words over Roe vs. Wade may be largely symbolic, but nonetheless in defense of a strongly held principle. The introduction of new pharmaceuticals such as the morning-after pill has made chemically induced abortions as available as the nearest drug store.
This election cycle has witnessed lots of attention to God and religion. First, we have that exemplar, President Trump, accused of sexual misbehavior by a dozen women and thrice married, and his casual reference to “crackers” and wine at Methodist services. Trump and five others – James Polk, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley and George W. Bush – have been Methodists.
But foremost among the religionists is Trump’s bobblehead and avenging archangel, Vice President Mike Pence, a collapsed Catholic and the administration’s ambassador to the evangelical wing of the Republican Party, who calls himself a “Christian” before anything else. It is Pence’s assignment to keep the fundamentalist Republican base in line while he sharpens the dagger at Trump’s back.
Pence is the man who would be president if anything legal, or otherwise human, befalls Trump. And he’s beginning to let his ambition show by not first getting permission slips to go it alone and by failing to conceal his open-faced glee over the shimmering prospect of becoming president.
There have been previous occasions when religion was front-and-center as an ink-blot test of acceptability for political office and an exaggeration of stereotypical bugaboos. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism was viewed by many as outside mainstream Protestantism primarily because of its perceived views on matrimony and secret rituals. And President Obama was considered a Kenyan socialist who consorted with a proponent of the radical Black Liberation Theology, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. John F. Kennedy had to convince Protestant ministers that he wouldn’t take orders from the Vatican if he was elected president.
And on another point of departure, God and religion have, or has, had little mention or played no measurable role on the Democratic side of the eternal divide as compared to its significance in the Republican Party’s shotgun marriage to the right flank of American politics. Yes, the rules of engagement for the two parties differ in kind and degree. And yes, again, there is an extreme branch of Catholicism that aligns with evangelicals. (Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic who was short-listed for the Supreme Court, is a member of “People of Praise,” an obscure, charismatic faith group.)
One recent accounting found nonbelievers to be more liberal than conservative. The General Social Survey, conducted in tandem by two universities, revealed that 40 percent of those who’ve abandoned religion identified themselves as liberal while only 9 percent called themselves conservative.
But the so-called evangelical vote, considered so significant in GOP primary elections, had all but evanesced, and it manifests itself as vaguely a whisper except at occasional prayer breakfasts, until muster is called for the Kavanaugh crusade in the Senate. They are salivating like Pavlov’s puppy over the chance to rid America of abortion, abetted by Trump who chose Kavanaugh for pretty much that reason. (In Maryland, women’s reproductive rights are protected by state law no matter who’s on the Supreme Court or what the court does.)
God and religion have reentered politics in other ways, too, with Kavanaugh as Trump’s standard bearer to: (1) Establish religious freedom by fiat (essentially repeal the First Amendment), and (2) repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches from engaging in partisan political activity or lose their tax-exempt status. Surely God jests.
For the most part, Americans brush aside such narrow and quixotic arguments. All but the most zealous subscribe directly to the teaching of Christ on the issue of separation of church and state: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17). In other words, the two are a toxic mix and, in most cases, should butt out of each other’s business.
Americans, and many other democracies, have made peace with the notion of church-state separation. It’s called pluralism. Government and religion operate on parallel tracks and rarely meet – one with a higher paycheck, the other with a higher authority (no, not President Trump). But there are those, of course, who believe that America is God’s masterwork because the name is inscribed on our currency and included in the Pledge of Allegiance – two afterthoughts that were championed by President Eisenhower in the 1950s.
A while back, Pew Research Center survey numbers advanced the idea of a church-state firewall in a forceful and dramatic way. They said that America is going to hell in a handcart, if such a thing as a theological hell exists. A quarter of the nation’s 310 million people now have no affiliation with any religion, and half the Americans who have left their churches for whatever reason, say they no longer believe in God.
To some extent, those spiritual drop-outs can be attributed, at least in part, to the modern presentation and perception of religion itself and what the three major religions have allowed themselves to become: Christianity as a magic show, Judaism as a food festival and Islam, at the risk of precipitating another Charlie Hebdo event, an eternal erotic experience.
The earlier Pew research revealed that about a quarter of those surveyed said they no longer subscribe to organized religion and nearly half said they just “don’t believe.” Plumbing deeper for reasons of those who gave up on God and religion, Pew found “science,” lack of “belief in miracles,” “common sense,” and “lack of evidence” as intellectual hat-racks. Others said, simply, that they “do not believe in God.”
Yet religion as an institution persists in convincing numbers. Another Pew flow-chart reveals religion embedded in percentages of the U.S. population. First, Christian: Evangelical Protestant, 25.4 percent; Mainline Protestant, 14.7 percent; historically black Protestant, 6.5 percent; Catholic, 20.8 percent; and Mormon, 1.6 percent. Non-Christian: Jewish, 1.9 percent; Muslim, 0.9 percent; Buddhist, 0.7 percent. Other: Atheist, 3.1 percent; Agnostic, 4.0 percent, and nothing in particular, 15.8 percent.
The five largest denominations, according to the National Council of Churches, are: Catholic, 68.2 million members; Southern Baptist Convention, 16.1 million; United Methodist Church, 7.6 million; Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon), 6.1 million; and Church of God in Christ, 5.4 million.
Millennials find religious institutions especially unappealing. They appear motivated more by the social gospels, or good works, as taught by Christ, than in doctrinaire teachings as proclaimed by churches. The God of their parents as a bearded and vengeful old crank who commands constant worship and adulation does not exist in their pantheon of expression but only as a trope in the Old Testament.
And as many religionists, especially fundamentalists, often dismiss the foibles of man as the will of God, young people are more inclined to place the blame squarely where it belongs – to those here on earth, in a kind of scornful pantheism. Yet despite their good intentions, whatever the motivation, millennials remain blissed out on politics. One survey showed young people in Nevada preferred voting for legalization of weed, vs. choosing a president.
Religious distinctions appear to be a major relevance in this election cycle, especially through the timing of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings and as a prop to the wholly Trump coalition that he painstakingly works to reinforce but not expand.
As for the role of the Almighty in this or any other election, God pays no attention to petitions but in justice and mercy favors the candidates with the best get-out-the-vote operations.
The prevailing theme of the Road to Majority conference this year was the “aggressive takeover of the court system” of the United States by conservatives.
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was perhaps the most enthusiastic, and certainly the most self-satisfied, about the Trump-appointed judges being rapidly confirmed. He told conference attendees that that ‘single most consequential decision I’ve made in my entire political career was to not let Barrack Obama fill that [Antonin] Scalia vacancy on the way out the door,’ for which he received a thunderous ovation from the audience.
McConnell said he has seen similar wins in the lower courts, and pointing out that Republicans have confirmed “one-eighth of the circuit court judges in America” in the last year and a half, thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Admirers of Justice Scalia are all over the country now and we’ve been seeing them as the president sends up circuit judges, we’ve been confirming in record numbers,” McConnell said. Then he added, “We are transforming the court system of this country.”
“Of all the things we’re doing, the things that will have the longest impact on the country are the court systems and these men and women the president has been sending up and we’ve been confirming are not very old, either,” McConnell said. “Late 40s, early 50s, chances are they will be on there for a very long time. Most cases don’t reach the Supreme Court, so the circuit courts are really where most complex cases end.”
Talk about judges was a prevailing talking point at the conference. “Vice President Mike Pence told attendees that Trump had appointed “strong conservatives to our federal courts at every level.” Said Pence, ‘In fact, last year, this president and our administration, with the strong support [the] Republican majority in the United States Senate, set a record for the most court of appeals judges confirmed to our federal courts in a single year in American history—and that doesn’t even count Justice Neil Gorsuch.’
“We have a Supreme Court justice. We have over 40 federal judges that have been appointed to the district, the circuit, the appeals courts,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn.
“One-eighth of the US Circuit Court judiciary right now is a Donald Trump appointee nominee and we’ve only been here for 16 months,” said Kellyanne Conway, advisor to President Trump. “That’s an incredible thing and that’s the way you see a lasting legacy, that’s the way you see a legacy long after he leaves the presidency six-and-a-half years from now.”
Rep. Kevin McCarthy said, “We’ve appointed more judges and we need more that believe in the Constitution, not one—somebody who’s going to reinterpret the Constitution.”
“At a meeting on Capitol Hill, Sen. Chuck Grassley told Road to Majority attendees that the Senate was confirming Trump’s judges like “a sub-machine gun—it’s because previous presidents didn’t work as hard as this president’s staff to get them reviewed and get them out.”
Making the courts more conservative is one of the keys to making America more religious. Will these courts, eventually uphold worship laws? Liberal judges are more likely to resist forcing religion on America. Nebuchadnezzar included the judges in his new world order religious worship on the plain of Dura, and insisted on them attending the worship of the great image, which he had built. Will the Trump judges support the new world order religious laws predicted in Revelation 13?
“Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.” Daniel 3:2.
Killing the Johnson Amendment is about lots more than Religion
November 28, 2017
Religion News Service
Boxes of letters from clergy who are opposed to repealing the Johnson Amendment, a federal law that bars tax-exempt houses of worship from engaging in partisan politicking, prior to delivery on Capitol Hill. Photo courtesy of Americans United
(RNS) — To listen to both sides, the effort to do away with the Johnson Amendment is all about religion. “Pulpit freedom!” cry the proponents. “Religious politicization!” the opponents cry back.
But the hue and cry has obscured the pervasiveness and insidiousness of what’s really going on. The tax bill passed by the House of Representatives scuttles the Johnson Amendment in a way that would change the landscape for the entire nonprofit world.
The bill’s original language was narrowly tailored to permit a pastor to include a political endorsement in a sermon if she so wished. It was actually about pulpit freedom (to politick) — and, in truth, of minor consequence.
But during the Ways and Means Committee markup, the language was amended so that electioneering “in the ordinary course of the organization’s regular and customary activities” became permitted for all 501(c)(3)s. Which means that those nonprofits would now be able to endorse or oppose candidates for public office without sacrificing their ability to receive tax-deductible contributions.
While professional publications like The Chronicle of Philanthropyhave noted the significance of what happened, the general news media — including The New York Times — have missed the boat. They shouldn’t have.
The new language comes from bills introduced by House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., back on Feb. 1.
It is a perfect vehicle for the further polarization of American society on partisan lines. Dollars to donuts it was intended to be in the House Bill all along.
To be sure, the bill states that 501(c)(3) electioneering must result “in the organization incurring not more than de minimis incremental expenses.” So direct monetary contributions to candidates would be disallowed, as would expenditures dedicated solely to canvassing and phone banking on their behalf.
But electioneering in the course of “regular and customary” issue advocacy and solicitation of support would be just fine — nothing more than de minimis incremental expenses there.
Consider the case of the Christian Coalition, whose stock in trade was handing out voter guides in evangelical churches around the country. In line with IRS nonprofit rules, these guides looked as if they were solely concerned with where candidates stood on the particular issues of concern to the Christian Coalition.
However, in 1999 the IRS turned down the organization’s long-standing application for tax-exempt status because the guides were designed to favor the GOP. For example, if a Democratic candidate happened to be anti-abortion, the guide would pick out some irrelevant procedural vote in order to portray him as pro-choice — thus effectively violating the Johnson Amendment.
The Christian Coalition is no longer with us, but its former executive director, Ralph Reed, now runs a very similar organization called the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Its stock in trade is also voter guides, and its politics are very much with the Trump wing of the GOP.
Faith and Freedom is a 501(c)(4), which is to say it is ineligible for tax-free donations. Under the House tax bill, it could become eligible for such donations as a 501(c)(3). Likewise would any nonprofit that supports or opposes candidates in the course of its regular and customary business.
Tax-deductible electioneering is what Republican opponents of the Johnson Amendment want to enable. Do you?
In February at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump made a solemn promise to "get rid of, and totally destroy, the Johnson Amendment".
The Johnson Amendment, named after Lyndon Johnson, prohibits 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches, but it is sometimes implied especially churches, from engaging in political activity.
