Sen. James Lankford knows the IRS isn’t targeting churches—he just hopes you don’t

The Republican lawmaker's bill would gut the Johnson Amendment, even though it's never enforced, and he admitted that in a new interview

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During an interview last week with Christian hate-group leader Tony Perkins, Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma explained why he introduced a bill to protect Christian pastors… even though, by his own admission, it was completely unnecessary.

Senator James Lankford (screenshot via YouTube)

Lankford was speaking about the “Free Speech Fairness Act,” a piece of legislation that would undo the Johnson Amendment. His bill, if enacted, would allow pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit without any fear that it might threaten the church’s non-profit status. It basically says it doesn’t count as endorsing a political candidate (1) if you do it “in the ordinary course” of whatever it is you do as a non-profit and (2) it doesn’t really cost you any money. (So a pastor giving a sermon in which he merely tells everyone to vote for Candidate X? No longer a problem for the IRS!)

For the uninitiated, here’s what you need to know about the Johnson Amendment: Just about all non-profit groups (including charities, cause-based organizations, and churches) are considered by the IRS to be 501(c)(3)s. With that designation, the IRS is saying these groups are not looking to make a profit but rather serve a greater cause. As a way to encourage people to give money to those groups, contributions to them may be deducted on donors’ taxes. It’s theoretically a win-win for both sides.

To keep the 501(c)(3) designation, however, there are certain rules most of these groups must follow: For example, they have to fill out paperwork each year (a “Form 990”) detailing how much money they took in and how much is getting paid out and to whom. It’s a way for donors to keep tabs on the organizations and make sure they’re living up to their stated missions.

They also cannot endorse political candidates.

They can always promote their partisan causes, and they can also issue “score cards” saying certain politicians uphold their values while others do not (wink wink), but they cannot explicitly tell members how to vote. That rule was proposed by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson in 1954, hence the name; it didn’t become an issue until decades later.

The problem now is that plenty of conservative pastors argue the Johnson Amendment is a threat to their free speech. (Some have deliberately tried to goad the IRS into revoking their tax-exempt status just so they can file a lawsuit over it.) They want to turn their churches into arms of the Republican Party but the law won’t let them.

The irony is that no matter how many conservative pastors have endorsed candidates from the pulpit, the IRS has never punished them. Over the past 70 years since the Johnson Amendment went into effect, maybe two ministries have been punished by the IRS for violating it. (The one definitive example involved a full-page ad taken out in a newspaper, which cost the ministry a lot of money; Lankford’s bill would still punish that while exempting pastors who just use their words.)

Just last week, I published a lengthy story about how the IRS had shut down an investigation into a church that clearly violated the rule for no stated reason whatsoever.

And also last week, a sermon went viral on social media in which Pastor Josh Blevins of Grace Calvary Chapel in St. Joseph, Missouri endorsed a school board candidate while freely admitting he knew the IRS rules but then saying they didn’t matter.

… We have some people running that need to be in, and others who, quite frankly, have agendas of their own that are apart from the truth of of God and in the darkness. And so we want to pray for and encourage our sister Kim Miller who is running… she goes to church here… and encourage you… And I already know some people are like, "Well, Josh, you know, the IRS says you can't tell us who to vote for."

Listen: The government should have no type /of leash that is strong enough to hinder the church from doing what is right. That is… that's… period. And so we want… we want to encourage you to vote for Kim Miller.

I will be voting as well for Jennifer Kerns, just because there are two seats open, and those are the two candidates I believe will uphold the strongest, and focus on the strongest, things that need to be focused on, on the school board…

Both Miller and Kerns went on to win the election.

The point of sharing that clip is that these pastors know damn well there’s no penalty for breaking this rule but they know damn well they’ll get credit for acting like martyrs when they do it anyway.

That’s because the very prospect of getting punished for breaking this rule has been a galvanizing issue for Christian Nationalists. Donald Trump claimed in his first term that he got rid of the Johnson Amendment, but that was a lie. Conservative churches have just been endorsing candidates ever since. (While some churches have also endorsed Democrats, this is overwhelmingly a conservative/Republican issue. Republicans are the ones with the most to lose if the Johnson Amendment ever got enforced.)

So back to Lankford. His bill would just nullify the Johnson Amendment entirely.

But during his interview, he said two things that made clear how pointless this whole charade was. The first was that this is, at best, a completely baseless fear for church leaders.

PERKINS: … Let's go to something else you and I passionately care about, and that is the ability of pastors to preach the word of God as it applies to the issues of our day, including politics. You care about that as one who's been in the ministry, and so you have introduced the “Free Speech Fairness Act.” Talk about that.

