During his acceptance speech, Trump thanked the evangelical community for their support, adding:
You have so much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits. An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views.
I am going to work very hard to repeal that language and protect free speech for all Americans.
The GOP platform echoes Trump:
Republicans believe the federal government, specifically the IRS, is constitutionally prohibited from policing or censoring speech based on religious convictions or beliefs, and therefore we urge the repeal of the Johnson Amendment.
Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Jay Sekulow summarized the impact the Johnson Amendment has had over the last 50 years on muting and neutering political expression from the pulpit, calling it a “federal tax law that prevents religious leaders from truly exercising their constitutionally-protected free speech rights when they act in their official capacity as a pastor or head of a religious, tax-exempt organization.” The purpose of the IRS was “to collect revenue for the general treasury,” but this amendment has turned the organization into the “speech police,” according to Sekulow.
In this era of political correctness and intimidation by the IRS, pastors rarely talk from the pulpit about “key issues”: abortion, same-sex "marriage," political corruption in high places, etc. The IRS, says Sekulow, “says it is permissible for religious leaders to discuss important issues of public policy (as they should), but are prohibited from supporting or opposing a candidate who takes positions on those issues. That’s absurd. The prohibition makes no sense.… It censors pastors in the pulpit. And it turns the IRS, which was originally designed to collect revenue for the general treasury, into the speech police.”
Repealing the Johnson Amendment would be a great victory for the First Amendment. It would be a greater victory in the culture wars. And it could, and should, lead to an even greater victory: abolishing the IRS altogether, along with the income tax.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/24030-trump-repeal-johnson-amendment-that-muzzles-pastors
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