Donald Trump smiles as he pauses during a speech at a "Thank You" tour rally held at the Giant Center (Shutterstock).
Salon guest writer Andrew Daugherty says President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission aims to turn churches into political action committee moneybags.
“The most efficient campaign finance vehicle in American history is tax-exempt, requires no donor disclosure and is available in virtually every zip code in the country. For 70 years, it has operated under one rule: It cannot endorse a political candidate,” said Daugherty. “The Religious Liberty Commission, which delivered its report to President Donald Trump on June 26, would like to remove that rule. They’re calling it religious freedom.”
But Daugherty, a Christian minister of an American Baptist congregation for more than 20 years, says he knows the difference between protecting a church and conscripting one: “A government that wants to free the church, to borrow Trump’s language, is usually trying to use it.”
The 1954 Johnson Amendment restricts churches, religious organizations and other tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates or funneling tax-deductible donations into partisan campaigns. Church leaders can preach hard and heavy on moral and social issue, but the tax-exempt status line stops at candidate endorsements.
“In other words, the amendment is the last structural barrier between the American church and full absorption into the machinery of partisan politics,” said Daugherty. “The claim that this constitutes religious suppression is the oldest con in the game. Every American pastor has the same First Amendment rights as any other citizen. What the Johnson Amendment restricts is tax-exempt dollars in partisan politics. Churches pay no federal taxes. In exchange, they stay out of the candidate-endorsement business. Void it, and that deal ends — and every church in America becomes a PAC with better branding and transparency requirements and endorsed by a divine mandate.”
Imagine a donor writing a federal tax-deductible check to their congregation. Then the church endorses the candidate of their choice, bundles those contributions and runs voter registration drives for one party. Plus, it does it all without a political action committees’ disclosure requirement.
“This is tax-exempt political spending, passed through the offering plate and invisible to the public record,” said Daugherty, and this is a mistake that could further destroy the American church.
“Church attendance has collapsed at a pace that would have seemed impossible just a generation ago,” he argued. “According to a 2024 Pew Research study, the fastest-growing religious identity in America is ‘none.’ The research on why people leave does not point to boredom or busyness. It points to disgust at what organized religion has become. The Christian right has spent five decades getting closer to power and losing the one thing it cannot buy back: The credibility to speak to anyone outside its own coalition.”
But Trump’s commission doesn’t appear discouraged by this information. And Daugherty said their plans go beyond just ending the Johnson Amendment. They propose putting an end to the separation of church and state.
“The separation has existed because both institutions require protection from each other. When such safeguards are removed, the bridge comes with a toll booth, and the commission is waving one side through,” said Daughtry. “This is state power reinforcing evangelical Christianity, and evangelical Christianity legitimizing state power. The commission calls it ‘partnership.’ History calls it a state church.”