Even if American religious leaders might now be able to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without losing their nonprofit status, not many Utah pastors or preachers say they will.
It would be like pouring “more fuel on an already wildly dangerous fire,” said the Rev Jamie White of First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City. “As a minister, I explicitly refuse to talk about partisan politics, because it feels outside the scope of what I have been trained to do and the authority of my role.”
Any time a Christian minister starts talking about “issues of justice and peacemaking and loving your neighbor, you have to start talking about policy,” White said, “but endorsing a particular candidate is, I think, crossing a line and jumping over a threshold that feels, for me, wildly dangerous.”
This comes in the wake of a court filing this week in which the Internal Revenue Service said religious services should get an exemption to the-so called Johnson Amendment, which bars all nonprofits from being involved in campaigns.
“When a house of worship in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith,” the IRS lawyers concluded, “it neither ‘participate[s]’ nor ‘intervene[s]’ in a ‘political campaign,’ within the ordinary meaning of those words.”
Religious preaching does “neither of those things,” the filing says, “any more than does a family discussion concerning candidates.”
Latter-day Saint tax attorney Sam Brunson doubts these specific exemptions will have any “immediate effect on churches.”
In the past 70 years, only “one church, plus maybe a couple other religious organizations, have lost their exemptions for violating the Johnson Amendment,” said Brunson, who teaches tax law at Loyola University Chicago. “It has largely gone unenforced.”
But, Brunson suggested, “it might give implicit permission to other organizations to start endorsing candidates.”
Will they or won’t they?
The Rev. Gregory Johnson, president of Standing Together, a consortium of Utah’s evangelical churches, was “delighted” to hear the ruling.
Historically, American clergy “did engage in political matters from the pulpit and did endorse candidates more supportive of Christian values than their opponents,” he said. “I believe that clergy should have this right.”
Johnson is unsure “much will change [among Utah’s evangelical pastors] in the near future,” he said in a message Wednesday. “It takes a while for these cultural shifts to take place.”
There is “an inherent feeling among many pastors that it is illegal to be political in the pulpit,” he said. “Those already inclined to address moral/cultural issues or who already endorse political candidates — and I know several that did last year from their pulpit in the presidential election — will do so with greater boldness going forward.”
Others who have pointed to the Johnson Amendment as to why they do not “will have to come up with another reason,” Johnson said. “In time, as pastoral leadership transitions from current leadership to new, younger leadership, I do believe endorsements from the pulpit will become more normal.”
To gauge response among Utah’s evangelical pastors, Johnson sent a group text to 30 of them, asking if they would begin to endorse candidates from the pulpit. Of the 20 who responded, 16 said no, he reported, while four said yes.
“The yes answer seemed to be from pastors who are saying that they would endorse regardless of what the IRS says,” Johnson noted of his informal polling, “if the Lords moved them to do so.”
Pastor Corey Hodges of The Point Church in Kearns is “glad to know that churches can have that option,” he said. “But personally our church would not endorse a candidate.”
His congregation is “multicultural and multiethnic,” he said, “with members from both parties.”
Church should be “a safe place, free from political endorsements of the leader,” Hodges said, “where the message is on Christ.”
No difference
Doug Andersen, spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, didn’t comment on the IRS ruling itself but instead simply pointed to the faith’s long-standing political neutrality statement.
According to its website, the Utah-based church “does not endorse, promote or oppose political parties and their platforms or candidates for political office; allow its buildings, membership lists or other resources to be used for political purposes, or advise its members on how to vote.”
The Catholic Church “will not endorse political candidates,” according to a statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “even if the tax code allows it.”
Echoing the national church, Utah’s Catholic diocese is “happy to continue what we’ve always been doing here,” said the Rev. John Evans, who serves as the vicar general.
Rabbi Samuel Spector, who leads Utah’s largest Jewish synagogue, Congregation Kol Ami, agrees.
“Just because I can do something,” Spector said, “doesn’t mean I necessarily should do something.”
Spector described his congregation as “fairly purple politically.”
He’s been “very outspoken on issues and policies and how I relate them to our Jewish values,” the rabbi said, “but I haven’t had a desire to endorse candidates because, at the end of the day, I want people to come up with their own conclusions.”
Plus, there are some practical considerations.
“As a leader of my community, I like to work with all of our elected officials,” Spector said. “If I were to endorse one candidate for office, and then that person lost the election to their opponent, have I now damaged my relationship between my community and that elected official?”
The rabbi does, however, see one exception.
“If I felt that there was a candidate who posed a real danger to the Jewish people, a candidate for office who promoted vehemently antisemitic rhetoric,” Spector said, “I might be tempted to hint at a person’s opponent.”
That would be, he said, “a very rare circumstance.”
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