President Trump made a down payment on his promise with an executive order. Unless you apply the "truthful hyperbole" standard that then developer Trump recommended in the Art of the Deal, the executive order did not destroy the Johnson amendment. Arguably it did not do anything at all to it. Section 5201 of the House version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is much more robust.
Under the provision, this language, known as the Johnson amendment, is qualified so that an organization exempt from tax under Code section 501(c)(3) would not fail to be treated as organized and operated exclusively for its respective non-profit purpose for engaging in political speech, assuming such political speech is made in the ordinary course of the organization’s business and the associated expenses of that speech are de minimis
That hardly puts the Johnson amendment on the eve of destruction, but it does address the concern that generated the fairly silly protest known as Pulpit Freedom Sunday which fell on October 2 this year. The idea is that preachers would give politically oriented sermons, record them and send them to the IRS - daring, nay double daring the IRS to come after them. Given all the attention given to Pulpit Freedom Sunday, it probably worked up to a triple dawg dare. Here is an explanation from somebody who apparently thinks Pulpit Freedom Sunday is a good idea.
Situation 9. Minister F is the minister of Church O, a section 501(c)(3) organization. The Sunday before the November election, Minister F invites Senate Candidate X to preach to her congregation during worship services. During his remarks, Candidate X states, “I am asking not only for your votes, but for your enthusiasm and dedication, for your willingness to go the extra mile to get a very large turnout on Tuesday.” Minister F invites no other candidate to address her congregation during the Senatorial campaign. Because these activities take place during official church services, they are attributed to Church O. By selectively providing church facilities to allow Candidate X to speak in support of his campaign, Church O’s actions constitute political campaign intervention.
Since the speech was at a regular service (i.e. ordinary course) and did not involve any expenditure, it would be OK, if the bill passes.
I count five other situations described in the ruling that would probably transform to permissible under the proposed legislation
Situation 4. President B is the president of University K, a section 501(c)(3) organization. University K publishes a monthly alumni newsletter that is distributed to all alumni of the university. In each issue, President B has a column titled “My Views.” The month before the election, President B states in the “My Views” column, “It is my personal opinion that Candidate U should be reelected.” For that one issue, President B pays from his personal funds the portion of the cost of the newsletter attributable to the “My Views” column. Even though he paid part of the cost of the newsletter, the newsletter is an official publication of the university. Because the endorsement appeared in an official publication of University K, it constitutes campaign intervention by University K.
Situation 6. Chairman D is the chairman of the Board of Directors of M, a section 501(c)(3) organization that educates the public on conservation issues. During a regular meeting of M shortly before the election, Chairman D spoke on a number of issues, including the importance of voting in the upcoming election, and concluded by stating, “It is important that you all do your duty in the election and vote for Candidate W.” Because Chairman D’s remarks indicating support for Candidate W were made during an official organization meeting, they constitute political campaign intervention by M.
Situation 13. Mayor G attends a concert performed by Symphony S, a section 501(c)(3) organization, in City Park. The concert is free and open to the public. Mayor G is a candidate for reelection, and the concert takes place after the primary and before the general election. During the concert, the chairman of S’s board addresses the crowd and says, “I am pleased to see Mayor G here tonight. Without his support, these free concerts in City Park would not be possible. We will need his help if we want these concerts to continue next year so please support Mayor G in November as he has supported us.” As a result of these remarks, Symphony S has engaged in political campaign intervention.
Situation 16. Candidate A and Candidate B are candidates for the state senate in District W of State X. The issue of State X funding for a new mass transit project in District W is a prominent issue in the campaign. Both candidates have spoken out on the issue. Candidate A supports funding the new mass transit project. Candidate B opposes the project and supports State X funding for highway improvements instead. P is the executive director of C, a section 501(c)(3) organization that promotes community development in District W. At C’s annual fundraising dinner in District W, which takes place in the month before the election in State X, P gives a lengthy speech about community development issues including the transportation issues. P does not mention the name of any candidate or any political party. However, at the conclusion of the speech, P makes the following statement, “For those of you who care about quality of life in District W and the growing traffic congestion, there is a very important choice coming up next month. We need new mass transit. More highway funding will not make a difference. You have the power to relieve the congestion and improve your quality of life in District W. Use that power when you go to the polls and cast your vote in the election for your state senator.” C has violated the political campaign intervention as a result of P's remarks at C's official function shortly before the election, in which P referred to the upcoming election after stating a position on an issue that is a prominent issue in a campaign that distinguishes the candidates.
Situation 21. Church P, a section 501(c)(3) organization, maintains a web site that includes such information as biographies of its ministers, times of services, details of community outreach programs, and activities of members of its congregation. B, a member of the congregation of Church P, is running for a seat on the town council. Shortly before the election, Church P posts the following message on its web site, “Lend your support to B, your fellow parishioner, in Tuesday’s election for town council.” Church P has intervened in a political campaign on behalf of B.
The Punchline
In some ways, repeal of the Johnson amendment codifies actual IRS practice. All those sermons that they have been getting have not resulted in any action by IRS. This is a perfectly reasonable response. The number of IRS personnel actually involved in enforcement (revenue agents, tax examiners, revenue officers and special agents) is about 25,000. With over 240 million returns to worry about, putting some of them onto listening to taped sermons does not seem like a good use of their time. Of course, it is more the effect that the change would have on the behavior of not for profits than any change in IRS enforcement that is of concern.
How Does This Score?
An earlier version of the bill that applied the relaxation only to churches was scored as costing $2.1 billion in revenue by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. This had me puzzled, because I had a hard time seeing how the provision could cost anything, I was not alone. Professor Samuel Brunson had similar thoughts. He wrote me:
I thought the same thing. The IRS doesn’t really enforce it against anybody (and especially not against churches), so it doesn’t currently raise any revenue to be lost. Moreover, according to the court in Branch Ministries, a church that lost its exemption for campaigning could instantly turn around and be exempt again. I’m not sure that the court was right there, but at the very least, I’d assume a church that lost its exemption would stop doing taxable stuff until it got its exemption back. So under current law, the best-case scenario, revenue-wise, is the occasional day’s income to a church.
