IRS Ignoring 1600 Pastors Who Admit To Illegally Endorsing Political Candidates

Over 1600 pastors have not only admitted, but proudly boasted they are breaking the law by endorsing political candidates, but the IRS is refusing to investigate. Why?

In what many believe is an illegal political movement, the virulently anti-gay legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom is organizing and encouraging pastors across the nation to defy the law and endorse political candidates. A 60-year old statute known as the Johnson Amendment requires religious institutions and others that hold a tax-exempt status to refrain from direct political activity. 

LOOK: America Spends $71 Billion Annually Subsidizing Tax-Exempt Religion

While the law is clear, many either don’t understand or simply don’t care, and are openly flaunting their illegal activity.

Pastors have even recorded video of themselves preaching politics to their congregations and sent those videos to the IRS, yet the tax and revenue arm of the federal government has blatantly refused to niot only prosecute these intentional ofenders, but it has not even warned them.

“A record number of rogue Christian pastors are endorsing candidates from the pulpit this election cycle, using Sunday sermons to defiantly flout tax rules,” Politico today reports. “Their message to the IRS: Sue me.”

Although the IRS was sued itself for not enforcing the law and admitted about 100 churches may be breaking the rules, the pastors and their critics alike say the agency is looking the other way. The agency refuses to say if it is acting.

At the same time, the number of pastors endorsing candidates in what they call Pulpit Freedom Sunday jumped from 33 people in 2008 to more than 1,600 this year, according to organizers, Alliance Defending Freedom. And this year, they’ve stepped up their drive, telling pastors to back candidates any Sunday up until the election, not just one Sunday as in past years.

The church leaders are jumping in high-profile races that will help decide the Senate and tight governor races across the country, endorsing candidates from Thom Tillis (R) over Sen. Kay Hagan (D) in North Carolina to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) over Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) in Kentucky.

“If by chance a member of the IRS gets this sermon and is listening, sue me,” said evangelical pastor Jim Garlow of the San Diego-based Skyline Church, after backing Democratic Rep. Scott Peters for reelection. His Republican challenger, Carl DeMaio, is gay, and could advance a “radical homosexual agenda,” Garlow warned.

 

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