“The Johnson Amendment was passed to silence churches.”

VerdictMisleading

The Johnson Amendment really does bar churches, like every other 501(c)(3) charity, from endorsing or opposing candidates. But the record of how it became law points to Lyndon Johnson’s 1954 Senate primary and to secular political groups that worked against him. Churches were never mentioned when it passed, and even the rule’s leading critics locate Johnson’s motive in his own political opponents.Last checked October 2026

It’s easy to see why people believe this. The rule is named after a politician. It applies to churches. A pastor who endorses a candidate from the pulpit can, in principle, put the church’s tax exemption at risk. If you’ve only ever heard about the rule in the context of churches, it’s natural to assume churches were the point.

Some versions of the claim are explicit about motive. A 2024 op-ed in The Christian Post told readers that “Lyndon B. Johnson introduced his amendment to muzzle churches in 1954” (John K. Amanchukwu Sr., The Christian Post). Others focus on the effect. Accepting the Republican nomination in 2016, Donald Trump said “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. Their voice has been taken away.” (American Presidency Project)

Those are two different claims. This page checks the first one: that the rule was passed to silence churches. Whether it silences them today is a separate question, which we take up below.

What the law says

Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code covers organizations “organized and operated exclusively for religious,” charitable, educational and similar purposes. To keep that status, an organization must be one “which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements),” “any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office” (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3), Cornell LII).

That last clause is the whole Johnson Amendment. It doesn’t single out churches or mention religion; “religious” appears in the section only in the list of exempt purposes. Churches are covered because they are 501(c)(3) organizations, alongside food banks, museums, universities and private foundations.

A few dates help:

  • 1934: Congress limits lobbying by these charities. Only “no substantial part” of their activities may go to influencing legislation (CRS Report RL34447).

  • August 16, 1954: The Internal Revenue Code of 1954 becomes law, with Johnson’s campaign restriction in it (U.S. Code, credit line for § 501, GovInfo).

  • 1987: Congress inserts “(or in opposition to),” so the ban clearly covers opposing a candidate as well as supporting one (same source).

What happened on July 2, 1954

Johnson, then the Senate’s Democratic minority leader (U.S. Senate), offered his change on the Senate floor while the Senate was working through the House’s tax overhaul. After the clerk read the new wording, Johnson explained it in two sentences of purpose. In the Congressional Record for that day (vol. 100, p. 9604), as reproduced in later court filings and in IRS training materials, he said:

“Mr. President, this amendment seeks to extend the provisions of section 501 of the House bill, denying tax-exempt status to not only those people who influence legislation but also to those who intervene in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate …”

He added that he had “discussed the matter with the chairman of the committee, the minority ranking member of the committee, and several other members of the committee, and I understand that the amendment is acceptable to them” (Liberty Counsel amicus brief, NRB v. Long, quoting 100 Cong. Rec. 9604).

That’s the documentary record of the amendment’s purpose. It says nothing about churches, pastors, sermons or religion. The IRS’s own training text for its exempt-organization staff notes that no debate or discussion took place and that the conference report “contains no further discussion of the amendment.” Its authors, two IRS lawyers, were blunt about the gap: “There is an obvious disconnect between the language of the provision and the stated intent of its author.” They added: “This is a knot no one has been able, or even attempted, to untangle.” (Kindell & Reilly, IRS Exempt Organizations CPE Text)

A note on sourcing: we could not open a digitized copy of page 9604 itself. The wording above is from a court filing that reproduces Johnson’s remarks, cross-checked against the IRS text, which quotes the same sentence from the same page. (The two reproductions differ by one word at the very end of the sentence, so we stop the quotation just before it.) The July 2 date is given by O’Daniel (below) and by the historian J. David Holcomb.

Why Johnson wanted it

Since the floor statement doesn’t explain the motive, historians have reconstructed it from Johnson’s papers. The most detailed account is by Patrick L. O’Daniel, a lawyer who was then an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and who built it on “the extensive use of President Johnson’s personal papers” (Boston College Law Review, 2001).

His findings, briefly:

  • In 1954 Johnson faced a Democratic primary challenge from Dudley Dougherty, a “thirty-year-old, first-term state representative from Beeville.” Johnson won easily: “Johnson received 883,000 votes to Dougherty’s 354,000.”

  • “The year 1954 saw McCarthyism at its height and Texas was no exception to its allure.” The Committee for Constitutional Government, a national conservative group founded in 1937 that had campaigned against the New Deal, “was adamantly opposed to Johnson’s election and vociferously supported Dougherty.”

  • Johnson also “suspected that Facts Forum, in spite of its pledge not to involve itself in political campaigns, was clandestinely in support of Dougherty, as well.” H. L. Hunt, whom O’Daniel calls “the right-wing Dallas millionaire,” “started the tax-exempt organization Facts Forum in 1951,” and its programs “prominently featured such speakers as Senator Joseph McCarthy.”

  • Johnson’s staff kept close tabs on Dougherty’s supporters, and his Senate office kept a separate file on the committee. In June 1954 he had a lawyer for the Senate Democratic Policy Committee look into whether the committee’s activities broke Texas election law. That same month Rep. John McCormack of Massachusetts, whom Johnson “apparently spoke to,” asked the IRS commissioner whether the committee was tax-exempt and whether its activities were proper.

O’Daniel’s conclusion: the prohibition “appears to have been proposed by Johnson as a way to squelch certain unsavory campaign tactics targeted at him by a few tax-exempt entities.” On churches specifically, he found that “far from churches playing a significant role in Johnson’s decision to enact the prohibition, Johnson himself sought religious alliances in his quest for re-election.”

