Johnson Amendment Lawsuit: Can Pastors Endorse Candidates? (Troy Miller)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: James Spencer, and I'm joined again today by Troy Miller. He is the president and CEO of National Religious Broadcasters. And today, we're going to be talking a little bit about the Johnson Amendment and more specifically about some legal happenings in relation to the Johnson Amendment that have been keeping you busy, Troy.

00:00:22
Speaker 1: So....

00:00:24
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. And I'm actually looking forward to having the conversation. So why don't we start? Just give us a little background on how everything you're dealing with came about.

00:00:35
Speaker 1: Sure.

00:00:36
Speaker 3: And it's great to be.

00:00:37
Speaker 1: With you again.

00:00:38
Speaker 3: So, yeah, exciting times we live in. No shortage of work and things to do. So, you know, back in 1954. So, you know, it's interesting that let me start back a little bit. We're celebrating the 250th anniversary of our country right this year. So we had all of those things going through. So we're about 170 years of this country. pastors were some of the most influential people in the culture today and even in politics. So we could go all the way back to the Black Robe Regiment during the Revolution. It was their preaching, often recognized by the British as the source of the Revolution itself. So we have that there. And then for 170 years, pastors spoke up about religious issues, issues of faith, issues of conscience, that they felt that God was calling them to shepherd their congregants about, including candidates for political office. Well, 1954, along comes then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. He has a very tough, contentious Senate race in Texas. He's opposed by a number of nonprofit organizations and a number of churches. as well. So he gets into the Senate, he wins that election, he gets into the Senate, and he attaches this bill, which we now call the Johnson Amendment, to the tax code. And what this does is three things. First, it limits the amount of, well, sorry, it prohibits any contributions by 501c3s directly to political campaigns. then it prohibits the endorsement or the opposition by 501c3s to political campaigns or candidates. And then it limits the amount of lobbying that an organization can do on a bill that runs through Congress. So as you can imagine, this passed. It never went up to a vote in the Senate. It was an amendment, went through the technical process and became law. Well, So since it's had a very chilling effect on our pulpits across this country. So we, in 2024, decided we're going to write this wrong. And we're not asking for a new right for our pastors. We're asking them to restore a right they had for 170 years.

00:03:02
Speaker 2: So what was the impetus then in 2024 for this? Was there some sort of incident that sort of really made this raise to the top of the priority list, so to speak?

00:03:13
Speaker 3: Well, it's really been building, I'd say, over the last kind of two decades, because what we've seen is the IRS kind of unequally apply the pressure using this ruling. So if you go back all the way back to the Obama campaign, we had then-candidate Barack Obama go to several churches where he stood in pulpits next to pastors who flat out endorsed him. But at the same time, the Republican candidates... went to churches, were simply prayed for, and they received an IRS letter. So this happened during the Obama candidacies. This happened again during Hillary Clinton's time. It happened with Joe Biden and, of course, we just saw it in the last election with Kamala Harris. And every time there were letters that were sent out to conservative, quote, churches who may have had a candidate at their church, and by the way, we didn't have a single incidence of where a pastor actually endorsed the candidate. Just, it was enough for the IRS to send a letter, just to have the candidate at their church. Uh, and so we said enough is enough. It's time to get this to wrong this right. And we took the, uh, IRS and the, and the Biden administration in 2024 to court.

00:04:30
Speaker 2: So there's a, it's the unevenness in the enforcement and, um, seeking of balancing the scales on this issue. So initially, your lawsuit was seeking to repeal the amendment.

00:04:44
Speaker 1: Is that correct?

00:04:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were initially seeking for a total repeal of the amendment there. And by the way, we think those churches is equal as conservative churches. We think all churches have the right to speak up on the conscience that God has given them this. But we were seeking, initially looking to have this repealed because we think it's a First Amendment violation on the freedom of speech. But even deeper into it, it's for pastors. It's also a violation on their free exercise there of religion.

