by Paul Singer, USA TODAY
Below is an excerpt. Read the full article on USA TODAY’s website.
Tucked in to the last pages of a sweeping Republican tax overhaul bill is a paragraph that would end a 60-year-old ban on clergy preaching partisan politics from the pulpit.
President Trump promised repeatedly during the campaign and after his election to repeal the so-called Johnson Amendment, a provision of tax law first adopted in 1954 that prohibits non-profit charitable organizations — called 501(c)(3)s based on the section of the tax code that governs them — from endorsing political candidates.
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Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said Thursday the tax law change is a bad idea that “threatens to destroy our congregations from within over disagreements on partisan campaigns.”