When Your Pastor Wants to Endorse Candidates: The Fight Over Political Pulpits

The Amendment Nobody Knows About (But Everyone Should)

Pop quiz: What’s the Johnson Amendment?

If you’re not a tax lawyer, political junkie, or pastor who’s really mad about campaign finance law, you probably have no idea. Which is interesting, because it’s been governing how churches engage with politics for seventy years, and there’s a loud movement to kill it.

Here’s the deal: Since 1954, churches and other tax-exempt nonprofits have been prohibited from endorsing or opposing political candidates. They can talk about issues all day long—abortion, immigration, healthcare, whatever. But the moment they say “Vote for Candidate X” or “Don’t vote for Candidate Y,” they risk losing their tax-exempt status.

This is the Johnson Amendment. Named after Lyndon B. Johnson, who was a senator at the time and apparently had beef with some nonprofits opposing his reelection. The amendment passed with minimal fanfare and has been law ever since.

Until recently, most people—including most pastors—were fine with this arrangement. Churches stayed out of explicit candidate endorsements, focused on issues and values, and everyone moved on with their lives.

Then something shifted. Conservative evangelical leaders started arguing that the Johnson Amendment violates their free speech and religious liberty. That preventing them from endorsing candidates from the pulpit is government censorship of religious expression. That the amendment should be repealed or gutted, allowing churches to go full political without losing tax benefits.

Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas has been one of the loudest voices in this fight, testifying before Congress about how the amendment supposedly silences churches and demanding its repeal.

The result? A culture war flashpoint where “religious freedom” collides with “separation of church and state,” where nobody can agree on what either of those phrases actually means, and where the future of American politics might hinge on whether your pastor can tell you who to vote for.

Welcome to the Johnson Amendment debate—where everyone’s absolutely certain they’re right and nobody’s willing to consider they might be wrong.

What Actually Happened in 1954

Let’s start with the origin story, because it’s less dramatic than current rhetoric suggests.

In 1954, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson was facing reelection. Some tax-exempt nonprofits were actively campaigning against him. Johnson, being a skilled political operator, didn’t like this. So he introduced an amendment to the tax code prohibiting 501(c)(3) organizations—which includes churches, charities, and other nonprofits—from participating in political campaigns.

The amendment passed. Barely anyone noticed at the time. It wasn’t a grand statement about church-state separation or religious liberty. It was Johnson protecting his political interests using his legislative power.

But the consequences were significant. Suddenly, thousands of organizations that enjoyed tax-exempt status—meaning they don’t pay income tax and donors can deduct contributions—faced a choice: stay out of explicit candidate endorsements or risk losing those tax benefits.

For churches, this meant you could preach about moral issues all you wanted. You could say abortion is wrong, that marriage should be between a man and woman, that immigration policy should be more compassionate, that economic justice matters. You could organize voter registration. You could educate congregants about issues.

You just couldn’t say: “Vote for this specific candidate” or “Don’t vote for that specific candidate.”

For decades, this arrangement worked fine. Most churches had no desire to endorse candidates anyway. Their mission was spiritual, not political. Issues mattered, but partisan politics felt like a distraction from the gospel.

Then the culture wars intensified. The Christian Right emerged as a political force. Evangelical leaders became increasingly aligned with the Republican Party. And suddenly, the restriction on candidate endorsements started feeling like an obstacle rather than a guardrail.

Enter Pastor Robert Jeffress and others arguing that the Johnson Amendment is an unconstitutional restriction on religious free speech that must be eliminated.

Meet the Megachurch Pastor Who Wants to Politicize the Pulpit

Robert Jeffress isn’t just any pastor. He leads First Baptist Dallas, a massive megachurch with serious political influence. He’s been a vocal Trump supporter, served on the “President’s Evangelical Advisory Board,” and regularly appears on Fox News to provide the evangelical perspective on political issues.

Jeffress represents a particular strand of American evangelicalism that sees no meaningful separation between faith and conservative politics. For him, Christianity necessarily entails specific political positions, and restricting churches from endorsing candidates is restricting their ability to fulfill their religious mission.