00:05:18
Speaker 2: So just to give everybody clarity on what this amendment precludes, It is supposed to be, at least, relatively narrow, correct? So the things you referenced, like giving money to a political campaign, endorsing of specific political candidate, but not necessarily speaking out on the issues in a more general biblical and theological manner.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: Is that fair, or what would you add?

00:05:47
Speaker 3: It is fair. I mean, when you look at the Johnson Amendment itself, it talks about specifically endorsing or opposing candidates. But look, there's a bit of interpretation there for the IRS, especially since the McCain-Feingold Act went into place in 2007, because that one limited organizations from speaking on what they call political issues to as they related to a candidate. And that act directly references the Johnson Amendment when it came to nonprofit organizations. They said, hey, nonprofits aren't supposed to do this because of the Johnson Amendment. So therefore, that applies for them. So The IRS could interpret you by saying, look, if a pastor did a pro-life sermon and then happened to say candidate A is pro-life and candidate B is not, that could be interpreted as an endorsement and an opposition.

00:06:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, as opposed to a description that could be entailed as an endorsement in the.

00:06:56
Speaker 1: That's interesting.

00:06:58
Speaker 2: I think that's an important wrinkle to bring out here is that these are constantly issues that are being navigated by various churches and organizations such as NRB. And so this isn't coming out of nowhere. But I think for a lot of people when they first, I know when I first heard about it, I was just kind of sitting back like, I wonder why this is coming up now and what the real implications of this are, given what I understood initially about what was precluded speech for a nonprofit organization.

00:07:29
Speaker 1: So that's a really helpful reframing.

00:07:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, there are several things like organizations can put out voters guides that are equal and those sort of things. But for the pastor to actually speak about it from the pulpit and then, you know, in today's world, through the media that those pastors have, if they do a direct endorsement or opposition, you're probably going to get a letter from the IRS. And let me be clear here. We didn't ask the IRS. We agree that the first one churches shouldn't be giving to campaigns, 501c3s. We didn't ask for a change of that. We didn't ask in the lobby. Those two we get, we understand. It's that middle one. in that middle, that that restriction comes, as we believe, in a conflict with our First Amendment right.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, so not a deeper fiscal, we might say, or even physical activation of politics within the church. So what I mean by that is the activation of that lobbying aspect or the distribution of funds to a candidate. That's not really what you're seeking. It's really at what point does the preaching of the word of God have to be given pride of place, even if in the course of that preaching, you end up endorsing one candidate over another. And if a pastor can't do that, then there is a limitation on religious speech that you want to protect.

00:09:09
Speaker 1: That's right. That's a fair statement of that issue.

00:09:13
Speaker 3: That's a fair statement. You said it very well. And look, we see that our country is founded on the basics of freedom. And one of the key freedoms, the whole idea behind the First Amendment, the whole idea of the freedom of religion and the free exercise thereof, was that the founding fathers saw that it was not the government's role to step in to be the conscience for any religious leader. That was between that leader and God and their faith, and that was not the government's role. As a matter of fact, that's the original meaning of the intent of the separation of church and state, is the state was to stay out of the matters of the church. And you saw, again, as I said this, we could look at history, and pastors have constantly and consistently spoken up on what we would call cultural issues, issues that are political issues that have become political, but really at their core, they're spiritual faith issues, moral issues. that congregants want to hear their pastor speak about, including pastors, as I said, during Johnson's own run for the Senate, there were multiple churches who directly opposed his candidacy.

00:10:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's interesting.

00:10:37
Speaker 2: I think that as I thought about this issue, just in preparation for the interview and reading all the different things that I had, I mean, I had A couple of concerns I was sort of balancing, which is, number one, obviously, I think free speech is a really important aspect of what we have in this country, and it should be respected, particularly religious speech. And so, you know, as Christians, we're always prepared to pay the consequences for exercising the freedom that we have in Christ.

00:11:03
Speaker 1: That's a given.

