Megachurch pastor tells congregation to "vote like Jesus" by supporting Trump

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is demanding the IRS revoke the church's tax-exempt status

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What does it look like when a Christian leader uses his pulpit to tell everyone why Jesus wants them to vote for Donald Trump? Look no further than Pastor Josh Howerton, who leads Lakepointe Church, a megachurch in Rockwall, Texas.

Josh Howerton (screenshot via YouTube)

Earlier this month, Howerton delivered an entire sermon (titled “How to Vote Like Jesus”) to make the case for why Trump was the best option for everyone in the congregation. He ignored Trump’s fascist rhetoric, blatant racism, incoherent ramblings, senseless policies, noticeable dementia, and desire to destroy democracy. None of that mattered.

Instead, as you might expect, Howerton focused on a handful of culture war issues that evangelicals are obsessed with—including abortion and transgender rights—fully unable to grasp how others have suffered, and will continue to suffer, as a result of their faith-based myopia.

Howerton explained that neither candidate is perfect, as if that’s ever been the standard. “Jesus is not on the ballot guys. Get over it,” he said.

Then, comparing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to Ahab and Jezebel—both evil—he argued that Trump was the best option because God frequently “uses a flawed leader for good purposes.” To make the point even clearer, he added, “A flawed leader used to do some good things is better than suffering under wicked leaders.”

Calling Trump “flawed” may be the biggest understatement you’ll ever hear.

When it came to abortion, Howerton praised how Trump’s Supreme Court picks overturned Roe v. Wade, but complained that Trump had moved left on the issue ever since. He has not. The only way anyone could think Trump is now more moderate on abortion rights is if you think he’s honest about pledging to veto a hypothetical national abortion ban because he wants to leave the issue to the states. He’s lying. We know he’s lying because lying is what he does. If Republicans in Congress pass a national abortion ban, Trump wouldn’t have the guts to tell them no. He has no principles and he’s repeatedly shown that he’ll sell his beliefs out to the highest bidders. White evangelicals have spent years capitalizing on their investment.

If the Christians around him tell him to sign a national abortion ban, that’s what he’ll do because it gives him the leeway he needs to enact the rest of Project 2025 that Christians don’t give a shit about. That’s what happened in the first term, too. Trump gave Christians what they wanted when it came to judges, and it successfully allowed him to ruin the country in other ways because he knew those powerful conservatives would never stand in his way.

Howerton has to know Trump will do the Right’s bidding on culture war issues but he offered the caveat, I assume, to act like he’s not fully in the bag for Trump—and to avoid criticizing him on all the other awful things he’s done that are fully disqualifying.

Here’s what that looked like during the sermon:

… And what Christians are doing is they're going, “Well, I just can't vote because there's no candidate I can fully support,” and what they're doing is they're thinking that their selection is a Sacrament, that somebody's gotta be totally pure for them to be able to vote for them…

…

Jesus is not on the ballot, guys. Get over it. Jesus is not on the ballot. Get over it, okay?

…

We all want a King Josiah. But sometimes, God uses a flawed leader for good purposes, and when you don't have the option of voting for a Josiah, and your choice is between Ahab and Jezebel, and Jehu, that choice is very obvious because a flawed leader used to do some good things is better than suffering under wicked leaders…

…

We do not currently have a consistently pro-life candidate in this race. We don't. We just don't, okay? Strangely, while Donald Trump is responsible for the greatest victory for the protection of the unborn in two generations in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he has now moved left, more towards the center of American popular opinion… including after the Vice Presidential debate, I was like all over it, he immediately, after that debate, tweeted, in all caps, that he would veto a national abortion ban if it came across his desk because he wants the states to be able to decide. He wants this to be a states rights issue…

…

I also have to be honest. The other side is far worse. Far worse. The other party has moved from a desire for abortion to be safe, legal, and rare to something that should be celebrated, paraded, and promoted as a moral good…

As someone who would love for Democrats to be more liberal on abortion rights, I can safely tell you they’re not celebrating abortion or treating it as a “moral good.”

Democrats have said victims of child rape should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy. They say the decision should be between a woman and her doctor, not a woman and the Republican leaders in her state. If that decision comes near the end of a pregnancy, which is extremely rare, it’s almost always because there’s an unforeseeable problem that no one was expecting or asked for. It’s certainly not because a woman just decided, on a whim, that she no longer wanted a baby days before she was due to give birth.