The IRS could save a few dollars on enforcement, but that would be very small because they spend very little time and effort providing guidance or enforcing the rule. Perhaps the number presumes that there are churches willingly paying taxes so that they can endorse from the pulpit that would now be able to endorse without losing their tax-exempt status. My guess is that it is a very small set, if not an empty one.
Scoring Mystery Solved Maybe
Last week I had the pleasure of attending an event at the Benjamin Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University. It was a panel discussion of Professor Edward Zelinsky's new book Taxing The Church. My full report on it has been deferred as I plow through interesting provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I asked the panel about the scoring and Professor Brian Galle of Georgetown commented that at the hearings the rationale was put out that the change would cause people to donate deductible dollars to churches rather than 501(c)(4) or 527 organizations. It sounded rather silly to me, but when I started thinking about it a light-bulb went on in my head.
If This Goes On
An endorsement from a prominent evangelist could be worth quite a bit to a political campaign. And successful politicians are good at fundraising. You are a mega-pastor of a mega church. You endorse candidate A, seduction of married women and advocacy of revenge to the contrary notwithstanding. Candidate A talks about what a great church you have, but how much greater it would be if the capital campaign to expand it were a big success. Of course, there is no quid pro quo going on here.
The Johnson Amendment protects charities from political pressure applied by donors and from partisan capture. Without it, charities, which are always in the fundraising business, could be bought for political purposes. The result would be taxpayer subsidies of phony charitable contributions made for political reasons, something the sponsors of this measure say they want to avoid.
And if you thought the last IRS scandal was troubling, be prepared for the scandal to end all tax collection.
Further, as recent history has shown, when the IRS attempts to regulate political speech, it does not go well for the agency or the country. The political reality is that the underfunded IRS would not seriously attempt to enforce these already weak limits, especially in the face of a hostile Congress.
The optimist in me would say that maybe this is not so bad. The charities cannot spend their bribe money on politics, so perhaps some money that would otherwise go to attack ads would instead go to feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty and other corporal works of mercy, but my sense is that Roger Colinvaux is right and this will not end well for existing charities.
On the other hand, the change in the standard deduction will increase the number of people who don't care about whether their deductions are deductible. There might be more of an impetus to grass roots heavily volunteer groups and dollars now going to big philanthropy might shift in that direction. That would not be such a bad thing.
The Trump administration has put in place many of the tenets of an extreme “religious liberty” order that was leaked earlier in the year ― and more is no doubt coming.
LGBTQ activists and allies thought they’d dodged a bullet. But in fact, we were shot in the back.
Let’s review: On February 1 of this year, Sarah Posner at The Nation published a leaked draft of the executive order
―“Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom” ― that Donald Trump apparently was going to sign. And the publication of it created a firestorm. As Posner described it:
The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act...Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”
White House officials told ABC News that the draft appears to be among the hundreds of possible executive orders that are circulating — drafted by the Trump transition team, the White House policy team or by outside groups — and that not all reflect administration thinking or likely policy. One official did not say who drafted this possible order but did not dispute its authenticity.
“We do not have plans to sign anything at this time but will let you know when we have any updates,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokesperson.
Legal analysts had also stated in much of the media that such a broad order would not stand up to judicial review, and the ACLU and others threatened lawsuits. Coming on the heels of the administration’s court losses on the Muslim ban, this seemed to put the White House on the defensive. By no means were activists placated by the White House distancing itself at that time, but at least the White House was on the run a bit.
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Three weeks later, at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 25, I interviewed Trump transition official Ken Blackwell, who told me the order was most certainly coming. Blackwell is a senior fellow to the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council. Blackwell also brought into our conversation former director of Family Research Council’s Center for Religious Liberty, Ken Klukowski, whom he said had “actually structured” the draft order as a legal advisor to the Trump transition team and who was, according to Blackwell, “in the process of redrafting the order.”
Blackwell envisioned the “anchor concept” of the order as one that will allow people with devoutly religious beliefs to turn away LGBTQ people in the course of business. Clearly alluding to legal challenges, he said that it must, however, “meet the scrutiny of the judicial process” and said, “we’re still in the process.”
Kuklowski, who had not publicly acknowledged that he was on the transition team, couldn’t comment in that regard but “as a private citizen” said there are several routes to securing “religious liberty,” and did add that getting conservative judges like Neil Gorsuch on the courts was key too.
The hints of the insidious strategy that would eventually transpire ― and the determination of anti-LGBTQ forces ― were all there in those comments.
Yet, on May 3, LGBTQ activists breathed a sigh of relief.
“Trump Signs Religious Liberty Executive Order That Appears To Leave LGBTQ People Alone” went the headline on HuffPost. And it was true, enough so that some anti-LGBTQ advocates were furious. Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation slammed the order as “woefully inadequate.” David French at National Review called it “worse than useless.” Brian Brown of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage said it “falls far short of what is needed to protect people of faith from governmental persecution.”
But the Family Research Council (FRC) praised the order, which mostly amounted to letting churches get involved more in politics, and FRC didn’t criticize its omission of anti-LGBTQ or other socially conservative directives. And that’s because they obviously knew what was coming down the pike.
Realizing that there would be yet another media firestorm and perhaps a tougher legal challenge if Trump signed a broad order, the White House clearly soon went in the direction of putting the components of the order in place piecemeal, something the ACLU had actually warned about, filing a lawsuit in July for all the records surrounding the original order.
What we have in fact seen is much of the original order put in place in little pieces here and there, sometimes meeting with a bit of media backlash, but mostly getting in under the radar or on the media’s back burner.
In recent weeks, the Trump White House, Justice Department and other departments have:
―Signed a memorandum, the “Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty,” in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions defined 20 sweeping, broad principles about religious freedom, and how discrimination by employers and businesses based on their religious beliefs was perfectly acceptable ― and obviously that would also mean according to their religious opposition to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
―Banned transgender people from the military, making them a target for discrimination in all other areas in which the government might target them.
―reversed the Obama Department of Justice’s decision that transgender people are protected against discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, allowing for discrimination against transgender people in businesses across the country.
―Filed briefs in cases in federal court and at the Supreme Court allowing for discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual people in employment and public accommodations.
―rolled back the birth control mandate under the Affordable Care Act ― again, using moralistic religious arguments about how it promotes “risky sexual behavior” ― creating a situation in which millions of women could go without birth control.