00:11:05
Speaker 2: At the same time, we would sure like government protections to be what they are and for the government to work through what it's promised to give us. And so I think that this sort of navigation is really crucial. The other side of it is just my gut reaction to it was, man– it really seems like I would really hope that certain pastors I could see, I wouldn't really want speaking out on politics. And you have that double-edged sword. Whenever we have these sort of issues of freedom of speech, we ultimately allow speech that we disagree with or that might even be damaging to the cause of Christ to get out. How do you think through some of those issues? Maybe not from a legal perspective. I think that's fairly clear cut, but just from a biblical and theological perspective, given the scope of organizations you represent at NRB?

00:12:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're right.

00:12:02
Speaker 3: We do sit down and think through these issues, and both from a legal aspect, because sometimes that's the environment we're dealing in here. But really, when you step back and think about it from just a scriptural and a moral kind of view, and we look at the scriptures, and one of the things that we understand about Christianity is Christianity has always been on the move, right? It's always on the go. It's always going. It's never meant to be stagnant or stand still. As a matter of fact, Scripture tells us that the gospel is so powerful that even the gates of hell can't stand against us. And so we kind of come back and look and say, look, I have enough confidence in the gospel and have confidence in God that the gospel can stand not just toe to toe, but stand on top of any other worldview that's out there. And so we know that when we look at the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion, oftentimes that means that us as looking at this, we're going to allow, as you said, voices that we would definitely oppose and not agree with. We're going to allow those voices to be in the public sector as well. as well but i i really think that the it really comes back to how much trust and and we have in the gospel itself and and in christ and in god.

00:13:30
Speaker 2: Yeah helpful so where is this at right now i i know that there was a consent agreement um that was put in place that was um I think a district court denied that consent agreement between the parties in the lawsuit. Can you kind of narrate through where we're at in the process and maybe what's coming next?

00:13:57
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we brought this case in 2024 when the Biden administration was in and the Justice Department there really actually had a couple of different motions to dismiss the case based on some grounds. And the judge said, allowed the case to go forward and wanted to hear or at least see the merits of the case. So that went through 24. And then, of course, Trump won in 25. And we had a new Justice Department. And so when they started to go through and look at their cases, they asked to sit down and we sat down with them. And we came, as you said, to this consent decree. And what that means is we both came to the point where they said, look, we agree with what you're saying in regards to pastors, okay? So you're looking at all 501c3s and getting this thrown out. We're looking at an exception in the rule that says that pastors would be an exemption out of this, and their preaching and what they're messaging and what they do in the pulpit and what they do through the mediums is going to be looked at as an okay, right? And so we came to that. We got through the whole legal process with a number of things. And then the judge at the end came back with this kind of what we call more of a technical ruling. There's what's called the Anti-Injunction Act. Congress limited the courts on what they can do as regarded to tax law. So the IRS has a really broad kind of spectrum that they could do when it comes to taxes in Congress. And so the judge said, based on the Anti-Injunction Act, I can't rule on this. Therefore, I'm dismissing the case. And so that's what we've now appealed in that district to the 5th District Court of Appeals. We've appealed that the judge is ruling to dismiss the case. And so that setting now with the 5th Circuit Our brief has been filed. The government's brief has been filed. Nothing has changed from the consent decree where we're at in the district court. This is now about whether the judge actually can rule on this. Both ours and the government think that there are exceptions that allows the court to rule on this, especially with the conflict of a First Amendment conflict here. And so we're in this period where other briefs can be filed and then we hope to hear either a ruling from the Fifth Circuit or they'll set up a hearing and we'll argue the case in front of them.

00:16:42
Speaker 2: And so there's been a brief submitted that talks a little bit about a narrow aspect of the case, which seems to get at that notion that you just mentioned. It's not about broadly 501c3 organizations. It's about pastors and their congregations. And what would it ever look like for the government to come in and say, no, a pastor can't say that to their congregation? These things really do, on some level, if I'm being generous, they can be viewed as safeguards. right, you could see a certain logic of guarding against a 501c3 organization, getting into politics, endorsing candidates, all those other kinds of things. But then this is rubbing right against sort of the religious freedom of speech and the religious freedoms that we have in churches. And so is that what this new brief is really about? It's about sort of setting into this Fifth Appellate Court and saying, look, there's this very narrow space here that really seems like could be given judgment.