Yet those situations are what Howerton claims are “celebrated, paraded, and promoted as a moral good.” Ultimately, if you believe women should control their bodies, then you have to allow them to make the decisions that are right for them, even if it’s not your preference. If you think abortion is health care, then health care needs to be available for everyone without unnecessary restrictions. It’s that simple.

Howerton and Christians like him would rather see women die because they can’t access abortion care than let women make the decisions that are best for their families.

And then came his lies about trans people.

… We don't get to decide if we're a different gender. And to support that idea is to call God a liar, to rebel against the created order, to erode the family, and to contribute to mental illness instead of helping people with the only truth that can set them free.

So currently—you need to know this—14 states in our nation have what are called “transgender healthcare shield laws,” among them the state of Minnesota. Governor Tim Walz signed legislation making Minnesota a trans refuge state. I want to read you what that means.

It means—listen carefully—if a minor child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming care because one or both parents object, the Minnesota law allows courts to have “temporary emergency jurisdiction over the child.” Translation: They can take your kid from you. They can take—and have done so.

Now guys, what you need to understand is evil never stops itself. It must be stopped.

None of that is true. The state doesn’t get to steal your child because you don’t want them to get gender affirming care. It hasn’t happened before. It won’t happen in the future. The law Walz signed in Minnesota involves complicated custody cases when parents live in different states and disagree about how to handle a trans child. (The law allows a Minnesota court to issue a temporary, and only temporary, emergency order.)

The point is that Howerton is spreading misinformation and fear-mongering because, as a Christian pastor, he thinks lying for Jesus is always justified. (It’s telling that he refers to supporting trans people as “contribut[ing] to mental illness.”)

Does it matter that Howerton didn’t explicitly say everyone should vote for Trump? No. He winked enough times to make that explicitly clear.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is now asking the IRS to investigate the church for violating its non-profit status by endorsing a candidate.

“The Internal Revenue Code states that to retain their 501(c)(3) status an organization cannot ‘participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office,’” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to the IRS. “In this instance, LakePointe Church appears to have improperly used its status as a religious organization and 501(c)(3) entity to intervene in the U.S. presidential election.”

FFRF is a registered 501(c)(3) and it takes this designation, along with the accompanying privileges and responsibilities, very seriously — and that’s why it would like to see the IRS take action on this issue and enforce its rules for the benefit of all taxpayers. It’s asking the IRS to immediately investigate Lakepointe Church and ensure that it no longer receives the benefits of 501(c)(3) status and that donations made to the church are no longer treated as tax deductible.

“Churches can’t be allowed to get away with such blatant politicking,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “They must abide by the same rules as other nonprofits — or lose their tax code privileges.”

Is that letter to the IRS futile? Maybe. But the IRS has an obligation to uphold its own rules and they won’t even consider an investigation without prompting. If Howerton’s sermon is permitted by the IRS, then there’s nothing stopping every non-profit group in the country from telling its members how to vote. And if that’s the case, then the IRS should just tell everyone that the Johnson Amendment can be ignored without consequences.

Obviously, Howerton isn’t alone here. Countless pastors have used their pulpits to endorse candidates over the years and the IRS has done jack shit about it. Lakepointe Church has made it clear that it’s nothing more than an arm of the GOP and that voting like Jesus means supporting a wannabe dictator instead of a democracy where votes are counted rather than suppressed.

It wasn’t even an original sermon. The Houston Chronicle pointed out that Howerton was just doing what his mentors told him to do:

The pastor named his sermon "How to Vote Like Jesus" after a book written by his mentor Mark Driscoll, the controversial leader of an Arizona-based nondenominational church who co-founded the now defunct Hill Church in Seattle. Howerton credited Driscoll acolytes for helping him craft his message, including Pastor Robert Ketterling of Minneapolis and Pastor Ryan Visconti, who recently welcomed Vance to speak at the Generation Church in Arizona where he too made false claims about the state of Minnesota taking your kids if you don't allow them to receive gender-affirming care.

Separately from this sermon, Howerton doesn’t have a great reputation. Earlier this year, he got criticized for a “joke” in which he told women to obey their husbands in the bedroom on their wedding night. When he was forced to apologize for that, he plagiarized the apology. Also, when the church wanted a new stoplight that required city approval, they manipulated traffic data to get the outcome they wanted.

Which is all to say that the same church that routinely chooses the dishonest path now wants everyone to vote for Trump because, the pastor insists, that’s what Jesus wants.

That says a lot more about their pathetic conception of Jesus than anything else.

If the leaders of an organization are supposed to set the tone for the members, then it’s clear that decent people shouldn’t want anything to do with this church.

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