His argument goes something like this:

Churches should be able to speak to all aspects of life, including who should hold political office. If abortion is murder and Candidate A supports abortion rights, shouldn’t pastors be able to tell their congregations not to vote for someone who supports murder?

The Johnson Amendment creates a chilling effect. Even if enforcement is rare, the threat of losing tax-exempt status silences pastors who might otherwise speak more directly about political candidates.

There’s a double standard. Liberal organizations seem to engage in political activity without facing the same scrutiny as conservative churches. The law is applied selectively to target conservative religious speech.

This is about free speech and religious liberty. The government shouldn’t be able to tell churches what they can and can’t say from the pulpit. The First Amendment protects both free speech and free exercise of religion—the Johnson Amendment violates both.

These arguments resonate with many conservative evangelicals who feel increasingly marginalized in American culture and see the Johnson Amendment as one more way the secular state restricts their religious expression.

But there’s a problem: pretty much every part of this argument is either misleading or flat wrong.

Why Jeffress’s Arguments Don’t Hold Up

Let’s take these claims one by one:

“Churches should be able to endorse candidates as part of their religious mission.”

Churches already can speak about any issue they want. Moral, political, social—it’s all fair game. What they can’t do is explicitly endorse or oppose candidates while maintaining tax-exempt status.

This isn’t a restriction on religious speech—it’s a condition of tax benefits. Churches can absolutely endorse candidates. They just have to pay taxes like everyone else if they do.

Nobody’s forcing churches to be tax-exempt. It’s a choice. And with that choice comes certain restrictions, which churches agree to when they apply for 501(c)(3) status.

“The Johnson Amendment creates a chilling effect.”

Does it though? Churches talk about political issues constantly. Conservative churches denounce abortion and same-sex marriage from the pulpit every Sunday. Progressive churches preach about immigration justice and racial equity. Nobody’s getting their tax-exempt status revoked.

The “chilling effect” argument assumes churches are self-censoring out of fear. But there’s scant evidence this is actually happening. Churches that want to discuss political issues do so freely. They just stop short of explicit candidate endorsements—which isn’t much of a restriction given how clear most churches make their political preferences anyway.

“There’s selective enforcement targeting conservatives.”

This is conspiracy theory masquerading as analysis. The IRS rarely enforces the Johnson Amendment against anyone—conservative or liberal. The last major enforcement action was decades ago.

If anything, the IRS has been criticized for being too lenient, allowing churches to engage in activities that clearly violate the amendment without consequences. The idea that conservative churches are being uniquely targeted is unsupported by evidence.

“This violates free speech and religious liberty.”

No, it doesn’t. The government isn’t prohibiting speech—it’s conditioning tax benefits. Churches remain free to say whatever they want. They just can’t say it while enjoying tax-exempt status if it involves candidate endorsements.

Lots of speech is restricted in certain contexts without violating the First Amendment. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. You can’t make defamatory statements. You can’t engage in fraud. These aren’t violations of free speech—they’re reasonable restrictions in specific circumstances.

Similarly, saying “if you want tax benefits, you can’t endorse candidates” isn’t censorship. It’s a trade-off. Churches can choose which they value more.

The Real Agenda

So if Jeffress’s stated reasons don’t hold up, what’s this really about?

Power. Influence. Political access. Money.

Repealing the Johnson Amendment would allow wealthy donors to funnel unlimited money to churches for explicitly political purposes—all tax-deductible. It would turn churches into super PACs with tax benefits.

It would allow megachurch pastors with huge congregations to explicitly campaign for candidates, mobilizing thousands of voters with the moral authority of religious leadership backing specific political choices.

It would blur the line between church and partisan politics until they’re indistinguishable, transforming Sunday services into campaign rallies and religious authority into political weapon.

And it would do all this while allowing donors to deduct their political contributions as charitable giving—essentially having taxpayers subsidize partisan political activity.

This isn’t about free speech or religious liberty. It’s about power and money, dressed up in constitutional language to make it sound noble.

What Churches Actually Want (Spoiler: Not This)

Here’s the thing: most churches don’t want the Johnson Amendment repealed.

Mainline Protestant denominations oppose repeal. Catholic bishops oppose it. Many evangelical leaders oppose it. Black churches—which have historically been deeply political while respecting the candidate endorsement line—oppose it.