LANKFORD: Yeah, pastors should be able to preach the word of God. They should not have to worry about an IRS agent sitting in their congregation, monitoring their speech to make sure they don't mention something in politics in their sermon. That's absurd! But we're the United States of America. Pastors have First Amendment rights just like every single American has First Amendment rights.

Why we even discuss this at all is because, decades ago, something was added to the IRS rules called the Johnson Amendment that says if a church endorses some political candidate—and again, that's up to the interpretation of the IRS agent what that actually means—then they could actually have [the] IRS take away their non-profit status.

The churches often live in fear of something that has literally never happened to any church, but they just live in fear of that, right? So it restrains their speech. So all I'm trying to do is be able to clarify and say pastors have the same free speech rights as everyone else.

Now, I don't believe pastors should preach politics all the time. I think they should talk about Jesus and salvation and the goodness and grace of God all the time. I think that should be their obsession to be able to talk about… But when things like abortion come up, or marriage comes up, or so many other things, or when there's an election coming and they encourage people to go vote or say there's an obvious candidate here that shares our values, they shouldn't be restrained from that either.

And so this gives the opportunity for people to just freely speak as every other American…

There are so many lies in the premise, it’s hard to know where to begin. But Lankford suggests there’s a legitimate fear that pastors “should not have to worry about an IRS agent sitting in their congregation, monitoring their speech.” That not a real problem. Hell, plenty of people who attend church on their own aren’t listening to the sermon! But Lankford ignores how some pastors have endorsed Republican candidates from the pulpit and literally sent videos of the sermons to the IRS, only to have nothing happen.

Lankford also admits that IRS agents have never revoked a church’s tax-exemption just because a pastor talked about politics during a sermon—it “has literally never happened to any church”—which makes you wonder why this bill is necessary.

Conservative Christian pastors are simply doing what their religion teaches them to do: They make up a problem then offer religion as the answer. Sin isn’t real, but accepting Jesus conquers sin. The IRS isn’t coming after pastors, but electing Republicans will ensure the IRS doesn’t come after pastors. You get the idea.

He also says that pastors are too scared to talk about abortion and marriage, which will be shocking to anyone who’s ever entered attended a conservative church. But no one’s arguing churches should be punished by the IRS for taking a stand on issues. Pastors can talk all they want about “culture war” issues. What they can’t do, just as with other non-profits, is tell people how to vote.

All of those are examples of Lankford deliberately lying about this topic. But a few seconds later in the interview, he did it inadvertently. He claimed that liberal pastors promote Democrats all the time (which they don’t) before admitting they’re never punished for that either.

LANKFORD: Quite frankly, churches that are more left-leaning, they talk about politics all the time. They endorse candidates all the time and don't live in fear of the IRS because there's a belief that they have: They're not going to come after us. We're on the left. It's only going to come after churches on the right.

On that, we need to be able to make sure this is very clear: The IRS doesn't have the authority to go monitor the speech of pastors and of church leaders. Let's have them do tax collection. That's what their job is. Not monitoring free speech.

Even Lankford doesn’t listen to Lankford, I guess…

Left-leaning churches don’t “endorse candidates all the time.” And guess what? If they did, they should also be punished for it! (He may be referring to events like “souls to the polls,” which encourage people to vote. But importantly, those events do not tell people who to vote for.)

This guy spends so much time talking about how conservative pastors live in fear the IRS will come after them for endorsing a candidate despite casually admitting the IRS doesn’t go after anyone for that.

By the way, to the point that liberal pastors believe they’re safe because the IRS will only go after “churches on the right,” there isn’t a single pastor on the left who seriously thinks the IRS will enforce the Johnson Amendment against a conservative pastor. Find one. I dare you.

Lankford is lying because his Christian faith never taught him that lying is a sin.

(And this is besides the point, but Lankford said the IRS should just “do tax collection” because “that’s what their job is.” Yet Republicans don’t want the IRS to do tax collection either.)

The fact is: If the Johnson Amendment were enforced, that wouldn’t be “monitoring free speech.” It would be making sure groups that receive a government benefit they signed up for are playing by the rules they agreed to and benefit from. If they would rather be a political group than a religious one, they are free to give up the tax exemptions anytime they want.

They can’t have it both ways.

A good interviewer would have pointed out the hypocrisy and lies. Tony Perkins is not a good interviewer.

I don’t know if this bill will pass, but even if it does, it’ll only stop the IRS from doing something it doesn’t do and sure as hell won’t be doing anytime soon.

(via Right Wing Watch)

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