{"id":135269,"date":"2017-11-02T23:04:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T05:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=135269"},"modified":"2017-11-04T15:03:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T21:03:03","slug":"coming-soon-pulpit-near-vote-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/02\/coming-soon-pulpit-near-vote-guy.html","title":{"rendered":"Coming soon to a pulpit near you: “Vote for This Guy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

While it didn’t make a big splash in the initial analysis of the House tax reform bill, one provision in there is interesting and disappointing in both small and large ways.<\/p>\n

The GOP bill will repeal the Johnson Amendment which, back in the 1950s, basically said that a church (or other charitable organization) that was enjoying tax-exempt status could not, in turn, engage in political activity in favor of a specific candidate, because the tax exemption was going to support their charitable work, not their partisan politicking.<\/p>\n

While the Johnson Amendment is rarely actually invoked by the IRS, it’s been a bugbear for conservative Christians as a suppression of their Religious Freedom. “How can we possibly preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ freely,” they cry, “if we can’t urge all our parishioners every Sunday to vote for Donald Trump?”<\/p>\n

(Note: campaigning on behalf of a political candidate is an activity of the Kingdom of Earth, not the Kingdom of Heaven. This is nowhere more apparent than Christian churches supporting Donald Trump. Thus endeth the lesson.)<\/p>\n

Of course, this provision in the tax bill will be much more consequential than just allowing even-more-partisan sermons on Sundays. It’s been suggested that repealing the Johnson Amendment will make activist conservative churches the target for massive voter donation money laundering schemes — all of it tax deductible, to boot! — oversight of which will be zealously resisted by conservative Christians who think that they<\/i> should be able to directly influence the State, but the State shouldn’t have an control over them<\/i> — even as they sell their heritage for a mess of pottage.<\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/a>
\nTrump Tax Bill Repeals Limits on Politicking From the Pulpit<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While it didn’t make a big splash in the initial analysis of the House tax reform bill, one provision in there is interesting and disappointing in both small and large ways. The GOP bill will repeal the Johnson Amendment which, back in the 1950s, basically said that a church (or other charitable organization) that was … Continue reading “Coming soon to a pulpit near you: “Vote for This Guy””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,133,109,350,378,110],"tags":[1199,1307],"class_list":["post-135269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts","category-censorship","category-church-state","category-civil-liberties","category-intolerance-persecution","category-religious-zanies","tag-churchandstate","tag-johnsonamendment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Trump-and-Bible.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":31390,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/16\/partisan-preaching-for-particular-people.html","url_meta":{"origin":135269,"position":0},"title":"Partisan Preaching for Particular People","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Nov-12 3:23pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm glad the FFRF is bringing this suit, since it's clear that IRS enforcement of the 1954 Johnson Amendment (banning 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations from campaigning for or against particular candidates -- more http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Johnson_Amendment) has been spotty at best, and non-existent of late.Honestly, though, as church-state-separatist as I am, I'm of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132739,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/02\/coming-soon-to-a-pulpit-near-you.html","url_meta":{"origin":135269,"position":1},"title":"Coming Soon to a Pulpit Near You","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Feb-17 6:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Trump's vow to \"destroy\" the Johnson Amendment -- which prevents churches from preaching about specific candidates or else potentially lose their tax-exempt status ...... is actually probably a good thing.Which sounds like a weird thing for me to say, since I find church-state entanglement to be almost always to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24935,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/30\/is-discriminating-against-discrimination-discrimination.html","url_meta":{"origin":135269,"position":2},"title":"Is discriminating against discrimination discrimination?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 30-Dec-11 10:23am","format":false,"excerpt":"Not when it's Your Tax Dollars At Work, in my opinion. 'Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel and associate general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disagreed. \u201cIt\u2019s true that the church doesn\u2019t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130577,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/03\/religious-freedom-requires-defining-religion.html","url_meta":{"origin":135269,"position":3},"title":"Religious freedom requires defining religion","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 3-May-16 7:23am","format":false,"excerpt":"Interesting article here (if not one I fully agree with) on municipalities looking more closely at facilities owned by organizations and trying to determine which ones are legitimate religious efforts, to be exempted from taxation, vs. which ones are simple commercial efforts, to be be treated (and taxed) like any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28740,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/mike-kelly-is-a-dolt-religious-freedom-edition.html","url_meta":{"origin":135269,"position":4},"title":"Mike Kelly is a Dolt (Religious Freedom Edition)","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Aug-12 1:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, this is hard, Mike (R-Penn.), because most of your blather below is fact-free posturing. \u00a0But let's look at your fabulous press release of yesterday. Washington, D.C.\u00a0\u2013Representative Mike Kelly led a GOP Freshman Class press conference today marking day one of the controversial HHS mandate, which will require all non-exempt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church & State"","block_context":{"text":"Church & State","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/church-state"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/iwo-jima.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/iwo-jima.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/iwo-jima.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":29859,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/16\/more-religious-assault-twaddle-from-rick-santorum.html","url_meta":{"origin":135269,"position":5},"title":"More "religious assault" twaddle from Rick Santorum","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 16-Aug-12 11:35am","format":false,"excerpt":"\"We have a president who, for the first time in American history, is directly assaulting the First Amendment and freedom of religion. He is going to tell you what to do in the practice of your faith. He is forcing business people right now to do things that are against\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F07%2Frick-santorum-440-300x224.jpeg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135288,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135269\/revisions\/135288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}