Earlier this month, the Internal Revenue Service reinterpreted the ban, known as the Johnson Amendment, saying for the first time that churches could endorse candidates from the pulpit. The change, which came via a legal settlement, functionally nullifies a core tenet of the law, giving Christian conservatives their most significant victory involving church political organizing in 70 years. Their ultimate goal is still to totally eliminate the law, through Congress or the Supreme Court, removing all its limits on their political activities.
“Now churches are free,” said Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which has been working to challenge the law for years. “The leash is gone.”
The I.R.S.’s new approach is the latest in a string of triumphs for conservative Christian groups, which are leveraging their alliance with Mr. Trump to redraw boundaries between church and state.
For now, the implications of this latest victory are unclear. On paper, the new I.R.S. policy appears narrow. It grants more freedom only to houses of worship, which the agency already seemed disinclined to police.
The ban on endorsements by churches and other tax-exempt groups dates to 1954, when it was inserted into a tax bill by Lyndon B. Johnson, then a senator, bypassing any debate on the matter. His motives were hardly lofty: Mr. Johnson was reacting to efforts by nonprofits that were supporting his rival in a primary.
The Johnson Amendment became an enduring part of nonprofit law, seen by some as an appropriate wall between charities and churches and the dirty business of politics.
But many conservative Christian activists — as well as some independent legal scholars — saw it as a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech….