On July 13th, The House Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) Appropriations bill was voted out of committee 31-32 and heads to the full US House of Representatives for consideration. The bill includes a section that would basically eliminate the Johnson amendment enforcement of the tax code against churches opening them up to used as political tools and bribery facilitators.
During remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump said he wanted to ‘totally destroy the Johnson Amendment’. The amendment is a rule that prohibits churches from giving money or endorsing candidates as part of the deal for federal tax exemption. Trump’s statement puts religious freedom in danger and opens the churches up to dark money that has ruined our election process.
This Sunday, October 5th, Alliance Defending Freedom’s Pulpit Freedom Sunday will take place. They claim it’s about religious freedom when in fact it’s about creating a lawsuit they can use to try and get tax regulations against electioneering by churches tossed out as unconstitutional. Finally, this year they might get their lawsuit.
Last month I posted about a settlement between the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over policing electioneering by churches. The IRS had for years dragged its feet in investigating complaints about churches violating the terms of the tax exemption rules by getting too political. Of course conservatives now claim, with the settlement, that a church’s first amendment rights will be violated. Such a claim is utter hogwash.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) announced on Friday that it and the IRS had settled a federal lawsuit over non-enforcement of restrictions on political activity by tax-exempt religious organizations and churches. The only roadblock to full compliance is a Congressional fishing expedition looking for scandals.
Alliance Defending Freedom, which sponsored Pulpit Freedom Sunday on October 7th, claimed over a 1,000 pastors would be taking part in violating the tax laws prohibiting a tax exempt group, such as churches, from electioneering at the pulpit. If the law breaking pastors had done some basic research they would have seen that having a protest now was a waste of time. The IRS suspended investigations of churches in 2009 due to a federal law suit. Basically Pulpit Freedom Sunday was a failure.
As I posted previously: