Churches should stay out of politics!
I hear this all the time, usually from secular friends whose idea of church has been distorted by harrowing personal experiences with conservative churches, and/or overexposure to televangelist megachurches who get the lion’s share of media coverage.
Whenever I hear this, I push back. I vigorously defend political involvement from churches and people of faith.
Oddly enough, some of the same people vehemently insisting that “churches should stay out of politics” are simultaneously asking why progressive churches have not been more visible in speaking out on political issues of the day: the need for stronger gun safety laws, protecting access to abortion care, emotional and medical support for healthy joyful lives for trans kids, or the fight against voter suppression and election tampering.
But wait—isn't it illegal for churches to get involved in political activity? What about the separation of church and state?
It is true that specific partisan activity is illegal. But there is still a lot that churches can do and should do, especially in this critical year when democracy is on the ballot and, for some of us, our very lives are at stake.
faith-based politics
Laypeople of faith, clergy, and churches have participated in every inclusive justice movement in this country since well before the founding of this country.
In the 1600s, Anglican Minister Morgan Godwyn preached against the slave trade, saying that indigenous people and black people, including enslaved men and women, were equal before God and deserving of equal access to the rites of the church. That was quite radical for its time. In the 1700s, "Patriot Pastors" risked arrest by refusing to swear loyalty to the king while they preached revolution in underground house churches.
In the 1800s, Episcopalians sought to preserve the union by refusing to accept that breakaway dioceses in the Confederacy had really broken away; and all of them eventually did come home. In the 1900s, liberal clergy and laity were among the most passionate voices advocating an end to child labor, the vote for women, and the broad-ranging civil rights movement for people of color.
And in this century, progressive churches and individual believers have been active in the battle for marriage equality, workers’ rights, the Poor People’s Campaign, equal civil rights for trans people, and sanctuary for the undocumented.
In spite of this, most people who argue vehemently that "churches should stay out of politics" believe that 100% of church-related political activity is bad, pushing patriarchy, white supremacy, and restrictions on women's autonomy. They fear giving political power to dominionists who long to establish a theocratic state like the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale.
I fear that as well.
This is all the more reason why progressive people of faith need to step up our game and be as visible as possible. Otherwise, we perpetuate the impression in the dominant culture that "church-going" and faith-based” are synonymous with backward, ignorant, science-hating, economically selfish deplorables.
Political activity is an organized group expression of how we care for one another, how we express our spiritual values in the real world, and how we love our neighbors as ourselves. Authentic people of faith can NOT separate faith from their political opinions and actions.
the johnson amendment
But what about the IRS? What about the Johnson Amendment?
It is true the IRS can go after a church, or any 501(c)(3) organization, for getting involved in partisan political activity. The Johnson Amendment, proposed in the summer of 1954 by the youngest ever Senate minority leader, Lyndon Baines Johnson, says a church can lose its tax exempt status if it advocates for specific candidates, or specific political parties.
There was talk early in the previous administration of repealing the Johnson Amendment. The confused man in the Oval Office apparently thought he did repeal it through an executive order. According to him: "ministers and preachers and rabbis and whoever it may be, you couldn’t speak politically before, now you can." His executive order allowed the Treasury Department to be more lenient in enforcing the Johnson Amendment, when in fact they were already barely enforcing it. Clergy can and do speak politically in church, even from the pulpit. Nothing in the law ever discouraged conservative churches from walking right up to the line, dancing on it, and deliberately crossing it to make their point, believing their actions were justified because their deepest values were at stake.
I am not suggesting that any church, clergyperson, or individual believer should deliberately flout the Johnson Amendment inside the walls of their churches. (As far as outside church walls is concerned, the call to civil disobedience is a subject for another day!)
But even though churches can't talk about parties, or candidates, there is a lot of non-partisan activity that can get individual churches and church networks into the fight for progressive, small “d” democratic values.
legal ways churches can be politically active
Here are some of the ways churches can be actively and legally involved in political activity in 2022 and beyond. If you belong to a progressive church and have wondered how you could use church resources to benefit your surrounding community in this way, here are some specific ideas.
Let’s start at the very beginning with voter registration. Encouraging people to register, and reminding people to vote, is nonpartisan activity and completely legal.
Always have blank voter registration forms available at your church. If you have an information table, put a display of voter registration forms there. If you are located in an area with foot traffic, have parishioners staff a voter registration table on a nearby street corner or some other public area near your church. Regularity is important. If you can’t be out there every day, be out there the same time every week.
