Is the Johnson Amendment Merely a Political Discussion?
Professor Stanley Fish is one of my favorite thinkers and writers. I don't always agree with him, but he rarely fails to live up to the name of his blog, "Think Again". In this week's post, he considers both sides of the "pulpit initiative" argument from a Constitutional point of view. His conclusion? There are strong constitutional arguments on both sides, and incompatible definitions of "religion" at work that could not be addressed, much less settled, by a judge.
The bottom line is that there is no rational or principled or constitutional resolution to this conflict. The resolution, if there is one, will have to be political. Either the Johnson amendment will be repealed or it won’t be.Fish's bottom line may be correct. But his essay leaves out one centrally important issue: tax exemption, which he never substantively mentions, but is the crux of the debate. Nobody is suggesting the government can prohibit churches from endorsing candidates, if they feel compelled by religious beliefs to engage in political campaigning. What is being argued is that the government has a right to tie the privilege of tax exemption to campaign regulations. Churches are certainly free to deny the exemption and infuse their worship with political campaigning, as questionable as that decision may be.
Fish might respond that still unanswered is the question of whether, given the tax exempt provisions, the government is inappropriately favoring one religious viewpoint (namely, one in which religious beliefs do not require political campaigning as a part of worship) over another (one that does require it). But that brings the discussion back to the much different set of issues that we truly do face: How important is it to us as a country to maintain rules for tax exemptions, and how important is it to regulate our political process, particularly campaign financing?
Those do indeed sound like political questions, don't they? But even if the Constitution doesn't settle them, our discussions should be guided by the spirit of church-state separation, our commitment to honoring religious diversity, and our principle of religious freedom for all. The First Amendment may not be at stake in the Johnson Amendment, but the values it represents very much are.