Pastors Ready to Sink Left’s Censorship
by Tony Perkins, Family Research Council:
It used to be that liberals didn’t want faith in the public square. Now they don’t want it in churches either! That’s been the message of the Left’s IRS for decades. Under Obama, the agency breathed down the necks of nonprofits and religious entities in the name of the Johnson Amendment, threatening to take away their tax-exempt status if anyone spoke openly about the political issues of the day.
Conservatives have pushed back against this onslaught for years, insisting that Americans don’t give up their right to speech when they enter a church. Donald Trump has been an outspoken ally, vowing from the beginning of his campaign that he’d knock out the Johnson Amendment, taking away a major weapon of censorship for the Left. If he succeeds, he’ll have almost unanimous support from pastors.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) released some jaw-dropping numbers in a letter to Congress on Monday. Based on new Lifeway polling, 91 percent of pastors want the freedom to speak freely from the pulpit without the threat of government penalties. Another 73 percent want Congress to “remove the IRS’s power to penalize a church because of the content of its pastor’s sermons.” For the Trump administration, which hasn’t been shy about its disgust over the Johnson Amendment, this should be fuel to the Free Speech Fairness Act fire.
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