All of these elements and more directives that the administration has moved forward on ― as well as others that it surely will be moving forward on in the future ― were in the original religious liberty executive order.
And now they’re in place, with much less pushback in the media than the original order ― and just in time for Trump’s speech on Friday to Family Research Council’s annual Values Voter Summit.
The “religious freedom” order we thought we’d beaten back is in fact here. This entire strategy shows the insidiousness and determination of anti-LGBTQ forces. And it shows how and why we must be on guard always and stay very much in the fight.
Mark Harris, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday in 2012.John Adkisson / Reuters
Why have some religious conservatives decided to support Donald Trump for United States president? Leaders have named their reasons: He’s promised to appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices; he’s allegedly good at business. But they have also consistently cited something else, perhaps more unexpected: the tax code.
Trump has promised to repeal the so-called Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision that prohibits tax-exempt organizations from participating in political activities. Proposed by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and later revised by Congress, it keeps churches and other non-profits from lobbying for specific causes, campaigning on behalf of politicians, and supporting or opposing candidates for office.
While opponents of the Johnson Amendment often frame their objections in terms of free speech, the provision’s primary impact may be financial. Right now, the IRS makes a clear distinction between non-profit groups—from charities and universities to certain private schools and houses of worship—and political organizations.
If the Johnson Amendment were repealed, pastors would be able to endorse candidates from the pulpit, which they’re currently not allowed to do by law. But it’s also true that a lot more money could possibly flow into politics via donations to churches and other religious organizations. That could mean religious groups would become much more powerful political forces in American politics—and it would almost certainly tee up future court battles.
Even though religious groups are some of the most vocal opponents of the Amendment today, it was originally about something else: communism. At the time when the measure was passed, McCarthyism was at its peak, and Johnson feared that right-wing groups, parading as charities, would attack his reelection campaign. Although the rule extended to religious groups, the former Purdue University professor James D. Davidson has argued that Johnson never specifically wanted to target religious groups.
According to the Catholic University of America professor Roger Colinvaux, some critics have argued that the Amendment’s history is the best argument against it: Because it was an ad hoc measure written to satisfy one skilled legislator’s political needs, they say, it should be repealed. But, as Colinvaux wrote in 2012, this already was a long-standing issue by the time Johnson took it up—the legal limits around political activity for non-profit groups “had dogged charitable tax status from the inception of the federal-income-tax exemption for charitable organizations.”
Congress first approved a tax deduction for donations to charitable organizations in 1917, but the boundaries around those organizations’ political activities weren’t exactly clear. In a 1930 decision, Slee v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a Second Circuit Court judge made those boundaries clearer: He ruled that the government doesn’t have an obligation to subsidize the political activity of non-profit groups; and people can write off donations to these groups, which include religious organizations, but not if the groups are engaging in “political agitation,” or lobbying. In 1934, this rule officially became part of the tax code: “No substantial part of an organization’s activities” could involve “carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation.”
There were two problems with this rule. First, the word “substantial” is vague and confusing. “People found that standard difficult to meet because they couldn’t identify it—they couldn’t quantify it,” said Miriam Galston, a law professor at George Washington University. “The IRS never gave any clear or precise guidelines.” Subsequent court decisions made this standard somewhat clearer: “Substantial” is somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of an organization’s operating budget and efforts, Galston said, and factors like mission and volunteer time have to be taken into account.
The other problem was that lobbying isn’t the same as electioneering—a non-profit group like a church might not spend time and money trying to get a bill passed in Congress, but it might promote a candidate for office with flyers and buttons and speeches. The Johnson Amendment clarified that the ban extended to political activity: Non-profits, including religious groups, couldn’t support candidates for political office without losing their tax-exempt status. In 1987, Congress clarified that this means non-profits can’t oppose candidates, either.
Since 2008, a group of predominantly conservative, Protestant churches have participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday—a day started by the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, when hundreds of pastors across the country give explicitly political sermons in protest of the IRS’s rule. The movement has been growing, and religious leaders will often mail tapes of their sermons directly to the agency to showcase their defiance.
The IRS doesn’t often go after these churches, though. Agency leaders have emphasized the importance of educating religious organizations about what is and is not legal, rather than aggressively initiating audits or trying to revoke the non-profit status of houses of worship. The agency has rarely pursued this last option; one of the most prominent recent cases was in 1995, when it denied the non-profit status of an upstate New York church that took out a full-page ad in USA Today warning Christians not to vote for Bill Clinton in 1992.
In general, though, “the political climate has changed in the last four or five years, where attacks on the IRS has been more frequent, more virulent, and the IRS has become extremely defensive,” Galston said. Especially with the budget cuts of the last half decade, the agency has scarce resources for enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code. “They can’t, in my view, allocate the resources in such a way that they preclude proper enforcement of the other code sections,” Galston added.
Yet even beyond purposeful protests like Pulpit Freedom Sunday, religious leaders seem to openly defy the ban on participating in political activities. The televangelist Mark Burns has openly stumped for Trump, as has Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. And at the start of the Democratic National Convention, the Decatur, Georgia, pastor Cynthia Hale prayed for Hillary Clinton to become president. Even if the IRS would not see these actions as formal violations of the law, the difference between pastors electioneering and speaking as private citizens “is a fine distinction that is easily evaded,” said Galston.
Critics of the agency, including some progressive religious groups, argue that the IRS should put more resources toward enforcing the electioneering ban. The main question, said Alan Brownstein, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, is not whether religious groups and leaders should be able to express their views—it’s whether that activity should be subsidized by the government. “Pastors can say whatever they want, as can anyone else,” he said. “The question is whether a tax-exempt institution can say whatever it wants and retain its tax-exempt status, and whether the pastor as an official can use his or her position in the tax-exempt institution to engage in electioneering.”
Although religious groups often participate in political and campaign activities in defiance of the law, only Congress could make these activities fully legal. And doing so would raise big questions about money: Would religious organizations get to keep their tax-exempt status if they were permitted to participate in campaigns and endorse candidates? More importantly, could people still make tax-deductible donations to religious organizations—effectively giving money to promote a particular candidate or campaign?