00:17:53
Speaker 1: Am I understanding all that correctly?

00:17:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, for the most part, that's correct. I mean, the consent decree is that very narrowing of the case, the very narrowing of what we've come to an agreement with the government on. So we've narrowed that from the broader you know, 501c3s in general down to, you know, pastors in pulpits, leading churches, leading congregations.

00:18:20
Speaker 1: And so that.

00:18:21
Speaker 3: So the appeal is really about this Anti-Injunction Act, this technicality that the judge has that he feels like he really can't even look at the merits of the consent degree itself because this Anti-Injunction Act. So look, it's good on the judge's part because if we clear this hurdle, then there's really no process for appeal after this. And so clearing this hurdle is a big step getting the case moving forward.

00:18:52
Speaker 2: So getting through the appellate court, then it just moves through and you can actually get a real judgment on this and figure it out. Are are you still seeking that repeal of the Johnson Amendment or would you sort of readjust and go toward the consent decree?

00:19:08
Speaker 3: No, we readjusted toward the consent decree. So that's all where we're at right now.

00:19:15
Speaker 1: Very good. Very good.

00:19:18
Speaker 2: It's a really interesting problem in question. I mean, it gets down to something just as simple like who gets to decide– the boundaries of religious speech, which right now, and I think what your case is representing is that the government shouldn't police those boundaries.

00:19:40
Speaker 1: The difficulty is.

00:19:42
Speaker 2: As Protestants, we don't have anybody police the boundaries. You know, I remember I was just over in Switzerland for a Reformation tour, but I've done Germany as well. And You know, poor Luther, he goes through the Reformation and there is a peasants revolt. He tries to speak into this and say, no, this isn't what we should be doing. And they go, who are you to tell us what to do? We're living according to our conscience. And so you have, you know, you sort of take the good with the bad when it comes to the Protestant Reformation and the autonomy.

00:20:11
Speaker 1: Of churches that we have today.

00:20:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, even Luther himself, right, at the trial at the Nile of Worms, right? He's on a religious trial with the court, and what does he come down to? The statement, you know? He said, unless you can convince, I'm paraphrasing here, convince me from God's word, I have to stand my ground because it's neither good nor right to violate your conscience, especially your faith conscience, your spiritual conscience. And he was saying that the church couldn't do that. And the founding fathers understood that. The pilgrims came over. the early pilgrims, they were looking for that kind of religious freedom. They didn't want to be under the thumb of the Church of England or the Church of Holland or the Netherlands or the various churches or the Catholic Church. And so they were looking for that. Even when the Danbury Baptists wrote their letter asking Thomas Jefferson, and he writes back, you know, there is a wall of separation, the most propagandized statement and misunderstood. He was actually talking about the very fact that the government was not going to establish a national religion. We weren't going to have a Church of America like they had a Church of England. And nor was the government going to interfere in church matters because government is not equipped to do that. And they can't make those theological. But let me give you an example of some things that the courts already decided on that are kind of parallel to this. There have been over the last two decades a number of cases that have made it all the way to the Supreme Court on religious organizations and their hiring of employees. So they can hire. Do they have to follow the same laws that a secular organization has to follow? Do they have the same EEOC rules or the same Labor Department rules and recently the same DEI rules and those? And the courts have consistently said, no, no, the religious organizations have the right to hire people who adhere to their faith, their doctrines, and their beliefs. And the government has no say into that. And most of those Supreme Court rulings were 9-0 or 8-1. It wasn't even like a divided court. The court has just blanket said this. And this is really the same thing.

00:22:42
Speaker 1: If the government.

00:22:43
Speaker 3: continues to weaponize, and this is what we're looking at, and stepping in in these areas, then we're going to end up like our friends in Canada who have to send programs to government regulators to review before they can air and broadcast in Canada. And of course, we've seen what's going on with free speech across Europe. And so there's a point where you have to step in and protect those rights. Otherwise, they're just going to continue to be trampled on.

00:23:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I did see something.

