Erik Stanley
While it’s perfectly okay for people to have different opinions about what churches should say from the pulpit, especially with regard to politics, what’s not okay is for the federal government—rather than congregations themselves—to be in charge of what is said. And it won’t do to dangle the threat of taxing the church if it won’t comply. That’s why the Johnson Amendment has to go.
The Tax Code’s restriction on political speech by non-profit organizations is popularly known as the Johnson Amendment, named after its sponsor, Lyndon Johnson, who maneuvered the levers of senatorial power to insert the provision into a massive tax overhaul bill in 1954. Congress passed that bill without any thought about its impact on the constitutionally protected freedoms of churches, and Johnson wasn’t targeting them either. It was a rank incumbent-protection measure specifically designed to silence two nonprofit organizations opposing Johnson’s Senate run because they thought he was soft on communism.......To Read More....
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