IRS Greenlights Churches to Back Candidates from the Pulpit

Churches and other houses of worship registered as tax-exempt nonprofits can, in fact, endorse political candidates to their congregations, says the IRS.

A court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and a group of Christian broadcasters brought forth this revelation.

501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations have long been prohibited from endorsing candidates and/or intervening in campaigns with bids for political office.

In the court filing, the IRS says that prohibiting churches from endorsing candidates would create “serious tension” with the First Amendment:

“For many houses of worship, the exercise of their religious beliefs includes teaching or instructing their congregations regarding all aspects of life, including guidance concerning the impact of faith on the choices inherent in electoral politics.”

The agency wrote, “Bona fide communications internal to a house of worship, between the house of worship and its congregation, in connection with religious services, do neither of those things, any more than does a family discussion concerning candidates.”

Separation of Church & State

Inevitably, there will be some who want to bring up the famous quote about the need for separation between church and state from one of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, and how the above is an example of the church overstepping her bounds; this would be categorically false.

The 1802 letter Jefferson wrote which contained the quote was written to the Baptist Church from Danbury, Connecticut.

The letter explained Jefferson’s beliefs about federalism, the meaning of the Establishment Clause and gave assurances to the congregation that the federal government could not interfere with their church or offer special favors to any particular sect.

He wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

And whilst this letter has been used in modern times to try and justify government overreach in dictating what the church can do in America, when in reality, the letter is proof that the founders never intended for the government to tell the church what they could or could not do, but rather, it reveals that they sought to place limitations on the government!

Essentially, the church is free in America to do what she so chooses, whilst the government has the restraints placed upon it.

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