00:23:14
Speaker 2: I think it was Barker or Baker was the judge in the case, if I'm recalling correctly. And he also mentioned something about the timing at which the suit was brought, that there hadn't been any violation of the Johnson Amendment because no 501c3 status had been pulled. There was no pending action against any specific church. No taxes had been levied, those kind of things. And so he said, because there was no violation, this is really an odd time to bring the suit. As I thought through that, and I'll see if I'm reading you right, there is still an irritant here. There's other ways to violate the Johnson Amendment, in other words, which would involve sort of poking and prodding into churches in ways that cost those churches money. money for legal fees, irritants for having to spend time to justify what it is that they're saying to the IRS to ensure that there is some compliance.

00:24:19
Speaker 1: And so.

00:24:22
Speaker 2: I'm getting the sense that that's really more where we're at in that irritant phase. You mentioned the uneven enforcement earlier, but that irritant phase is really more where we are. It's this poking and prodding into the various churches and ministries in an investigative manner that would not otherwise be done if this Johnson Amendment weren't in place.

00:24:48
Speaker 1: Is that a fair way to frame it?

00:24:51
Speaker 3: That's a fair statement, and you're exactly right. It's the amendment itself, while maybe has not been enforced all the way through, multiple churches, and it's been reported, have received, as I said, these letters from And the broader chilling effect that that's had on churches, you know, worried about their ability to speak. And also, we just don't like to operate in these gray areas. You know, is the IRS going to go and not go? But I think our legal team said, look, there's not. And the judge, that was one of the reasons to original reasons for the case to be dismissed. But there's also legal presidencies. You don't necessarily have to, especially on these kinds of issues. It's kind of like saying you have to break the law before you can bring the case. But that's that's not here. You can actually, you know, defend your rights because, as you said, the chilling effect it has already on the church today.

00:25:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you have something here. you can envision something similar as if, you know, every citizen had to prove that, you know, they were a resident of a particular state, you know, in order to not pay a particular tax or something like that.

00:26:17
Speaker 1: It's an irritant.

00:26:19
Speaker 2: It creates an expenditure from a citizen that isn't necessary because the government is doing something that's probably overreaching.

00:26:25
Speaker 1: And so there's a.

00:26:26
Speaker 2: Sense in which I can understand that that's sort of irritant for churches to How widespread do you get the sense this is? And then I have sort of a follow-up question for how this relates to broadcasting more particularly. But you've teamed up with two other churches here in this lawsuit. Do you get the sense that this is a much broader issue?

00:26:46
Speaker 3: Oh, it's definitely a much broader issue. I mean, I've been in ministry for 25 years now, and this has constantly come up. It's talked about amongst churches, pastors, leaders, denominations. It's It's always there and it comes up every election cycle. We didn't particularly, our timing wasn't brought up to affect any election cycle. We knew this was a long haul as these cases are. They're never, you know, short fixes. And so we knew this was going to take time, but we just knew it had to be addressed. It just can't set out there in this kind of vague position. any longer. So that was kind of our reasoning behind it. But yeah, I bet you there's probably not a major church in this country that doesn't know the term Johnson Amendment.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: Interesting. Okay.

00:27:42
Speaker 2: So then my question about the broader broadcasting world, given how this is narrowed to pastors and churches, how does that influence folks like me.

00:27:52
Speaker 1: I'm not a pastor. I'm not representing a church.

00:27:56
Speaker 2: But as a podcaster, if I wanted to, I suppose I could endorse a political candidate. It's not really my disposition. But with the way you're pursuing the lawsuit now, does it preclude folks like me, or does it include folks like me?

00:28:18
Speaker 3: No, right now, it would preclude folks like you Because, again, it's narrowly focused on churches, pastors who are serving those churches. And one of the things we looked at that was, too, because we live in the media world today, most churches, even small churches, have a broadcast even if they're just streaming. But we know there's a heavy radio ministry in that area. But remember, I don't know about your organization, but this is only for 501c3 nonprofits under the IRS tax code. So if you're a 501c3 nonprofit and you're not an active pastor pulpit in your church, this act, this ruling, this consent decree is not going to protect you moving forward.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. No, I just wanted to clarify that.

