Should the Church get political? An update on the Johnson Amendment ruling

In March, a federal judge in Texas killed a deal that had been sitting in limbo since the summer before.

To understand why it mattered, we have to go back to 1954. That year, Senator Lyndon Johnson was in a tight primary race in Texas, and a nonprofit was campaigning against him. In retaliation, Johnson added a line to the tax code saying any organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3), churches included, loses that exemption if it endorses or opposes a candidate for public office. That law still stands today, and it applies to every tax-exempt nonprofit in the country, not just churches.

However, in seventy years, the IRS has pulled a church’s exemption over it only one time. The Church at Pierce Creek in New York took out full-page newspaper ads right before the 1992 election urging Christians not to vote for Bill Clinton, and they lost their tax-exempt status.

In July of 2025, the government began to re-look into this law. The IRS reversed decades of its own position and agreed, in a court filing, that a pastor discussing candidates with his own congregation “in the context of religious services” wasn’t the kind of campaign activity the law was written to stop. The government’s own comparison was to a family discussing politics over the dinner table. The National Religious Broadcasters, a prayer organization called Intercessors for America, and two small Texas churches put this in motion and had sued the IRS specifically to get that position locked into a permanent court order, a consent decree, so no future administration could go back and reverse it again, essentially amending the interpretation of the original law.

You would think all nonprofits would be on board, right?

Well, over eighteen hundred other nonprofits, most with nothing to do with religion, filed objections. Their concern wasn’t really about churches themselves. It was that carving out one category of tax-exempt organization to act like a political action committee, while every other nonprofit stayed bound by the same rule, was a lopsided way to rewrite federal tax policy.

Why should churches be allowed to influence their “shareholders” politically, while regular nonprofits that were not churches were still restricted? This was their objection.

Judge J. Campbell Barker, who presided over the case, suggested, almost in passing, that any church serious about testing the law could give up its 501(c)(3) status, endorse whoever it wanted, and then sue if the IRS came after it for back taxes. Which, is more of a cheap dodge than an actual real solution. The National Religious Broadcasters called that suggestion backwards and announced they’re appealing. The Treasury Secretary said more guidance is coming. And as of this writing, the amendment that has stood since Eisenhower’s first term is still, technically, the law of the land. Any organization with 501(c)(3) status cannot endorse or oppose candidates for public office without risking their tax-exempt status.

I am not going to make a case for one side or the other. I believe the entire basis of the debate, from a biblical perspective, is wrong.

The churches suing for the exemption, the nonprofits objecting to it, even the judge who ducked the question, are all arguing about how loud a church’s political voice is legally allowed to be. But my question is whether that’s the kind of voice the church was actually given.

Is it the church’s duty to influence government policy and political runners? Where is the line between proclaiming Christ and his virtues and investing in public affairs and political committees?

Let’s see what Paul instructs regarding this. Remember, the government he lived under was one of the most hostile in history towards Christians. He wrote his first letter to Timothy during the empire of Nero, a man who blamed Christians for a fire he likely started and had some of them covered in pitch and burned alive as garden lighting.

What Paul told Timothy to do about that government wasn’t to organize against it or promote an alternative to it. It was to pray for it: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Tim. 2:1-2). Not a strategy for winning elections, but a reason to pray for the people running them.

To Titus, the instruction for the church was to “be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work” (Titus 3:1).

And to the Philippians, in a city proud of its status as a Roman colony, full of citizens who’d fought for that legal standing, Paul told them “our conversation is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). The word underneath “conversation” there is politeuma, the same root we get the word politics from.

Our citizenship, our actual political home, isn’t Rome and it isn’t America. It’s in a place that is outside of this world. Heaven is our home, and if there is any “politics” we need to be involved in, it’s being an ambassador of heaven proclaiming a spiritual reality and the gospel of grace offered freely to all. Instead of getting bogged down on which political candidate the church should support, and whether or not the church should even be allowed to get officially involved, church assemblies should focus wholeheartedly on strengthening the members of the body of Christ and living peaceably in this world so to magnify the grace and forgiveness of our Lord.

It’s not that Paul pretended like laws and government didn’t exist, or that he submitted to anything unlawful or immoral. This is the same man who used his own Roman citizenship strategically, invoking his legal rights and telling a Roman officer that he’d been beaten illegally. He wasn’t a doormat. There’s nothing wrong with knowing your government-given rights and standing up for certain liberties. But Paul used his citizenship to protect his ability to keep preaching. He never used it to try to run the empire’s politics.

It’s like renting an apartment you already know you’re moving out of. You still pay your rent on time and hopefully you don’t trash the place. You’re still a good tenant and neighbor to the others around you. That’s Romans 13 and Titus 3, the ordinary duty of a citizen. But you stop investing your identity in redecorating a building you’re not going to own. Our job as followers of Christ in this dispensation of grace since Paul’s conversion on Damascus is not to bring down a righteous kingdom on earth. We aren’t meant to establish righteous kings or rulers or to expect social policy to follow biblical truths. Of course I am not against any of that, I just don’t expect it nor make that my fight. God is not establishing peace on earth or an earthly kingdom of righteousness for us to live in. God, in this age, is offering eternity to lost souls and a heavenly seat to those who trust in the gospel of grace. If the empire of Nero comes back and believers everywhere are hunted, this does not change our mandate, nor does it prove that the Word of God has failed. We are not promised that our nations and rulers will reflect Christ. If they do, great. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter. Pray for them, and continue preaching.

If churches are stripped of their tax-exempt status, keep preaching grace and a heavenly reality. If abortion is made legal in every state on a federal level, keep preaching grace and a heavenly reality. If businesses are forced to go against their religious convictions, keep preaching grace and a heavenly reality.

We do not celebrate this present evil world, nor are we pleased with the sin and immorality around us. However, we also should not be discouraged when it seems biblical morals and beliefs “lose” in policy and law. That is going to happen. God is not fighting through kings in this dispensation. He is working spiritual truths in the individual members of his body to open the eyes of all who will listen to an eternal purpose.

Paul is not indifferent to injustice. He used his legal rights when they served the gospel. He’s merely secure in where his home truly is, and it’s not here.

None of this settles the legal question, and it shouldn’t. A government deciding what a pastor can say to his own congregation is surely worth resisting, I agree. But that isn’t a fight the church needs to win in order to fulfill its purpose. Paul was handed a ministry of reconciliation, not a committee to run or a super PAC to manage (2 Cor. 5:18-20). A church that wins the legal right to sound like a campaign yet loses sight of their true mission and ambassadorship is a net loss in my book.