A church told members how to vote. The IRS officially says that's fine.

The Johnson Amendment may be in effect, but even the IRS doesn't want to enforce it

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The IRS says it is no longer investigating a Christian church that endorsed a candidate for political office in 2022, violating its tax-exempt status.

Perhaps the most incredible thing about that is that it means the IRS was actually investigating a church for endorsing a candidate for political office in 2022… at least until the Trump administration took over. For years, people have been clamoring for definitive proof that the IRS enforces its own damn rules, and we finally have some evidence that they… at least know those rules exist. (Enforcement will have to wait another day.)

The story actually involves two churches even though only the second one had a run-in with the IRS.

Here’s what happened: On August 14, 2022, Pastor Greg Peters of Parkview Church in Palm Coast, Florida brought on stage three candidates for the Flagler County School Board and urged his congregation to vote for all three in order to “flip” the district so it would be under conservative Christian control.

PASTOR GREG PETERS: … In the 25 years that I've been pastoring Parkview, never one time, never one time in 25 years, have I brought a political candidate to the platform. And so today I thought, “If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right.” And I'm going to bring three.

…

So, Pastor, why? It's an easy answer: For the souls of our kids…

Franklin Graham said the most important elected position is the school board member. And there's been so much in our world that has been going on. And there have been things that have happened in our school board over the last few years that have deeply disturbed me… And so today, I've asked Jill Woolbright, Will Furry, and Christy Chong to come and be a part of our service… There are five school board members.

The two opposing votes against a conservative agenda—the two opposing votes are not up for re-election. So the three seats that are being voted for, all three must be conservative in order for the school board to be flipped from liberal to conservative. All three of these candidates have been supported and backed by the 1776 Project, which—The 1776 Project has overturned in excess of 40 liberal school boards in the last year across our country.

…

They will rise up against a woke agenda, and they will seek to promote truth as it is spelled out clearly in your Word.

That campaign rally—because that’s what this was—lasted about 20 minutes, and neither the pastor nor the candidates spoke about district-specific issues. He just said they were backed by The 1776 Project, which is a right-wing political action committee that opposes educating children about systemic racism while promoting a whitewashed and misleading vision of American history.

Based on the candidates’ statements, though, you would think their only qualification for the jobs they were seeking was being a conservative Christian. (It’s not like their opponents were anti-Christian.)

There was no mention of the fact that the sole incumbent on stage, Jill Woolbright, twice rejected a proclamation denouncing hate groups, filed a criminal complaint against her superintendent over a book she wanted to see banned, and responded to the COVID crisis by taking the side of… the virus.

Peters then gave each candidate several minutes to talk about their faith before literally telling the congregation when and where they could go vote for those three candidates:

I’ve had more people this time around ask me, “Pastor, who should we be voting for? Who should we consider voting for?” And I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me. If you need a little bit more advice—I know so many of you are new—[gives out email]… I’m more than happy to help. But from our platform, I wanted you to meet Jill and Will and Christy, and I want you to be praying for them and understand the critical importance of this school board election in particular.

All of this was a blatant violation of the Johnson Amendment, which basically says non-profit groups, including churches, cannot endorse political candidates if they want to maintain their tax-exempt status. They can talk about issues, sure. They can even encourage members to vote, period. But they cannot cross the line of telling members how to vote. That’s what this church did.

It didn’t stop there either. And this is where the actual problem occurred.

That same weekend, Woolbright appeared at New Way Church, also in Flagler County, and got even more extreme when she addressed the audience:

In that speech, she talked about the “satanic warfare” she’s been fighting while on the school board because they don’t have a “conservative God-fearing majority.” As an example of what she’s up against, she brought up how a high school student had to fill out a questionnaire that asked “what pronouns they preferred to be called” and “who was allowed to know their preferred pronouns.” (Oh no! The horror!)

She said this was her second church visit of the day—a third would follow—and she needed everyone’s help to overcome the “evil spirits around” her.

Already, this was a violation of the IRS rules. But it wasn’t just her. Before she spoke, Pastor Richard Summerlin introduced Woolbright by saying, “I… don’t care about 501(c)(3)s and all that stuff.” It was basically an admission that he knew this was a problem but he was doing it anyway.

Pastor Richard Summerlin endorsed candidate Jill Woolbright during a church service (screenshot via YouTube)

The candidates’ main opponents in the school board races told a local reporter that none of these churches reached out to them to speak to the congregation, offering even more proof that the Christian ministries weren’t interested in informing their members about all the candidates but rather actively endorsing their preferred ones.

Two things happened after those churches made their endorsements.

First, Furry and Chong both won their elections and remain on the school board to this day. Woolbright, ironically, lost hers.

Second, church/state separation advocates demanded the IRS investigate these churches. That included individuals online who saw the story on social media as well as groups like the Central Florida Freethought Community. But the thing about reporting these churches to the IRS is that you have no clue if anyone is actually listening. The IRS doesn’t say “Okay, we will.” They never announce if or when they’re investigating Johnson Amendment violations. That’s why there’s good reason to believe it simply doesn’t happen.

Well, apparently, it happened.

We now have definitive proof the IRS was at least investigating New Way Church.

In a letter sent to the church on June 14, 2024—under the Biden administration—Edward Killen, then the Deputy Commissioner of the Tax Exempt & Government Entities, informed church leaders that the agency had “some questions about your tax-exempt status.” The agency said it had “reasonable belief that you may have participated in political campaign intervention activities” which are prohibited by 501(c)(3) rules.