00:29:15
Speaker 2: Like I said, it's not like I'm aching to endorse a political candidate anyway, but I do think, I do find it interesting that I just wanted to define how fine that line actually was. And so a pastor with a radio ministry could technically endorse the political candidate as part of that sermon that's ultimately going to be broadcast and put out more broadly. But a radio host on a religious broadcasting network of which you represent many wouldn't necessarily be able to do the same thing.

00:29:49
Speaker 3: Correct.

00:29:50
Speaker 1: That's correct. Really interesting. Interesting. I mean, I think it's important.

00:29:54
Speaker 2: I think it's good and helpful that it's because I could see, you know, certain instances where a pastor in a church would want to steer the congregation or endorse a candidate in one way or another. And but and I like the idea of it sitting under that, you know, sort of authority of the elders at the very least.

00:30:19
Speaker 3: Right. And that's the way we look at it, too, is that, look, churches, most churches, most pastors are under the authority of the elders within the church. So, you know, this idea that, oh, this is going to create all of this, you know, church electioneering and it's going to create, you know, these these work between candidates are going to pour money into churches that we don't that's not going to happen. It's certainly not on a broad scale. Pastors just generally don't want to be political, and that's good. They're not called to and not called to be partisan. But if a pastor feels compelled to speak up about a biblical issue, let's just say pro-life, or let's just say a gender issue, and wants to say, hey, we're coming up to an election cycle, and I want you to know that candidate A supports this and candidate B opposes this, You know, and here's our biblical worldview on this. You know, that pastor, if the conscience of that pastor is calling them to speak up, then they should have the freedom to do that based on their relationship with their faith and with God and not the government's saying this is right or wrong.

00:31:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think interestingly, I appreciate that framing. As I thought through this, just preparing for the conversation, the other thing I thought was this really, for local churches, could probably connect more strongly with local politics. Things that are actually going on in a given locale that a pastor... and their congregants are going to be far more intimately impacted by in a given, you know, just space, something that's happening with a local school board, for instance, or a community development of some sort.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: And, and to feel muzzled.

00:32:14
Speaker 2: And I, I would, I would say that that's probably the right way to put it to feel muzzled, um, and not want to go through all the rigmarole that you guys have gone through in, in sort of navigating these issues. Um, seems like it would be a real temptation, right? To just stay silent and not speak on the issue versus really being able to stand up and say, Hey, this is an important one. We need to have this conversation. We need to speak to this public happening that's going on. And I want to at least give you guidance and framework from God's word to think through these matters. So yeah, that local aspect to me was really compelling.

00:32:55
Speaker 1: Right.

00:32:55
Speaker 3: And that's where we really think, as you said, that's really where it's going to come into play. We often sort of look at this and we raise it all up to the national level and usually to the office of the presidency. But it really is the local level that I think the pastors are really wanting to have and can have a much greater impact. Yeah.

00:33:18
Speaker 2: So do you see this as just fundamentally a freedom of speech movement? religious liberty sort of issue, and particularly with churches. And I guess that would be my real question. We're defining a religious liberty at this point narrowly within churches, not outside of a specific 501c3 authority structure that would be labeled a church. that would have that sort of elder oversight of some sort. Is that the fundamental crux of what you all are fighting for here?

00:33:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, we look, we think churches had this right, you know, like I said, for 170 plus years. And then, you know, even if Johnson was trying to you know, keep nonprofits that were receiving, you know, a government benefit, even if he was trying to keep them out of the political process and being used for that. The sweeping effect of that, because the IRS looks at a church as a 501c3, they fall under that same regulation guideline. Even though churches don't need to apply for 501c3 status, They fall under that. We think it's time to get that corrected and, as you said, restore that fundamental right that pastors had to really follow their conscience and take all of this gray area out, take this kind of chilling effect that it's had, this self-censoring effect it's had, And let's restore that freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of free exercise thereof to the pastors of this country.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: It is interesting to me to look at some of the sort of back and forth on this online. There are some groups, nonprofit groups, some Christian groups who would stand against this and say, no, we want to keep the Johnson Amendment. And then there's the other side that say, well, no, we would like to repeal the Johnson Amendment and even go further, maybe.