Why? Several reasons:

It would compromise churches’ prophetic voice. Once you’re explicitly endorsing candidates, you’ve chosen a side. You’re no longer speaking truth to power—you’re part of a partisan political machine. This undermines the church’s ability to challenge any party or candidate when they stray from moral principles.

It would divide congregations. Churches already struggle with political polarization. Imagine if the pastor endorsed a candidate from the pulpit. Members who support the other candidate would feel alienated, unwelcome, even betrayed. Churches would split along partisan lines.

It would invite corruption. Political money corrupts everything it touches. Allowing unlimited political donations to churches—tax-deductible, no less—would create massive incentives for wealthy donors to use churches as political vehicles. The temptation would be enormous.

It would damage churches’ mission. Churches are supposed to be about spiritual transformation, community building, serving the vulnerable. Making them explicitly partisan would distract from these core purposes and reduce them to political organizations.

It would undermine tax-exempt status itself. Tax exemption exists because churches provide public goods—charity, community services, spiritual guidance. Once they become political entities, the justification for tax benefits disappears. Repealing the Johnson Amendment might ultimately lead to churches losing tax-exempt status entirely.

The pastors pushing for repeal represent a minority—loud, politically connected, but still a minority. Most religious leaders recognize that the Johnson Amendment protects churches more than it restricts them.

The Separation Nobody Understands

This debate keeps invoking “separation of church and state,” but almost nobody agrees on what that actually means.

The phrase doesn’t appear in the Constitution. It comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote describing the First Amendment’s religion clauses. And people have been fighting about its meaning ever since.

One interpretation: The government can’t establish a state religion or prohibit religious practice, but religion and politics can otherwise mix freely. Churches can be political. Politicians can be religious. As long as there’s no official state church and no persecution of minority faiths, we’re good.

Another interpretation: There should be meaningful separation between religious institutions and government power. Churches shouldn’t exercise political power. Government shouldn’t promote religion. The two spheres should remain distinct to protect both.

Jeffress and company hold the first view. Most constitutional scholars and mainstream religious leaders hold the second. The Johnson Amendment reflects the second interpretation—keeping churches out of explicit partisan politics to maintain that separation.

But here’s the trick: Jeffress frames his position as “religious liberty” and his opponents’ position as “government censorship.” This is rhetorically brilliant and substantively dishonest.

Religious liberty means you can practice your faith without government interference. Nobody’s interfering with religious practice. Churches can preach, worship, organize, serve their communities—all protected.

What Jeffress wants isn’t religious liberty—it’s religious privilege. Specifically, the privilege to engage in partisan political activity while enjoying tax benefits not available to other political organizations. That’s not liberty; that’s special treatment.

The Consequences Nobody’s Thinking Through

Let’s say Jeffress gets his way and the Johnson Amendment is repealed. What happens?

Scenario One: Churches Become Super PACs

Wealthy donors immediately start funneling money to politically aligned churches. Megachurches become explicitly partisan political organizations. Sunday services feature candidate endorsements and campaign messaging. Churches divide along party lines—Republican churches, Democratic churches, with theology taking a backseat to politics.

Smaller churches can’t compete with this money. The political landscape becomes dominated by a few massive, well-funded religious organizations. Traditional religious authority gets weaponized for partisan purposes.

Scenario Two: The Backlash

Public opinion turns against churches’ tax-exempt status. If they’re going to be political organizations, why should taxpayers subsidize them? Pressure builds to eliminate religious tax exemptions entirely.

Congress eventually responds by removing or drastically restricting churches’ tax benefits. Ironically, the push to repeal the Johnson Amendment ends up costing churches more than the amendment ever did.

Scenario Three: The Slippery Slope

Once churches can endorse candidates, the logical next step is direct campaign contributions. Then coordinated campaign activity. Then churches essentially become political parties with religious branding.

This fundamentally transforms American politics and American religion—neither for the better. Religion becomes hopelessly entangled with partisan politics. Faith becomes indistinguishable from party affiliation. The prophetic voice of religion is lost entirely.

Scenario Four: It Doesn’t Matter

Churches already make their political preferences abundantly clear without explicit endorsements. Repealing the Johnson Amendment doesn’t actually change much in practice—it just makes official what’s already happening unofficially.

