Religious liberty order draws mixed responses
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed his long-awaited executive order on religious liberty Thursday with a full-throated reassurance he would protect the freedom of American believers. But the reactions of religious leaders across the country suggested it instead promised freedoms many of them did not want — and failed to deliver concrete legal protections conservatives had been led to expect.
The centerpiece of the order is a pledge to allow clergy and houses of worship to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, fulfilling a campaign promise Trump repeatedly used to rally his most fervent supporters. Public opinion polls show, however, that neither the American public as a whole nor religious leaders in particular — even evangelicals, who voted for Trump in droves — think partisan politicking by churches is a good idea.
“I don’t actually know anybody who has endorsed or who wants to endorse a politician from the pulpit,” said Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing about 40 denominations and 45,000 churches. “My idea is that church is about teaching the Bible, it’s about discipleship and evangelism. It’s not about politics.”
Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who specializes in religious liberty, said, “In reality, what Trump issued today is rather weak.”
The reaction from opponents also was telling. Two groups that had threatened to sue the White House over the new order, the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen, backed off after seeing the text. Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the ACLU, called the signing of the order “an elaborate photo-op with no discernible policy outcome.”
Since 1954, the Johnson Amendment, promoted by Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, has threatened religious organizations and charities with loss of their tax-exempt status if they endorse or oppose political candidates. In reality, this rarely was enforced and the IRS rarely investigated.
Lloyd Mayer, a Notre Dame law professor who specializes in churches, politics and tax law, said some would argue the order “doesn’t change anything, because the IRS has been very wary of enforcing the Johnson Amendment.”
But, he added, “there is the risk that it will open the door for people to create arguably fake churches — the Church of Obama, the Church of Trump — and use that as a mechanism to obtain anonymous, tax-deductible contributions which can then be spent on political activity.”