This Wisconsin pastor wrote a sermon endorsing AOC for president — then he lost his job

19 August

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19, 2024 (Maxim Elramsisy/Shutterstock.com)

Far-right white evangelicals are applauding a new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule that allows pastors to make political endorsements in the pulpit, including the Family Research Council. But Christianity is far from monolithic, and individual churches don't necessarily approve of the practice even though the IRS is now allowing it.

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Rev. Jonathan Barker found that out the hard way.

Barker, until recently, preached at the Grace Lutheran Church, where the liberal/progressive Mainline Protestant pastor planned to give a sermon endorsing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) for president in the United States' 2028 election. But when the church objected — regardless of the new IRS rule — he ended up resigning, according to the New York Times.

Barker still gave the pro-AOC sermon, but not in the Grace Lutheran Church pulpit.

In an article published on August 19, Times reporters David A. Fahrenthold and Elizabeth Dias explain, "The odd battle that played out last week over one sermon for one Lutheran congregation in Kenosha, an industrial city on Lake Michigan, was an illustration of the sharply different ways that American churches have responded to the IRS' surprise reinterpretation of the decades-old law. It may have also foreshadowed many similar fights to come."

The journalists continue, "The fight was set in motion by a lawsuit that two Texas churches and a group of religious broadcasters filed against the IRS last year, seeking to invalidate a 1954 law called the Johnson Amendment. That law, introduced by then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, said that churches and charities could lose their tax-exempt status if they endorsed candidates for office. The plaintiffs said it was an unconstitutional limit on free speech."

Back in 1993, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.'s show "The Old-Time Gospel Hour" was fined $50,000 by the IRS and lost its tax-exempt status for two years because of his overtly political activity in the pulpit. Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and father of former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., was a leading religious right figure who drew scathing criticism from the late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) — an influential conservative who believed that Falwell and other far-right evangelicals were terrible for the GOP and the conservative movement.

Fahrenthold and Dias note that Christian churches are hardly in lockstep when it comes to political endorsements.

"The Family Research Council, an advocacy group that promotes conservative values, is already trying to organize 18,000 pastors for next year's midterm elections," the Times reporters explain. "But leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and some Mainline Protestant denominations, including the Evangelical Lutherans, have told their pastors to refrain from endorsements, maintaining their earlier practices. Many said they worried that endorsing candidates would drive away members, and drag their divine lessons into the mud of earthly politics."

Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required)

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