How strong is this evidence?

Here it helps to be precise. The text of the amendment and Johnson’s floor remarks are documentary. His motive is inferred, because he never stated it publicly. O’Daniel says so himself: the provision was “not subject to debate and cryptic in its origins,” but “it is possible to piece together a plausible genesis.” His case rests on Johnson’s office correspondence, from which, he writes, “It is apparent” that the two groups “figured prominently.”

There is also a second explanation in circulation. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report notes that it “has been suggested that he proposed it either as a way to get back at an organization that supported an opponent or as an alternative to a proposal denying tax-exempt status to organizations making grants to subversive entities and individuals” (CRS Report RL34447). That second theory places the amendment in the McCarthy-era fight over politically active foundations.

The two theories differ on what Johnson was reacting to. Neither involves churches.

Where the rule’s critics agree

The most striking evidence on this question comes from people who want the rule gone.

  • Alliance Defending Freedom, which organized the “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” protests: “This law was specifically designed to silence public criticism of a politician.” (ADF, 2014)

  • Institute for Free Speech: “The Johnson Amendment was likely created in the hopes of silencing groups that criticized Senator Johnson” (IFS, 2017).

  • Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel: the amendment “was largely in retaliation to a nonprofit group that campaigned against Johnson” (The Christian Post, 2025).

  • Cornerstone Chapel and First Baptist Church of Dallas, in a 2025 brief asking a federal court to rule for the churches, quoted the sociologist James D. Davidson: “Churches were not banned from endorsing candidates because they are religious organizations; they were banned because they have the same tax-exempt status as Facts Forum and the Committee for Constitutional Government” (amicus brief, NRB v. Long).

So the historical point isn’t really in dispute between the two sides. The dispute is over what to do now.

Engaging the counterargument: “Whatever Johnson meant, it silences churches today”

This is the strongest case against the rule, and it deserves a fair hearing. The Institute for Free Speech argues that the wording is vague, so “speakers will curtail their speech more than they otherwise would,” and that the penalty “for even a minor violation of the Amendment is a death sentence for any group” (IFS). By ADF’s count, more than 1,800 pastors took part in its 2014 Pulpit Freedom Sunday protest, and ADF said it hoped “to eventually go to court to have the Johnson Amendment struck down” (ADF). And 1954 was a year when tax-exempt groups with unpopular politics were under real suspicion in Washington. A rule born in that climate can deserve scrutiny regardless of who it was aimed at.

All of that bears on whether the rule is good policy. None of it changes why the rule was passed. Motive and effect are separate questions, and this page rules only on the first one.

On the second, Christians genuinely disagree. J. David Holcomb, a historian at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor writing for the Baptist History and Heritage Society, concluded that the amendment “remains a prudent protection for churches” (Baptist History & Heritage, 2019). The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said it will keep steering clear of candidate endorsements from the pulpit, whatever the courts decide (Texas Tribune, March 31, 2026). Enforcement has also been rare. When the IRS revoked the exemption of a New York church in 1995 over 1992 newspaper ads urging Christians not to vote for Bill Clinton, the federal appeals court noted it was acting against a bona fide church “for the first time in its history” (Branch Ministries v. Rossotti, D.C. Cir. 2000).

Check the Claim takes no position on repealing or keeping the rule.

Where things stand (October 2026)

The statute itself hasn’t changed. The fight over how it applies to churches has moved fast:

  • May 4, 2017: Executive Order 13798 tells the Treasury, “to the extent permitted by law,” not to take adverse action against houses of worship for speaking on moral or political issues from a religious perspective (Federal Register). It did not change the law.

  • July 7, 2025: In National Religious Broadcasters v. Long (E.D. Tex.), the IRS and the plaintiffs, including two East Texas churches, jointly asked the court to enter a consent judgment. The filing states that “communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted” (joint motion).

  • March 31, 2026: Judge J. Campbell Barker dismissed the case (by then captioned National Religious Broadcasters v. Bessent) “without prejudice for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction,” holding that the Anti-Injunction Act and the Declaratory Judgment Act’s tax exception barred the court from approving the deal (Bloomberg Law; CRS Legal Sidebar LSB11447). The court did not reach the First Amendment questions.

  • April 3, 2026: Treasury and the IRS announced plans to issue guidance on “the application of the Johnson Amendment to religious organizations,” with a release date to be “determined later this year” (Treasury). As of mid-October 2026 we could find no published guidance.

  • Appeal: The plaintiffs appealed to the Fifth Circuit (No. 26-40237) (Thomson Reuters). In late September 2026 the Justice Department filed a brief siding with the plaintiffs and asking the court to reverse the dismissal (The Christian Post; NRB), and the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a brief on September 25 arguing that the plaintiffs lack standing and that the case presents no genuine dispute, since the IRS joined the plaintiffs’ request (FFRF). As of September 30, 2026, no ruling had been issued (NRB).

  • Congress: The Free Speech Fairness Act, which would allow political statements of minimal cost made in an organization’s ordinary activities, has been reintroduced in the current Congress, according to the Congressional Research Service (LSB11447). It has not become law.

The takeaway

The Johnson Amendment does restrict what churches can say about candidates, and people can reasonably argue about whether it should. But the story that it was written to muzzle the pulpit doesn’t match the record. Johnson’s floor statement never mentions religion; the best-documented motive is a Texas Senate primary and two anti-communist political groups; and the rule’s sharpest critics say the same. Churches were caught by a rule aimed at someone else.

Related claims

Sources

Primary

Secondary and current reporting

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