Congress could make the first change fairly easily: It could add language to the current provision adding a special exception for pastors and other religious leaders who want to talk politics from the pulpit, Galston said, although that might present constitutional challenges. It would be a little more complicated to legalize tax-deductible donations to politically active churches. As Galston pointed out, another provision of the tax code strictly bans charitable, tax-deductible contributions to organizations that engage in political activity. Moreover, all charitable organizations are forbidden from providing “private benefit” to any individual—which includes campaigning on their behalf. So Congress would have to amend those provisions as well.
The result would likely be two-fold: Social-welfare groups that currently file as 501(c)(4)s, for example, might apply to become 501(c)(3)s in order to get a better break on taxes, Galston said. Moreover, political donors might start directing more cash toward non-profits, since those donations would be tax deductible. If all of these changes were made—which seems fairly unlikely—the biggest beneficiaries would likely be the wealthy. Tax-deductible donations only benefit people who take itemized deductions; people with high incomes are significantly more likely to do so.
What’s unclear about Trump’s promise to repeal the Johnson Amendment, though, is whether he’s only intending to push a repeal of the rule for religious organizations. A broad change to the provision would likely cause minor-level chaos within the U.S. political system: There would no longer be any meaningful difference between charitable groups and lobbying organizations. The government would effectively be subsidizing the political activities of all schools, charities, churches, and scientific-research organizations. On the other hand, if Trump’s theoretical administration pushed for a repeal only for religious groups, legal challenges would almost certainly follow. “It would be a preference for religion against organizations that were not religious,” Galston said.
Realistically, it seems unlikely that a President Trump would be able to push this repeal through Congress—it would pose immense political and legal challenges for legislators, Republicans and Democrats alike. The proposal seems to serve more of a dog-whistle purpose during this 2016 presidential campaign season: It’s a signal to religious conservatives that Trump is their champion, and that he cares about religious-freedom issues. It might also be a message to rich conservatives, specifically: Here, Trump hints, might be a way to make tax-favored political donations.
For those Americans who want more, not less, religious influence on American politics, the repeal of the Johnson Amendment is the perfect campaign promise: a guarantee of increased political power, greater freedom of speech, and more control over political dollars for groups that widely feel their electoral influence slipping.
Emma Green is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers politics, policy, and religion.
The American tax code grants houses of worship and other nonprofits special tax-free status specifically because they work for the common good. The Johnson Amendment, which has been in the tax code for more than 60 years, protects the integrity of these tax-exempt organizations by ensuring they do not endorse or oppose political candidates. Americans do not want our charities and houses of worship to be torn apart by partisan campaign politics.
Here's why you should support the Johnson Amendment:
Political parties and candidates seeking power shouldn't use tax-exempt organizations—including charitable nonprofits, foundations, and houses of worship—as tools or pressure them for endorsements. These tax-exempt organizations should focus on fostering community and fulfilling their charitable missions.
Changing current law to encourage churches and charitable nonprofits to endorse and oppose political candidates will deepen divides in our congregations, organizations, and our communities.
Houses of worship, charitable organizations, and foundations can already speak out on any political, social, or moral issue. They just can't endorse or oppose candidates with tax-deductable dollars.
Changing the law is deeply unpopular among religious and denominational organizations, charitable nonprofits, faith leaders, and the American public. 4,200 faith leaders, 5,500 nonprofit organizations, and 103 religious and denominational organizations have all written to Congress strongly opposing the weakening or repeal of current law.
Religious organizations are prohibited from taking a position with respect to political candidates.
In his address to the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Trump vowed to "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution."
Some conservative Christian groups will welcome the promise, but many Americans may wonder what Trump was talking about. Here are five basic questions that we can answer.
1. What is the Johnson Amendment?
The Johnson Amendment regulates what tax-exempt organizations such as churches can do in the political arena.
Under terms of the 1954 legislation (named for its principal sponsor, then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson), churches and other nonprofit organizations that are exempt from taxation "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," according to the IRS website.
Organizations claiming tax-exempt status cannot collect contributions on behalf of political campaigns or make any statement for or against a particular candidate. Clergy are not allowed to endorse candidates from the pulpit. (Despite Trump's promise to "totally destroy" the amendment, the president does not have the authority to do so on his own. Only Congress can repeal a law, in this case an amendment to the tax code.)
2. Does this prohibit all types of political activity in churches?
No.
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. Churches can publish "issue guides" for voters.
3. Who wants the Johnson Amendment repealed?
Though white evangelical Protestants have been active in pushing for the amendment's repeal, other religious groups have been more likely to test its limits.
A 2016 study by the Pew Research Center found that black Protestants have been more likely than other Christian groups to report having heard their clergy speak out clearly on the merits or faults of a particular candidate. The study found that 28 percent of black Protestants heard their clergy speak in support of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, while about 1 in 5 black Protestants, about 20 percent, said they had heard their ministers denounce Donald Trump.
By comparison, just 4 percent of white evangelicals reported having heard their clergy speak in favor of a presidential candidate (2 percent each for Trump and Clinton), while 7 percent heard their clergy speak against a candidate (mostly Clinton).
4. Is this just about free speech for churches and pastors?
No. It's also about money and politics.
Conservative groups that favor a greater role for religion in the public space, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, have long sought to repeal the amendment, arguing that it restricts free speech by censoring the content of a pastor's sermon.
Overturning the law, however, would also have major implications for campaign finance. If churches or clergy are allowed to participate in political campaigns, tax-free donations to the churches could go to support a political candidate. Religious organizations could become bigger money players in politics.
5. Have any churches landed in trouble for violating the Johnson Amendment?
Not really.
Despite the controversy surrounding the Johnson Amendment, the Internal Revenue Service has not been especially active in enforcing it. Since 2008, the Alliance Defending Freedom has organized "Pulpit Freedom Sunday," encouraging pastors to give explicitly political sermons in defiance of the law.
The IRS, however, has rarely moved to take away a church's tax exemption. According to the alliance, as reported by the Washington Post, only one of more than 2,000 Christian clergy deliberately challenging the law since 2008 has been audited, and none has been punished.
Republicans’ Attempts to Repeal the Johnson Amendment aren’t over yet.
