A Word From David

Vote Early and Vote Often

Coming in mid-July, this may seem a message out of season, but this week the IRS, in a court filing that reverses 70 years of tax code interpretation, announced that “houses of worship” will not lose their tax-exempt status if they endorse candidates for political office. 

I am of mixed minds regarding the decision to change tax enforcement practices related to the Johnson Amendment, a provision added to the tax code in 1954 that threatens the tax-exempt status of faith-based and other nonprofit organization if they participate in, or intervene in “any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”

On the one hand, I have never believed that the state should use the coercive power of taxation to limit what faith-based organizations can publicly proclaim, including regarding elections. On the other hand, I don’t believe any pastor, imam, rabbi, or other faith leader serves their communities well if they bind themselves too closely to any candidate for public office.

If I had a third hand, it would hold all my reservations about the church becoming an institution with recognition from the empire in the first place. But that is a concern for a different day.

Psalm 146 says it best: “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.”

I have probably brushed up against the Johnson rule a few times, including last November when I said, from the pulpit, “don’t vote for the Fascists.” (I am chuckling as I imagine a public hearing on that!) Nevertheless, I have always been way more uncomfortable with the idea of endorsing candidates than I have been with opposing the positions that candidates may hold. 

Even though, in our hyper-partisan era, that distinction has become increasingly less meaningful, I still won’t stand in any pulpit come November and tell you who to vote for. 

I’ll just say, as they say in Chicago, “vote early and vote often!”

Here are some songs for this Sunday:

This Is the Day (GtG 391)

When Israel Was in Egypt’s Land (GtG 52)

Here I Am, Lord (GtG 69)