What’s Your Excuse Now, Pastors?

When it comes to politics and the pulpit, pastors usually fall into one of three categories.

The first – and largest – is the “blissfully ignorant” group that prefers to stick a finger in each ear and their entire head in the sand while the world around them goes to hell in a handbasket. As the old saying goes, they are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.

And so, one million precious preborn babies are aborted each year, and they remain silent. God’s definition of marriage gives way to same-sex nuptials, and they look the other way. Schoolchildren who were created in God’s image and likeness are tragically and erroneously taught that they evolved from apes and chimpanzees… and they simply go with the flow.

The second group of pastors also refuses to buck the world’s system, but they do so with their eyes wide open. They know that abortion is murder, that homosexuality is a sin, and that evolution is a lie straight from the pit of hell and yet, they refuse to speak out against all three.

Why? For several reasons. They lack the necessary moral courage because they are man-pleasers rather than God-pleasers, and they don’t want to offend people. They also know that offended people stop coming to church… and take their checkbooks with them when they leave.

Far too often, these pastors have believed the contemporary lie that politics and religion don’t mix, forgetting that Jesus spoke about our relationship to government authorities and paying taxes among other social issues. He even referred derisively to King Herod as “that fox”, an unclean animal in Jewish culture.

Paul and Peter also weighed in on political matters and John the Baptist was so outspoken about Herod’s adulterous relationship with his brother’s wife that it cost him his life. More recently, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor, was stripped naked and hung by a piano wire for opposing Adolf Hitler’s tyranny.

Oh, that we had pastors today who were that willing to speak truth to power!

The third group of pastors believes a different lie, one promulgated by liberals, the media, and Progressive politicians trying to silence their conservative opposition. “If you talk about political issues from the pulpit,” they warn weak-kneed pastors, “you can lose your 501 (C) (3) tax-exempt status.”

The legislative hammer that they use to bludgeon uneducated pastors over the head with is the Johnson Amendment, which was introduced by then-Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson and adopted as part of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. For the past 70 years, this law has been interpreted as forbidding churches and other religious nonprofit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Sadly, far too many pastors mistakenly believed that it also required them to remain silent on social issues.

Well, that all changed last week when the IRS filed a court document with the United States District Court Eastern District of Texas in which it says it will allow houses of worship to endorse candidates for political office without losing their tax-exempt status.

That’s a HUGE win for Christians and all people of faith as well as for the First Amendment.

The National Religious Broadcasters and several churches had sued the IRS over the no-endorsement rule, arguing that it infringes on their First Amendment rights to the freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion. President Trump agreed, saying in his first term that he intended to "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution."

Backed into a legal and constitutional corner, the IRS was forced to wave a white flag and issued the following statement…

When a house of worship "in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith" it neither participates nor intervenes in a political campaign. Going a step farther, the IRS compared religious institutions' endorsement of candidates to a "family discussion", meaning that is 100% permissible.

"Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted," the IRS concluded.

President Trump’s reaction to the court settlement was instant and exuberant. "I love the fact that churches could endorse a political candidate," Trump told reporters at the White House. “If somebody of faith wants to endorse, I think it's something that I'd like to hear."

"Government has NO BUSINESS regulating what is said in pulpits!" said Rev. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, adding that it “would never have happened without the strong leadership of our great President Donald Trump”.

And so, the ball is now back in the pastor’s court.

Will pastors speak out boldly, biblically, and unapologetically when it comes to social issues that are clearly addressed in Scripture? Or will they self-censor, preferring a muzzle to a megaphone?

God’s Word demands that we speak out against abortion because “hands that shed innocent blood” is one of the seven things He hates the most (Proverbs 6:16-19). And because God established and blessed the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:1-9), pastors must also defend it against modern-day distortions and perversions.

The same goes for opposing the radical LGBTQ+ agenda that is claiming and confusing so many young people because the Bible refers to homosexuality as an abomination in the Old Testament and as “dishonorable, vile, unnatural, and shameful” in the New Testament. Pastors, in today’s hyper-sexualized society, we must condemn all sexual sin – including heterosexual adultery and pornography – while offering unconditional love, hope, and forgiveness to those entrapped by it.

Doing so may not win you friends or public adulation, but it will find you faithful to your calling… and isn’t that why you entered the ministry in the first place?

And so, go ahead and speak out on social issues from the pulpit no matter how controversial they are. While you’re at it, conduct voter registration drives and distribute voter guides published by organizations like the Family Research Council so your congregation knows where the candidates stand on issues of moral importance.

In other words, L-E-A-D.

However, don’t ever forget that your #1 job is to “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2).

After all, as I used to tell prospective donors who were trying to decide whether to support my prison ministry or my congressional campaign when I was running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 and 2010…

“It’s more important to send a soul to heaven than Dale Glading to Washington D.C.”