For more than a year now, Donald Trump has promised the Religious Right that he would sign a repeal of the rule, which forbids places of worship from endorsing political candidates if they want to keep their tax exempt status. If he were to rescind it, Christian churches be one step closer to essentially becoming fundraising arms of the Republican Party. We have no idea how much dark money would start flowing to campaigns via churches when that day arrives.
Those efforts began last year, when Trump signed an executive order claiming to repeal the rule… but it had no teeth. It was more of a performance than anything substantive.
Since then, Republicans have attempted to do the job legislatively by putting a repeal into various spending bills… to no avail. The latest attempt was thought to be via the omnibus bill passed by Congress this past March.
But when the $1.3 trillion bill was finally released, the Johnson Amendment repeal wasn’t included. (More specifically, there was no language prohibiting the IRS from using its time and money to go after churches that violate the rule by telling the congregation who to vote for.)
Bullet dodged, right?
Not so fast.
At this Road to Majority Conference this past weekend, Faith and Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed announced that he was working with congressional Republicans in another attempt to rescind the rule by putting the repeal in the next “must-pass” bill.
During the congressional portion of his annual Washington conference, Reed said, “I would put it at a maybe 60 percent [likelihood],” in reference to the repeal of the Johnson amendment. “I want you to know without giving away any confidences that we are in ongoing communication with House and Senate leadership, including some of the speakers you are hearing from this weekend, about getting the Johnson amendment included in a must-pass bill before the end of this session of Congress.”
Some of the speakers at the conference included House Majority Leader
Rep. Kevin McCarthy
and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell
.
The Center For Inquiry, rightly opposing this move, is already urging members to take action by contacting their representatives. They also signed on to a letter yesterday, along with 144 other groups, urging the House Appropriations Committee to reconsider this horrible repeal.
The irony in all this is that thousands and thousands of religious leaders don’t want to see the rule repealed. They’ve already signed a letter urging Congress to keep the Johnson Amendment in place. They want politics out of religion. They understand that they’re already free to speak about issues that matter to them, but they have no desire to tell their congregations who to vote for.
While atheist groups aren’t represented in that letter, the Secular Coalition for America and 10 of its member groups sent a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations last July saying roughly the same thing (even though we don’t have houses of worship). The atheists also pointed out that the likely repeal would be problematic because it gives churches — but not secular non-profits — a way to endorse candidates without losing tax exempt status. In other words, this would be a potential lawsuit waiting to happen.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. religious entities would be allowed to engage in political activity without the risk of losing their tax-exempt status under a Republican proposal to overhaul the tax code unveiled on Thursday, a move that could give influential community leaders more latitude to try to influence voters.
The plan would eliminate a provision in the tax code known as the “Johnson Amendment,” which prohibits churches from using church resources to encourage voting for or against a candidate. A religious leader can currently endorse a candidate in their personal capacity, but they cannot do so within the confines of their church, mosque or synagogue or use their staff to help a candidate.
Supporters say it will increase religious liberty. Opponents say it will allow political leaders to pressure churches and allow some churches to be turned into political operations.
The change would apply to all religious groups that register as non-profits, including places of worship for Christians, Muslims and Jews.
But it is evangelical Christians - who have become increasingly more engaged in the political process in the past 25 years - who have clamored the most loudly for the change.
President Donald Trump, who is popular with evangelical voters, vowed on the campaign trail to scrap the Johnson Amendment, arguing that it kept evangelical churches from helping his campaign.
Critics of the Johnson Amendment have long argued that it violates the First Amendment’s separation of church and state because it imposes restrictions on what religious leaders can say. But supporters of the Johnson Amendment say it does just the opposite and instead protects the separation of church and state, arguing that it will allow political leaders to pressure churches to give them endorsements.
The announced change was part of a proposed cut in the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent is the centerpiece of the tax proposal unveiled by House of Representatives Republicans. The plan would also reduce tax rates on some individuals and families.
Many analysts have raised doubts about the likelihood that Congress will be able to pass a comprehensive tax package, including whether they will have enough support for several provisions including the change in religious rules.
Allowing churches to engage in political activity might provide some tactical help for Republicans in the 2018 U.S. congressional elections.
Republicans have long argued that the Johnson Amendment places them at a disadvantage because churches are a central organizing mechanism for their voters while labor unions, which favor Democrats, are allowed to engage in political activity and operate as tax-exempt.
(This version of the story corrects the third paragraph to say supporters, not supports)
Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
Three Reasons Not to Preach Politics in the Pulpit
Christianity Today
21 October 2012
Daniel Darling
To preach is a humble and holy task. Church attenders arrive with the assumption that what is said comes from the Bible. To cut and paste partisan talking-points or to substitute consistent exegesis with sample "election season" sermons is spiritual malpractice.
Here are three important reasons why pastors shouldn't preach politics in the pulpit:
1) Our Text Must Be the Word of God
This sounds like a cliche, but it bears saying: faithful Bible preachers use the text of the Word of God as their source of preaching. Anything less is simply a speech, which may be inspirational, moral, or even Christian-themed. But if our basis is not the text, we're not preaching.
Sometimes a given text will make political or moral statements. For instance, if you're preaching through Psalm 139, you cannot escape the references to the sanctity of life. Or if you are preaching through Proverbs you will encounter many economic truths that shape capitalism. Or if you are preaching through parts of James or Timothy, you will find it inescapable to avoid the harsh condemnations of greed.
But as a rule pastors, especially those who preach in an expository (taking a book at a time, chapter at a time, verse at a time) approach, will be guided by the text. To parachute political talking points into the text is spiritual malpractice.
One caveat is this: perhaps a pastor will do a topical series on key issues of the day and how Christians should think through them biblically. I've done this as a Sunday Night series. This can be helpful, however, a pastor must be faithful to let the text speak to the issue and not wedge your particular political opinion into the text.