00:35:33
Speaker 1: Then the lawsuit.

00:35:33
Speaker 2: And so you've got all voices coming into this. But what I find sort of fascinating is there are legitimate concerns that I think are right and really aren't effectively addressed by this particular amendment. For instance— You've mentioned, you know, you don't want churches to become lobbying groups. And so that's not really part of what you all are addressing. You don't want nonprofits giving the government or political candidates money. And so that's not part of this. I think those are appropriate spaces to have a conversation about the way that nonprofits use the money that's given to them and the appropriate allocation of those funds toward a given mission. What's almost never talked about is how this hits the for-profit sector and the very similar dynamics that you see in lobbying and for-profit corporations doing this exact same stuff with zero guidelines and policy really precluding them from supporting political candidates, endorsing political candidates. and doing all of these sort of machinations that seem so abhorrent when we look at it from a 501c3 perspective.

00:36:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an interesting irony, isn't it? On one side, you know, and look, and the interesting thing is there's all kinds of tax breaks under the law that apply to corporations, you know, and that's the way Johnson framed this was that, you know, These organizations were getting a benefit, and that benefit came with strengths. But like I said, the McCain-Feingold Act tried to address some of that. John McCain and Russ Feingold tried to address some of that. And interesting enough, when that went to court, the court threw out most of the major provisions. tossed them on the grounds of free speech that you can't limit, you know, people or corporations, entities from those free speech rights. And so, yeah, that's always the kind of interesting side of it is that why are 501c3s being treated so differently?

00:37:57
Speaker 2: As you've gotten, and I assume you've gotten some pushback, not just from the defendant, but from other sectors. But as you've gotten that pushback, it Do you get the sense that people view 501c3 organizations and that nonprofit work as sort of oddly sacred and they want to make sure that it's not adulterated by the political processes in the way that some of the, you know, maybe the for-profit entities have gone?

00:38:26
Speaker 3: You know, no, not really. OK, that's the interesting thing about this. All the pushback has really come even in the religious side of it has come from these. I'll say on the religious side, it's come from the more left progressive side. religious organizations that want to say church and stay out of these politics. The same organizations that fly rainbow flags from outside their churches and do some of that are saying stay out of politics. So that's interesting. But the other thing is really the pushback is just keeping religion out of the public sector. That's more what we're hearing. It's the idea that that's your religion. You should stay and keep that in your house or in your church. And so you have the freedom of worship, you know, but you don't have the free exercise of religion to do what God's been called. And you and I know the interesting thing to that is that the government is not neutral. There's no neutrality there. This idea that this was going to create a neutrality in there, but the government's not neutral. As a matter of fact, I think the reason that this has become such a greater issue today is because over the last 40, 50 years 60 years, we've seen the government become more and more involved in religious issues, not the other way around. The government has tried to legislate things that we as people of faith see as moral issues or ethical issues or freedom of religion issues, everything from marriage to gender to pro-life. And it's not necessarily been that the church has really pushed into into governance, but that the government has pushed into religious issues.

00:40:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, I wrote a piece a long time ago. I want to say it was in the 2022 era where I talked a little bit about the, the difficulties of, um, allowing for free speech, allowing for freedom of religion, advocating for church and state when you have ideological groups that would never call themselves churches or religions. But functionally and dynamically, they're doing the exact same thing. They're carrying a story with them and seeking to legislate that story into the government. And so part of what we're dealing with, I think, nowadays is just a fragmented, understanding of what the good the true and the beautiful actually are and as christians sort of advocate for some of that we get pinned as you know religious nuts and uh and but the reality is that all of these different groups that are advocating for this in the public space are bringing the same sort of presuppositions and convictions about these areas that we are. The difference being, of course, that we believe all this has been self-disclosed by God. And so we have a different angle on it than most of them. But it does seem to me to be that fragmentation is really a difficult part of what we're dealing with right now.

