Seventy years ago, a practice hundreds of years old was kneecapped just a little bit. Those fiery sermons of old, which spread the call for liberty and independence in the Colonial era, were stifled. Even after the IRS was invented out of whole cloth, pulpit pounders were free to talk about politicians and even endorse them or their policies.
In 1954, the feds decided against it. Nonprofits like churches were told they could not retain that status and endorse political candidates. That didn’t stop the rhetoric, but it became the systemic standard. Rarely enforced, most shied away from it, short of allowing those running for office to speak or be present. It was just how things were done.
The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.
The agency made that statement in a court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters.
Much the way a board of directors is free to discuss within its membership, a congregation has earned the right to know what its leaders think.
[The] I.R.S. agreed to a narrower carveout — one that experts in nonprofit law said might sharply increase politicking in churches, even though it mainly seemed to formalize what already seemed to be the agency’s unspoken policy.
The agency said that if a house of worship endorsed a candidate to its congregants, the I.R.S. would view that not as campaigning but as a private matter, like “a family discussion concerning candidates.”
“Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted,” the agency said, in a motion filed jointly with the plaintiffs.
Not everyone thinks its a good idea.
The National Council of Nonprofits, which represents 30,000 such groups, warned that allowing tax-exempt groups to endorse candidates could lead to a future where political groups use nonprofits as a kind of legal disguise.
Diane Yentel, the group’s president, said in a statement Monday that the I.R.S.’s move was “not about religion or free speech, but about radically altering campaign finance laws. The decree could open the floodgates for political operatives to funnel money to their preferred candidates while receiving generous tax breaks at the expense of taxpayers who may not share those views.”
If this can happen, it will but what happens next? Does the IRS decide it has to do more due diligence in the area of non-profits? Is that already a wrench aiming for the gears? There are innumerable entities bankrolling partisans with vast sums of money funneled to non-profits. Many were Irish members and downstream beneficiaries with taxpayer money in epic proportions. I don’t recall The National Council of Nonprofits getting uppity about that.
USAID?
Crickets?
From 30,000 feet, the problem the Johnson Amendment was created to solve was none of the government’s business and based, at least anecdotally, on a political candidate silencing speech they didn’t like. Rolling it back is good, even if it creates loopholes in a process that should (maybe) not exist in the first place.
Kamala raised and spent more than $2 billion over 100 days. Any concern about how that happened, whether it was good or bad? Purchasing celebrity endorsements and buying online influencers.
Whatever the IRS is doing is likely benefiting one side more than the other. The solution os to get out of the way and let states and the people figure it out, and if it wants to tax all of that, then it has to convince people to elect members of congress to write laws that do that.