2) The Bible Cuts Both Ways
I find it fascinating that certain groups on the Right want pastors to "speak up." What they mean by this, of course, is to more overtly endorse their preferred candidates and/or moral issues. But what they don't understand is that pastors are speaking up, it's just that what pastors are speaking up about may not be the taking points of the current season.And, the Bible cuts against both parties, against all political persuasions. Yes, there is much in the Scripture affirming the prolife (Psalm 139; Genesis 2-3) and traditional marriage (Mark 19:5) positions. You can also make a good argument that the Bible affirms the idea of limited government (1 Timothy 2:2; Mark 12:17) and some of the root ideas of capitalism. So some would say the Bible is very conservative. And yet that would be incomplete, because you will also find in Scripture many texts on justice, the plight of the poor, treatment of the immigrant. And who Jesus' chief antagonists were in the gospels? The Pharisees, the Religious Right of their day.
Should pastors speak about in the pulpit about contemporary issues? Yes, but only when the texts of Scripture clearly articulate it. They shouldn't bow to any party's talking points. They shouldn't slant their sermons to fit a political profile. They shouldn't become wannabee pundits in the pulpit. They should preach the Word and let it do it's work in the hearts of the people, who will then go influence their communities.
3) We Must Never Dilute the Message of the Gospel.
The Church should be counter-cultural and should engage the issues of the day. But this engagement should be an outgrowth of the gospel's sanctifying work in each believer. In other words, the political issues shouldn't be the main thing that characterizes a church. The gospel should be the main thing. The Scriptures should be the main thing. Christ should be the main thing. This is why pastors often shy away from endorsements or public pulpit activism. It sends the wrong message that the main purpose for gathering on Sunday is to stir up the troops and get "our guy" elected. But what of the brother or sister of the other party or the soul seeking God who only hears partisan talking points? If this happens, we've failed in our mission.
To be clear, pastors are citizens, too. And so in other venues, such as op-eds, blogs, books and other places of influence the pastor may speak his mind. Even so, he must jealously guard that influence and always speak winsomely. Again, as a minister of the gospel, he must not make politics more important than his pastoral duties.
Pastors should also coach their members to winsomely engage the culture. We need gospel preachers at all levels of society and in all spheres, politics included. Pastors should equip, encourage, and support those who enter public service.
Summary: In conversations I've had and in my own experience, it is mission that keeps pastors from overtly preaching politics in the pulpit and not the IRS.
Daniel Darling is the Senior Pastor of Gages Lake Bible Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and is the author of several books, including his latest, iFaith. His work has been featured in evangelical publications such as Relevant Magazine and Focus on the Family. Follow his blog at Crosswalk.com.
President Donald Trump greets the Little Sisters of the Poor before signing an executive order on Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty during a National Day of Prayer Event on May 4, 2017. Olivier DoulieryTNS
If President Donald Trump and the House Republican leadership have their way, stand ready for the two most contentious subjects in our society — religion and politics — to mix under one roof in churches, synagogues and mosques.
The same goes for your tax-exempt, shopping center-based, nondenominational house of worship, and of course, for the large-scale evangelical centers that gather thousands of celebrity-preacher followers.
One and all could turn into a political machine, the separation of Church and State be damned.
Can you imagine the Sunday sermon spiked with political punditry — and a plug for Pepe Croqueta for the Miami City Commission, Jane Doe for the Florida House, Joe Blow for Congress?
Jesus, save us!
Of all the possible amendments to jam into their tax bill, the GOP has chosen the constitutionally questionable issue of allowing churches to become political forums in which preachers, ministers, pastors and imams can endorse political candidates.
Don’t roll your eyes at my bringing up mosques, imams and Islam. The incursion of religion into politics may be happening because Trump wants to please his right-wing evangelical voter base, but when you open a door to one religion you open it to all. As I so often feel the need to note these days, though it’s being tested this is still a democracy, and religious freedom is one of the cornerstones.
But arguing that the 1954 Johnson Amendment prohibiting religious organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates restricts the free speech rights of religious groups, the Republican tax bill seeks to modify it. And the only thing left after the makeover is that religious institutions still cannot make donations to political campaigns.
Opening the door to politicking in church could change religious practice and the religious experience as we know it — except perhaps for Catholics.
“The Catholic Church has no dog in that fight and it’s got nothing to do with the tax exemption,” Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski told me. “This is not the way Catholics view religion. The church doesn’t endorse candidates — whether there’s a Johnson Amendment or not.”
In fact, Wenski said, Catholics find themselves “politically homeless, because we don’t find a home in either party today,” with the church at odds with the Democratic Party on abortion and reproductive rights, and with the Republican Party on immigration and capital punishment.
During the last two election cycles, parishes have distributed voter guides approved by the Catholic Conference of Bishops that are focused on forming political consciousness through faith, Wenski said, but that’s the extent of the church involvement in elections. Although groups may call themselves, say “Catholics for Romney,” they have no ties to the church and aren’t — and won’t be in the future — allowed to engage in any campaigning on church grounds.
It’s not that way for some black churches that do feature political candidates “and no one bats an eyelash,” Wenski said.
Trump’s insistence on mixing politics and religion rings un-American, too, as our founding fathers had the wisdom to cement the distance between religious worship and the nation state in the Bill of Rights. Throughout the ages, religion has been one of the deeply rooted causes of war, genocide and persecution. Why would the United States in the 21st century want to open that retrograde, dangerous, and divisive door?
Religous dogma is the way, for example, that the ayatollahs exert ideological and political pressure in embattled Iran, to name one country. Is Trump planning the creation of a Christian theocracy in the United States?
Preaching politics from the pulpit is an atrocious idea, a right-wing power grab by Trump and Republicans who heavily courted Christian conservatives and African-American evangelical pastors during the last presidential campaign.
Only four months into his presidency, Trump signed an executive order “promoting free speech and religious liberty” — instructing the IRS not to punish clergy for political speech — during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden. Sweet-looking nuns from the Little Sisters of the Poor shook Trump’s hand as priests, pastors and at least one Muslim leader applauded. The Catholics attended, Wenski said, because they saw this as a pushback on “the Obama overreach” on requiring religious organizations to pay for employees’ contraception.
But neither Trump, nor the Republicans nor the religious leaders supporting him are doing organized religion a service. The “pulpit freedom” might prove costly. People have left churches behind for less treacherous reasons than having your sermon spiked with divisive politics.
Turning a house of worship into a partisan political forum might be one more reason to go find God elsewhere.