The letter included a URL to a video of Woolbright speaking at the church and asked basic questions to confirm if what we all saw was indeed what was happening. Questions like “what was the purpose of allowing Jill Woolbright to speak at an official church function…?” and “If you believe what is depicted in the video does not constitute prohibited political campaign intervention, please explain why.”

The letter also asked if the church offered their platform to all the other candidates (they did not) and if they were aware that IRS rules prohibit non-profits from endorsing candidates (they sure as hell were).

The church never answered that letter.

Instead, a response came from the right-wing legal group First Liberty Institute and the high-profile white-collar conservative law firm Jones Day. Both groups worked with the church to get the IRS off its back by saying the agency had no right to even ask these questions.

That response, sent in August of last year, said that “we believe the inquiry is barred by the First Amendment and lacks any basis in law and fact.” They added that asking the questions at all reeked of bias by the “sitting Biden-Harris Administration” before demanding the inquiry be shut down “immediately.”

Their argument came down to the belief that the government had no business interfering with anything a church did, even though a church receives tax benefits from the government.

The letter pointed out that some liberal churches have endorsed Democratic candidates, too. That’s true. That should also be punished. However, there’s a vast discrepancy between how often the two sides endorse candidates—conservative churches do it a lot more, and they’ve been doing it for a lot longer, and they actively brag about it—and it’s ironic to see the lawyers highlight how Democrats have benefitted from this when their entire argument is that this ought to be okay. At no point, by the way, did the lawyers offer any proof that the IRS has avoided going after those liberal churches. If the IRS sent a letter to this church, it’s possible they’ve sent letters to other churches too.

Still, it was the responses to the questions that got my attention. Rather than answering them, the conservatives just said the IRS shouldn’t have asked them in the first place: “New Day therefore objects to providing any response to Question 1.”

The other answers all fall along the same lines: We’re not answering Questions 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and we refer you to our response in Question 1.

And then they laughably closed the letter by saying “We trust that this response will be more than sufficient to facilitate the closing of this inquiry.”

Here’s the sad news: It worked.

On Monday, First Liberty announced that the IRS had officially shut down this investigation:

“First Amendment rights don’t end when a pastor, church member or even a political candidate steps on the platform of a church,” said Jeremy Dys, Senior Counsel for First Liberty Institute. “We are pleased that the IRS not only closed its investigation, but affirmed that this church’s activities of praying for political candidates during its church service do not threaten its tax-exempt status.”

“The First Amendment protects the rights of all Americans to speak on matters of public concern, including elections and political candidates,” said John Gore, partner at Jones Day. “We are grateful that the IRS has recognized that this fundamental freedom applies when Americans come together in worship services.”

What they’re saying is a lie and it’s based on a different lie.

The church didn’t merely pray for political candidates—no one would have given a damn if that’s all they did—they told the congregation to vote for those candidates.

And the IRS did not say it’s okay to endorse candidates and that doing so does “not threaten [the church’s] tax-exempt status.” It just decided to look the other way rather than following its own rules, which is typical of the Trump Administration.

Here. Look for yourself. The official IRS response—the substantive bit of it, anyway—is all of one sentence and it boils down to: You’re fine. Keep doing whatever you’re doing.

Dear New Way Christian Fellowship Inc.:

We recently mailed you Letter 5309 for the periods shown above, as authorized by Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 7611. Our examination notice was prompted by potential political activities outlined in the Letter 5309.

We determined that your organization's activities continue to allow you to be exempt from paying federal income tax under IRC Section 501(c)(3).

Notice that the IRS didn’t explain why the candidate endorsement didn’t violate their rules. They didn’t say the Johnson Amendment was invalid. They simply said that the church’s activities didn’t break the rules without explaining how they came to that decision. It’s like a bad umpire calling a ball even when all the replays show the pitch was clearly thrown in the strike zone. You can’t argue. All you can do is throw your hands up in surrender because the system is obviously not working.

The right-wing legal groups are taking that one sentence as proof that the Johnson Amendment is no longer in effect, even though it technically still is. We don’t know what deliberations occurred behind the scenes or why the IRS chose not to pursue this case. All we know is that they’re not pursuing it.

In a way, then, we’re right back to where we started.

No one seems to know if the Johnson Amendment is being enforced. It’s still on the books, but everyone seems to be able to ignore it without penalty. The IRS may say they’re investigating potential violations—and we now know they’ve sent at least one letter to one church!—but it didn’t accomplish a damn thing because the IRS won’t follow up on the church’s refusal to answer any questions.

Where does that leave us?

For now, it means many white evangelical Christian churches are effectively functioning as arms of the Republican Party, telling members that they should vote for a specific batch of candidates and implying that those votes are symbolic of and synonymous with an endorsement of Jesus. You’re not a good Christian if you don’t vote for these conservative school board members.

To be clear, all of these pastors are allowed to tell people how to vote in their personal capacities. But that’s not what we saw in the videos. These church leaders believe they’re above the law and the rules don’t apply to them, even though they would be first in line screaming if, say, a non-profit like Planned Parenthood issued a formal endorsement of any candidate.

These churches can honor their actual theological missions or they can tell people how to vote. But they can’t have both while maintaining their tax breaks. It’s wildly unfair that Christian churches have been allowed to break rules that other non-profits would never be allowed to ignore. At least that’s the thinking. But if the Johnson Amendment is no longer in effect, then liberal non-profits should begin endorsing candidates immediately. There’s no reason to cede the battle field to people who don’t want to play by the rules. Might as well fight fire with fire.

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