President Trump lost a ninth circuit court ruling on his immigrant travel restrictions Thursday, but another of his initiatives caught the eye of local church leaders.
21 days into the Trump administration, the President made a call to ‘destroy’ the Johnson Amendment at the National Prayer Breakfast last week.
Rock City Pastor Jeff McCreight said the law creates a handicap, making it harder for spiritual leaders to inform their congregation come election time.
“So being restricted like that, to me, it kind of flies in the face of the First Amendment, because the Constitution says that Congress ‘Shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting.’ I’m a pastor, I must be able to freely exercise my religious freedom to inform people about not just issues, but also candidates, because sometimes their lifestyle, just the way that they conduct themselves in political office, that has to be part of the package.”
But First Unitarian Church Board Member Harvey Madison said not endorsing a political candidate is a small price to pay for tax exemption.
“They’re perfectly free to exercise total First Amendment rights, if they don’t mind giving up that tax exempt status, so that’s the only hitch. There’s no restriction on what a church can talk about or what ministers can talk about, they just can’t do that under that, and have special privilege of not having taxes.”
Lubbock County Democratic Party told EverythingLubbock.com in a statement they believe the elimination of the Johnson Amendment would benefit wealthy political donors looking for tax breaks, adding that they don’t feel the country needs more money going toward politics, and the chances of terrible and unfair outcomes aren’t worth the benefits.
For McCreight, he believes the law is holding him back from exercising free speech.
“The contradiction is, candidates from the local state and national level use pulpits in churches to campaign for themselves, my point is if a person can use a pulpit to campaign for themselves, why can’t I use my pulpit to campaign against them if I disagree with what they believe or how they stand [or vice versa].”
