Trump just promised a repeal of the “Johnson Amendment”, a rule preventing churches from endorsing or speaking out against politicians, which has been in place since 1954.
Now, I believe everyone should have the right to support the candidate of their choice…but they should be willing to give up their tax exempt status to do so.
Will the Democrats dare to block that? Is Trump setting this up as a trap for the Dems? I have no idea how this polls, but it would not surprise me if most Americans supported repeal.
I have no problem with the idea, just so they lose tax exempt status. Hell, he can pay for his damn wall with the revenue.
Probably wouldn’t have as bad an impact as one might fear. They will literally be preaching to the choir, and America in general is becoming increasingly secular. And the Christian Right bedding down with Trump will do nothing but accelerate the move away from religion into a stampede.
That’s what the amendment is about-- losing tax exempt status if the endorse candidates. The “idea” is to change that, so it would appear you do have a problem with it.
Shock! Horror! He’s doing what he promised to do!
But this sounds like a bad move to me, because religious ministers have sworn fealty to a power they see as greater than the US.
Is it a very big amendment?
And why wouldn’t anyone want to know whom God endorses? 
To some, it is their god of choice, to others it is power itself, or greed, or ideals they already have etc.
Not understanding the question.
I think was was a huuuuge whoosh!
Also: you need to be careful. Do you want the posters that are conservative and secular/agnostic/atheist heads to blow up?!? 
:smack:
It would be trivially easy to eliminate this rule - Trump would simply need to direct the IRS to no longer enforce its provisions. Other priorities and all that.
That being said, I’m against the idea of tax exemption for organizations as a whole so this seems counter to that.
I’m pretty much in the same boat as you. Anything that would make any other 501c3organization lose their tax-exempt status should apply to churches as well. To the best of my limited knowledge, the only way churches would be able to engage in political activity and still retain their tax-exempt status, barring special exemptions for churches, would be to allow churches to be classified as 501c4.
I haven’t seen any polls about it either but I would suspect that it polls about the same as most of the partisan things Trumps been advocating.
about 50/50 nationally with 80% of Republicans in favor and 80% of Democrats against.
Repealing the Johnson Amendment would be a violation of the 1st Amendment. No surprise that Trump doesn’t respect the Constitution.
No it isn’t.
How on earth does it violate the 1st Amendment?
As an atheist, I think the Johnson Amendment is ridiculous and should never have existed as it does interfere with the freedom of speech.
On a separate topic, I don’t think that being a church alone should qualify it for a Section 501(c)(3) status. That creates a specific favor for it being a church.
I disagree with the IRS’ assumption that they should receive a unique status over any type of other business.
On the other hand, it would very interesting to see the Pope come down hard on Trump as I have a feeling he’s been straddling that line and speaking in code, albeit obvious code, about Trump.
She said She’d tell me if I went totally vegan.