Put announcements in your Sunday bulletin, on church bulletin boards, and in your electronic and snail mail church newsletters reminding people each week about the next significant political deadline: the last day to register for the primary, the day(s) to vote in the primary, the deadline to register for the general election, the day(s) to vote in the general election, and to remind folks of the dates of special elections.
Encourage people to vote every year—not just every four years for president, and not just every two years for Congress. Off year and off-off year local elections are extremely important because just a handful of votes can have the power to swing the result and have an immediate impact on your congregation and your community.
Ballot questions are considered nonpartisan activity in most states, even when it is perfectly clear which party or which candidate supports which position. Conservative churches have taken advantage of this one to do damage much more than progressive churches have used it to do good. You can have a table with petitions to sign to get questions on the ballot. If voter guides are created by your state with pro and con statements about all the ballot questions, make those available wherever you post other public information in your church. Make and sell (or give away) buttons about ballot questions. During the Yes on 3 campaign in Massachusetts in 2018, clergy walking around in clericals and wearing Yes on 3 buttons started a lot of interesting conversations in the subway!
Allow your church to be used as a meeting location for phone banking and canvassing. Modern phone banks do not require that the churches’ own phones be used, since everyone brings their own cell phone. But a staging area like a parish hall is helpful as a place to do pre-call training and post-call debriefing, hand out phone scripts, bring in food and drink for the volunteers, and create an encouraging teamwork buzz that keeps people upbeat and motivated.
If you are a group working on a ballot question, a progressive church near you is a good place to ask for space. If they can’t afford to let you use the building for free, negotiate a donation to cover utility expenses, which would still be much less than renting commercial space and more convenient in terms of parking and restrooms than meeting in someone’s home.
Be a staging ground for rides to the polls. If you have early voting on Sundays in your area, an after-church mobilization to take people to the polls is a very rewarding community-building activity. “Souls to the Polls” has been so successful that some states are making new laws to inhibit and discourage it. That must mean it is particularly effective. You can also have volunteers available on election day(s) to pick up parishioners (and their neighbors) at home and take them to the polls and back. For folks with mobility issues or unreliable transportation, a ride is the difference between voting and not voting.
Signage is VERY powerful in spreading a message. You can’t put up a lawn sign for candidate X or Y, but you can have signs for ballot questions, and other nonpartisan messages such as “Democracy is on the ballot.” Black Lives Matter signs, rainbow flags, and other inclusive visual messaging lets people in your community know that you are open-minded and approachable.
Having a reputation as “the church where the tenant’s rights group meets” or “the church that has the Waking Up White reading group” or “the church where we phonebank for the trans rights ballot question” or “the sanctuary church protecting a family from deportation” or “the church sending Shelterboxes to Ukraine” goes a long way toward smashing the lie that conservatives are the only people populating the churches.
March, protest, and bear witness. Go to the women's march, attend the march for science, counterprotest when the neo-Nazis and racists are in town, be visible at Pride events. Take banners, flags, and signs and other visible indications that you are with a church group, even if you are only a group of two or three.
If you are able, organize your own demonstration. A few people standing with signs in a public park may be enough to make the local news if you tell them in advance. Take photos and send them to local and regional newspapers with a short “press release” and they may run it in its entirety. If they don’t, make a fuss. Why are they covering conservative demonstrations but not yours?
We have to get out there with our message of justice and love. If we don't do this, we concede the field to the dividers and the haters, and they become the only religious people who are seen and heard.
Last but not least on the subject of personal witness, there is preaching.
Clergy preaching and lay preaching about politics is a very delicate topic, but again, as long as you don't mention parties and don't mention individual candidates, it is perfectly legal. Progressives complain mightily about the ways conservative churches use their preaching to influence their congregations to take action, but there is nothing stopping us from doing the same thing. There are ways to preach about political issues where everyone knows who you are talking about even if you never say it directly.
When conservatives preach about forcing women to remain pregnant against their will, they never say which party and don't have to, because everyone knows which party is advocating that. Similarly, when we preach about how scripture says welcome the stranger and the foreigner among you must be treated as the native born, we don't have to say which party, because everyone knows which party is advocating that.
Ebenezer Baptist Church, affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Convention, has a long history of doing all of these things: registering voters, reminding people when and where to vote, phonebanking, offering space for civil rights speeches and other meetings, organizing and leading marches and boycotts, advocating for workers’ rights and economic justice, and giving rides to the polls. This was their heritage for many decades, even before Martin Luther King Jr. became co-pastor in 1960. The Rev. Raphael Warnock spoke out frequently about police brutality, the scourge of gun violence, and being on the justice side of history during his years as senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2020.
