Sure enough, intoxicated by Donald Trump’s promise to undo the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits 501(c)3 organizations (including churches) from engaging in electoral advocacy, two Republican congressmen have introduced a bill repealing it.
Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to make conservative Christians more politically powerful by eliminating legal restrictions on churches’ and other tax-exempt nonprofits’ ability to do electoral work. On Wednesday two Republican congressmen, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and Georgia’s Jody Hice, introduced H.R. 6195, what they call the “Free Speech Fairness Act,” which would lay the groundwork for a President Trump to do just that.
Scalise and Hice were joined at a press conference in the U.S. Capitol by Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Christiana Holcomb, and anti-gay activist and pastor Harry Jackson. According to a handout, the bill or the policies represented in it are also supported by Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation, the Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability, March for Life Action, Liberty Counsel and Liberty Counsel Action, the American Center for Law and Justice, and the Home School Legal Defense Association.
We know what will happen if the amendment is repealed: Churches will start selling their influence, and our public life will become more corrupt than it is already.
When Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle shed light on the conditions in Chicago’s slaughter houses, the meatpackers didn’t turn to the legislature, where there was already a lot of strong feeling against them. No. They turned to the preachers. They printed-up a million or so handbills condemning Sinclair — and asked pastors to hand them out. They did so gladly, selling their influence and abetting the oppression of their congregants. (A complete account will be found in my anthology, The Case for Taxing Churches).