00:41:51
Speaker 1: There's no consensus.

00:41:53
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, there's been a time where there's really been Like you said, no consensus, but it's this, I think, misunderstanding that somehow because there's religion, there's a faith, there's a Bible, there's scripture behind what certain people believe in that. Somehow that is more limiting now. than somebody else's general belief that they got off of some philosopher or some leader at some point who wrote about this, that, or the other thing. And I think there's this misunderstanding, again, that if we keep religion out, then everything else is going to be neutral. But again, somebody's worldview is going to guide the laws, the way money is spent, the regulatory framework, the judicial framework. Somebody's worldview is going to guide that. And what we're saying is that if you're religious, your worldview has to set on the sideline. If your worldview is based on a faith, on a religious faith, that sets on the sidelines, while ours runs rampant over the top of you.

00:43:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:43:11
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, We're in a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It's difficult to separate the people from the faith that they hold, whatever it is. And I think that to some degree, as we look at what you all are doing, trying to give people guidance on what their faith entails, you know, the claims that their faith actually makes on them and how that might relate to voting is certainly within the the scope of what a pastor of a church is called to do. This is the equipping of the saints. This is the, the call to culturally engage, right. And make sure that, that folks have a good understanding and that their, their conscience is not only clear when they do something like vote for a candidate, but that it's also informed. And I think that's a really crucial thing that they need to do.

00:44:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. Very good.

00:44:10
Speaker 2: Well, Closing remarks, Troy. I mean, you know, where do you guys take this next? What do you I don't know whether you want to say what you're expecting, but you know what's coming next.

00:44:21
Speaker 1: What's your hope in all this, I guess?

00:44:23
Speaker 3: Well, look, I think we came to the understanding with the Justice Department. So the consent, the Justice Department sees this as a violation of those rights and wants to correct this. So our hope is that now that the court will see this as well. and the Fifth Circuit will, you know, look at this and look at the exceptions that have been made to the Anti-Injunction Act and push this back to the judge who then can review it and the two parties can move on. That's our hope, and that's the hope is to, again, remove this, you know, kind of threat. It's really, as you said right now, this threat and bring clarity to pastors. We don't expect, if let's just say we prevail in this case, we don't expect that that's going to cause some big political wave, you know, immediately, but it is going to allow pastors to now understand as they feel called and led along with their elders, their congregation, and their own, you know, conscience before God. They don't have to worry about the government coming in and, you know, taking the, you know, economic security from their religion or from their church or whatever away from them. And they just have a clear path to do what God's called them to do.

00:45:47
Speaker 2: And with that, just sort of last couple of questions, just to clarify a couple of pieces. Would the consent decree be binding going forward, like there would have to be legal action to reverse it? It's not something that would change from administration to administration like guidance would.

00:46:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, my understanding from our legal team is this. Once it's signed off, it can't be undone. But also, let me be clear, because this is the way court cases work in that. But the consent decree will set a precedent for the IRS and the Justice Department. It narrowly applies to the participants, to the plaintiffs here in the case. But the court, you know, looks at these and says, well, if it applies there in the Justice Department, then it's probably going to be broadly applied across the board.

00:46:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could see other people coming in and saying, hey, we'd like the same thing.

00:46:45
Speaker 1: And see how that goes. Really helpful, Troy.

00:46:48
Speaker 2: I appreciate you coming on and talking through these issues with us. Appreciate you all spearheading these ideas and fighting for the religious rights of pastors and free speech of pastors. And so just thanks for the conversation and thanks for the effort.

00:47:04
Speaker 1: Really, I think good stuff.

00:47:06
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me today and for allowing us to talk about this. NRB has existed for 82 years now and our primary mission is is to just ensure that the gospel has its place in the public sector.

00:47:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, very good. Well, great conversation. Thanks for being here. Thanks, everybody, for listening.

00:47:28
Speaker 2: And we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.

00:47:30
Speaker 1: Take care, everybody.