Author, columnist, speaker

Pastors Should Be More Involved in Politics, Not Less

By Robert Knight

Before 1954, pastors, priests and rabbis could openly endorse political parties or candidates.

Then came the Johnson Amendment, named for Lyndon Baines Johnson, a then-senator from Texas who tweaked the IRS code.

Suddenly, tax-exempt nonprofits were barred from “participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” The “opposition to” phrase was added in 1986.

A ruthless political strategist before and during his presidency, Mr. Johnson engineered this coup after two Texas nonprofit groups had supported his Senate primary opponent. This effectively silenced clergy who feared losing their tax-exempt status.

Over the next 70 years, conservative pastors self-censored, while liberal pastors ignored the rule, knowing the IRS would never enforce the law on them. This greatly benefited Democrats.

Despite the code’s blatant unconstitutionality, it stood until this past week, when the IRS announced it would no longer enforce it. Congress needs to follow this up with full repeal.

A conservative columnist whom I regard highly and won’t name is lamenting this long-overdue reprieve. He wrote that pastors who practice “partisan politics” would “dilute their primary mission,” and said he would leave any such church.

“Politicians and preachers should mostly stay in their own lanes,” he wrote.

This might explain why a survey last fall indicated that millions of self-identified Christians don’t bother with elections.

"The 32 million Christians sitting in the pews each week who refuse to vote are a gamechanger,” concluded pollster George Barna. “It's low hanging fruit for pastors as they try to motivate those congregants to carry out their civic duty and honor God through their influence for things that matter in our culture."

Over the years, Christian leaders such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Franklin Graham have been excoriated for encouraging more Christian activism, especially on social issues like marriage and abortion.

Without Mr. Falwell’s Moral Majority, Ronald Reagan may not have won his presidential races in the 1980s. Christian activism from the pulpit helped Virginia Republicans elect conservative statewide officials in 2021. It was a key element of President Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris and the GOP’s capture of both houses of Congress in 2024.

At the end of the aforementioned column, my colleague quotes Jesus telling Pontius Pilate, “‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36). That ought to be good enough for everyone to put their priorities in the right order.”

You can just hear the ACLU and other Democrats cheering, “Yeah, what he says—stay out of these fights!” In practice, that means Christian pastors taking the easy way out and ignoring pressing realities instead of being “salt and light.”

Meanwhile, functional atheists enact immoral policies. If you want to see what that looks like, check out any Planned Parenthood abortion mill or a public library’s drag queen story hour.

I have several questions: Where in the Bible is there any limit on Jesus’s influence in this world? Where does it say that Christian pastors can address any and all sectors of life except public policy?

Jesus said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but that doesn’t give Caesar a license to commit evil without opposition.

Should William Wilberforce, the outspoken Christian in Great Britain’s Parliament, have stayed silent instead of working from 1790 to 1807 to end the transatlantic slave trade? After all, it was a political matter.

Should pastors have been barred from supporting abolitionists in the United States before the Civil War ended slavery? Perhaps they should have “stayed in their own lane.”

The same goes for pastors who spurred enactment of the civil rights laws in the mid-1960s with a greater percentage of Republican support than from Democrats.

Likewise, opposing abortion in the pulpit while declining to expose the politicians who facilitate it (the entire Democratic Party and some Republicans) is ineffectual at best.

Congregations look to their clergy for guidance. If the pastors don’t bother to mention politics or elections, these must not be important.

Yet, as we see every day, elections have profound consequences. All laws have a moral dimension. Compliance, as with taxes, is not voluntary. Laws are enforced by potential violence from the state—even for traffic violations. If you don’t pay your fine, you can be jailed.

In 1819, the U.S. Supreme Court said in McCulloch v. Maryland, “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

I don’t want pastors to “stay in their own lane.” They should speak out more forcefully against politicians who enact evil policies in the name of euphemisms such as “reproductive freedom,” “gender-affirming care,” or “social justice.”

At the same time, with the fig leaf of IRS fears gone, they can and should openly endorse upstanding candidates. This could change the world for the better.  

Illustration by Linas Garsys / The Washington Times.