A nearly 60-year-old tax law prohibits preaching politics from the pulpit, but with just days before the presidential election, dozens of Georgia’s religious leaders are embracing a movement to challenge the rule.
Pastors across metro Atlanta have openly flouted the law in recent weeks, attacking the Internal Revenue Service’s stance as an intrusion of their sacred free speech rights. Others have endorsed a political candidate, and some have dared the federal government to sanction them for expressing their political preferences, eager at the chance of a legal battle over religion and politics. Violating the law could cost a church its tax-exempt status.
“There are risks to be taken and I knowingly take those risks. But I refuse to compromise God’s word and I refuse to be muzzled,” began Jerry Helton, who leads Blairsville’s House of Prayer Interdenominational Church, in a sermon earlier this month.
Helton’s church was among at least 38 in Georgia to participate in “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” a national movement sponsored by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The group says it will enlist lawyers to support churches who were challenged by the IRS, but so far the federal government has steered clear of sanctioning participants.
Political activism in the church is nothing new. Conservative Republicans have long tied their message to the church, and black clergy took to the pulpit to urge voters to the polls amid The Civil Rights Movement.
This dispute, however, stems from a 1954 law sponsored by Lyndon B. Johnson, then a senator, blocking nonprofits from participating in campaigns for public office. In short, churches are prohibited from backing a political candidate. It’s not clear what prompted Johnson’s legislation and whether its impact on churches was intended, though at the time Johnson was sparring with nonprofit groups who opposed his agenda.
Many of the churches involved in the most recent effort appear to be predominantly white and politically conservative, though left-leaning pastors have also expressed frustration with the rule.
Helton stopped short of endorsing a candidate, but urged congregants to view the presidential election through a Biblical lens. That perspective was echoed by preachers in both Alpharetta and downtown Atlanta Sunday, where they reminded their parishioners to vote on November 6th and all but stated their presidential choice.
Pastor Brent Deakins, of the Reach One Church in Alpharetta, reminded his congregants that the Rev. Billy Graham said this presidential election is among the “most critical” in his lifetime. Graham recently met with Mitt Romney, telling the candidate he would do all he can to help him in the race.
And in downtown Atlanta, the head of the Ebenezer Baptist Church — the Auburn Avenue landmark that President Barack Obama has visited — urged congregants to turn out to the polls regardless of Romney’s seemingly solid lock on the state’s 16 electoral votes.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock is not part of the Alliance’s efforts to goad the IRS, but like his conservative counterparts, he also faces a tension over how to guide his flock this election cycle.
“Georgia could have gone the other way in 2008. We had the votes. But we didn’t do what we were supposed to do,” said Warnock, citing electoral statistics that showed black men didn’t vote at the same rate as black women during the 2008 election, when Republican Sen. John McCain won the state by more than 200,000 votes.
Though it’s unlikely a higher rate of black voter turnout in Georgia could have swung the state toward Obama, it could have made the outcome closer.
“Sisters, if you have a brother in your life, tell them to vote,” Warnock said Sunday. “…It’s absolutely important.”
Some Georgia pastors haven’t been shy about tempting the IRS with outright endorsements of candidates.
The Rev. Anthony Locke, who leads the First Presbyterian Church of Tucker, recently praised Mitt Romney for his performance in one of the presidential debates and suggested Christians should vote for him.
“Mitt Romney said that our national debt is immoral,” said Locke, according to a transcript of his Oct. 7 sermon. “How long has it been since you heard a politician use the word immoral? And Mitt Romney did it in front of 65 million viewers. How could a Christian not vote for Mitt?”
Though Deakins, of Reach One, participated in the Alliance Defending Freedom’s event, he said he’s still wrestling with what role religious leaders should have in politics. “I hear the message that we should be leaders in culture and politics, and I look at Martin Luther King and he was a leader [in both],” Deakins said. “But the other part of me of says that is not our focus … our focus should be sharing the gospel and the word.
Surveys of clergy members have consistently shown most oppose publicly endorsing candidates, said James Guth, a Furman University political scientist who has written extensively about the divide between religion and politics.
But he said some outspoken members of the Christian right have long resented the 1954 law and embraced coded phrasing to skirt the rule, such as suggesting one candidate cherishes certain religious values over another. In recent years, though, more of those critics have been emboldened to drop the pretense.
“As they see it, there’s a double-standard that the IRS has exhibited over the years,” said Guth. “They’re trying to set the stage for some sort of legal action against the rule.”
The IRS declined comment, but recent history suggests the federal government largely ignores the barbs. A 2007 report, the most recent figures available, shows the IRS investigated 44 churches accused of conducting illegal political activity during the 2006 cycle, but did not take punitive action.
The detente could have implications far beyond Sunday sermons, suggests Rick Cohen, a correspondent for Nonprofit Quarterly. He wrote this month that the apparent refusal by the IRS to crack down on political preachers is “really bad news” for other tax-exempt organizations.
“If the nonprofit sector becomes seen by donors and politicians as yet another tool in the ever-expanding pool of dollars diverted to the ravenous appetite of political campaigns, good luck to all of us,” he wrote.
For her part, Reach One congregant Aretha Johnson said she believes God should be involved in politics, but that a candidate is someone for the voter — not the preacher — to choose.
“I believe that God should be involved in everything,” said Johnson, of Alpharetta. “But I don’t believe a church should push one candidate. That’s up to me to decide.”
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