But it sets a dangerous precedent about the relationship between religious institutions and political power, opening the door for further erosion of church-state separation.

None of these scenarios are good. Which is why most churches don’t want the amendment repealed.

What This Is Really About

Strip away the constitutional rhetoric and here’s what’s actually happening:

A subset of conservative evangelical leaders wants to formalize the already-close relationship between their churches and the Republican Party. They want to explicitly endorse candidates, mobilize voters as a religious bloc, and leverage church infrastructure for partisan political purposes—all while maintaining tax benefits.

They’re dressing this up as “religious liberty” and “free speech,” but it’s really about power. They see declining cultural influence, feel threatened by secularization and social change, and want to use churches as political weapons to fight back.

The Johnson Amendment stands in their way—not because it actually prevents them from being political (they’re already extremely political), but because it prevents them from being explicitly, formally partisan while enjoying tax benefits.

Repealing it would give them what they want: official recognition that churches can be partisan political organizations without losing financial privileges. It would validate the transformation of certain churches from spiritual communities into political machines.

And it would fundamentally alter the relationship between religion and politics in America, probably permanently and definitely not for the better.

The Future of Faith and Politics

So where does this go?

The Johnson Amendment probably isn’t getting repealed anytime soon. Despite loud advocacy from some quarters, there’s not enough political will. Most churches oppose it. Most Americans—even religious Americans—don’t want explicitly partisan churches.

But the push to repeal it reveals something important: a growing faction of religious conservatives who see no meaningful distinction between their faith and their politics, who view partisan activity as religious expression, who want to wield religious authority for political ends.

This faction is loud, well-funded, and politically connected. They’re not going away. And even if they don’t succeed in repealing the Johnson Amendment, they’re succeeding in blurring the lines between church and partisan politics in practice.

Many conservative churches already function as Republican organizing arms in everything but name. The only thing the Johnson Amendment prevents is explicit candidate endorsements—and many churches find ways around even that restriction.

Meanwhile, progressive churches struggle with their own version of this tension—wanting to address political issues from faith perspectives without becoming partisan organizations.

The question isn’t really about the Johnson Amendment anymore. It’s about what role religious institutions should play in American political life. Are they prophetic voices speaking moral truth regardless of party? Or are they interest groups advocating for specific political outcomes?

Can churches engage with politics without being consumed by it? Can they address political issues without becoming partisan organizations? Can they maintain spiritual integrity while wielding political influence?

These are the real questions. The Johnson Amendment is just one small piece of a much larger puzzle about religion, politics, and power in America.

The Ending Nobody Wanted

The Johnson Amendment debate is frustrating because it’s a proxy war for much bigger conflicts we’re not addressing directly:

About whether America is a “Christian nation” and what that means. About whether religious values should inform public policy and how. About the relationship between faith communities and political power. About who gets to define “religious liberty” and what it protects.

We can’t resolve those conflicts by arguing about tax code. But we also can’t ignore them by pretending this is just a technical legal question.

Pastor Jeffress and others pushing for repeal are wrong about the law, wrong about the consequences, and wrong about what’s good for churches. But they’re right that there’s tension between faith and politics in America that we haven’t figured out how to navigate.

The Johnson Amendment isn’t perfect. No law is. But it represents a workable compromise: churches can be as political as they want on issues, but explicit partisan candidate endorsements are off-limits if you want tax benefits.

That seems… reasonable? Not restrictive. Not censorship. Just a sensible boundary between religious and partisan activity, protecting both.

Most churches agree. Most Americans agree. Most legal scholars agree.

So maybe the lesson is: when loud voices demand something most people don’t want, claiming to speak for everyone while representing a minority, we should be skeptical of their motives and protective of the systems that actually serve the common good.

The Johnson Amendment isn’t silencing churches. It’s protecting them from becoming what some leaders desperately want them to be: partisan political machines wearing religious clothing.

And that’s worth preserving.

Even if it makes Pastor Jeffress mad.

Especially if it makes Pastor Jeffress mad.

Because the day churches become explicitly partisan super PACs is the day they lose whatever moral authority they have left.

And no tax deduction is worth that.