In his address at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday morning, President Trump made one clear policy declaration: “I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment.”
There are multiple issues with this one sentence from this woefully ignorant man we have so unwisely elected President.
1. He seems to think that he can just “get rid of” a law, not seeming to understand that he is in the executive branch of the government, not the legislative branch.
3. There has been far too much of the very kind of thing that the Johnson Amendment was meant to stop: Preachers telling their congregations how to vote. I am amazed and sickened that even men such as John MacArthur, who should know better, went on record as saying that their congregations should vote for Donald Trump because the Republican Party platform was pro-life. (I’ve watched the video, and he he is indeed speaking from what looks to be the pulpit of his church, a clear violation of the amendment.)As Jazz Shaw says,
Preaching politics from the pulpit and using that platform to encourage the election of any candidate from either party is simply wrong. We give churches tax exempt status for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that they are outside of the political and governmental body of the nation. Further, a preacher telling you to vote for Candidate A over Candidate B isn’t just appealing to your intelligence and general sensibilities. They are speaking with the authority of the Almighty and providing you with guidance as to the maintenance of your immortal soul. This provides them with a position of vastly undue influence over your choices. It’s a parallel to the reason we don’t allow doctors to engage in sexual relations with their patients… they simply hold too much influence over them from positions of assumed trust.
Why did 81% of white evangelicals vote for this disaster? For many of them, because their pastors told them to. They were already predisposed to do so because their whole news intake came from The Water Carriers for Trump, but their pastors certainly did not encourage them to think for themselves. As I’ve said before, the preaching from the pulpit at our church was thoughtful and biblical, with no easy answers being handed out. Here’s what should have been said from pulpits across the land:
Your responsibility as a citizen is to be informed, to read critically, to interpret a candidate’s qualifications wisely. It is not my job as your pastor to tell you how to vote. It is my job to preach the Word of God as faithfully as I can. I would encourage you to be wary of getting all your information from one source. Use your common sense and your spiritual discernment. If someone is making promises that are too good to be true, then they probably are. Christians are called to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” There is room for disagreement within the Christian community on which candidate would do the best job or the least harm. Your vote is not a spiritual litmus test.
Okay. Maybe I’d better just let the estimable Mr. Shaw from RedState have his say:
“Destroying” the Johnson Amendment Is a Poor Idea,Mr. President”