Connect your own dots

By Jeff Long

It's likely most people who read this column have never heard of the Johnson Amendment. I hadn't until a couple of weeks ago. Now, however, the president of the United States and a candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri are calling for its repeal. What? Wait a minute! Tell me what it is first!

The Johnson Amendment is named for Lyndon Baines Johnson, our 36th president. Its quiet insertion into law was in 1954, when LBJ was Senate's majority leader. Sixty-four years later, the amendment continues to bar non-profit, tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) organizations from endorsing political candidates. This would include, for example, Habitat for Humanity. (Full disclosure: I am current president of HFH's local affiliate.) At that time, no one fully realized this ban would also apply to churches and specifically, to what speech pastors could allow in the pulpit.

President Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2017 vowed to "totally destroy" the amendment. Josh Hawley, candidate for U.S. Senate in our state, in a story carried on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Aug. 21, called the amendment "absolutely unconstitutional." Perhaps.

I must tell you that I've seen the amendment willfully, even contemptuously, ignored by some pastors and churches -- those, for example, who have allowed political candidates to speak to Sunday congregations near an election. When the Christian Coalition was a force for social conservatives in the '90s, a church I pastored in St. Louis was offered "voter guides," brochures that didn't specifically endorse candidates, but their meaning was so thinly veiled no one was in doubt about the intent. I refused them, thinking they were against the law, in spirit if not in letter -- even though I knew nothing then about the Johnson Amendment. I was aware of pastors, even in my own denominational tradition, who freely shared the information with congregants when they arrived for worship. Yes, it's the law but the law has no teeth. It is essentially unenforceable. In fact, no church has lost its tax-exempt status by violating the amendment's provisions.

The National Catholic Reporter, a newspaper reporting on issues related to the Roman Catholic Church, opposes the amendment's repeal, fearing "partisan conflict" may erupt in congregations. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken no official stand on the matter.

Surveying some former clergy colleagues, I got these reactions to the prospect of removing the amendment:

J. David Israel, former pastor, New McKendree United Methodist in Jackson, said he fears a repeal will mean candidates may "use" pastors and pulpits in ways "inconsistent with our task of sharing the Gospel."

Tyler Tankersley, pastor, First Baptist Church in Cape, said, "I pastor a deep-purple church. We've got red and we've got blue. As a pastor, it should not be my job to tell people who to vote for. I don't want that right. Being a pastor is a calling to stay above the political fray."

Renita Green, pastor of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Cape and herself a current candidate for the MO House District 147, says repeal would be "very bad for the Church." Repeal, she fears, would open the door for campaign funds to be "channeled through a church's coffers and put the church in the same category of a PAC (political action committee)."

Is the Johnson Amendment a restriction on free speech, as the president claims? Yes, it is. Do I mind? No. Pastors, in particular, are accommodating individuals. Too many clergy, if the amendment would be repealed, would permit candidates to commandeer the pulpit at election time because we wouldn't feel a right to refuse. The Johnson Amendment gives pastors cover. I'm no longer active in ministry. When I was, though, I preferred to speak to issues and invited those who heard me to connect their own dots when it came to voting for Candidate A or B. It's still the better policy.