When progressives say “keep churches out of politics”, we overlook the advances that could be made if all the people affiliated with progressive churches were as politically active as Ebenezer Baptist has been.
the cost of saying and doing nothing
Saying and doing nothing may seem like the best option in these frightening times. It’s hard to blame anyone for just wanting to go along and get along and not attract attention from angry evildoers. But churches do not help anyone by pretending to be neutral. People are hurting right now, desperately casting about, looking for guidance and comfort and hope. We don’t want them to find it from conservatives because the alternative voice is not loud enough.
In this time of crisis, what is your church doing? Where does your church stand?
There are churches today who still feel shame that people were taken off to concentration camps while their leadership and members said and did nothing. There are churches today who still feel shame that people were beaten and firehosed and unjustly jailed and killed during the civil rights movement, while they said and did nothing.
If you ever wonder what you would have done if you had been alive during some of these decisive moments in history when rights were challenged, injustice was rampant, and lives were on the line, look at what you are doing right now. What are you doing, RIGHT NOW? The times we are living in are history in the making, and all that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
When angry young men were carrying torches and chanting Nazi slogans in Charlottesville, what did your church say and do? When thousands died in Puerto Rico because they didn't get the same help from their president as electoral vote-rich Florida and Texas, what did your church say and do? When crying children were pulled from the arms of their crying mothers with cruelty, deceit and deception, taken to detention centers hundreds of miles away—kidnapped by the state! What did your church say and do?
As women are denied basic bodily autonomy by state after state while we wait for a Supreme Court decision to throw us back in time by 50 years, what is your church saying and doing? As voters are being asked to wait in long lines without places to sit or shelter from the heat or cool water to sip, what is your church saying and doing? As climate change brings life-threatening heat waves, more intense fires, and widespread drought, what is your church saying and doing? As adults and children are blasted into pieces by legally obtained assault weapons in shooting after shooting after shooting, what is your church saying and doing to pressure legislators on the local, state, and national level to change those laws? How and where are you speaking out?
faith without works is dead
I have no problem with thoughts and prayers, if they focus the mind and help discern next steps. At the same time, faith without works is dead. Thoughts and prayers must be backed up with actions or they are blasphemously empty.
Churches can NOT stay out of politics, because politics is about how we treat one another. A school board budget, a piece of legislation, a ballot question is a moral document, a statement of what we value and whom we value, and who deserves to get the most care and attention from taxes, public lands, and other pooled resources we hold in common. All of us are already politically involved.
The voices with the most media attention are preaching hate and cruelty. Who among us will stand up for the gospel of inclusion, the gospel of liberation, the gospel of love? Acting from hope and strength is the only way to stave off despair and get through this political crisis together. Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but to carry on! The people gathered are the church, and whatever good we do in the name of love is a blessing to the world and to ourselves.
Political activity is one way to make the gospel come alive outside the walls of churches—in our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, our country. Believers have an obligation to use every resource available to us, including political activism, to care for the lost and least. That is the core of progressive faith and although we are already doing it quietly behind the scenes, we can always do more, openly and unashamedly. We can flip the narrative and restore faith-based work to the moral high ground, lifting it out of the cesspool of bigotry and mistreatment and punishment the other side has used to tarnish it for so long.
Churches are a built-in communication network that reach MANY more people than the folks who sit in the pews. Each person who attends church is connected to family members and friends and neighbors and co-workers who will benefit from having someone in their lives who is kept informed of registration deadlines and election days. If you can’t do anything else, at least encourage people to register and vote, and to #VoteEveryYear!
I am proud to stand side by side with people who don’t believe as I do. Even if people think what I believe is utter nonsense, I’ll band together with atheists and agnostics and anyone anywhere who is willing to work for the progressive values that are best for our country and the world. People who don’t like church or don’t believe in God or have been damaged by conservative evangelical hate don’t have to worship as I do for us to be political allies. The only thing we have to believe together is that the power of love can overcome the love of power.
We must work as hard as we can for as long as we can, and when can’t fight any more we trust the people we have inspired will take up the standard after us. This is how EVERY great inclusive justice movement in this country has succeeded, sometimes after decades or generations or centuries when victory seemed impossible. This is exactly how we must fight the many dangers, toils, and snares we are facing now. This is how we too will succeed, maybe not in my lifetime, but eventually, in building the beloved community on Earth that seeks and achieves the best, highest, and most loving outcomes for everyone.
We’ve got Love… Power… it’s the greatest power of them all... and together we can’t fall