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THE IRS SAYS CHURCHES CAN NOW ENDORSE CANDIDATES. THAT COULD GIVE
TEXAS PASTORS MORE POWER THAN EVER.  
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Marissa Greene
August 4, 2025
ProPublica
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_ While the IRS move applies across the country, Texas — with more
than 200 megachurches — will be the epicenter for pastors and
congregations to test out their new influence, one expert said. _

State Rep. Nate Schatzline speaks to a gathering of the True Texas
Project, a conservative political group, just outside Fort Worth.,
Mary Abby Goss/Fort Worth Report

 

_ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign
up for The Big Story newsletter
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to receive stories like this one in your inbox_.

Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline recently stood before a gathering of
conservative activists just outside Fort Worth, recapping legislative
wins and previewing what’s next at the Capitol. On this day,
however, he was speaking not only as a lawmaker but also as a pastor.

A week earlier, the Internal Revenue Service decided to allow
religious leaders to endorse political candidates from the pulpit,
effectively upending a provision in decades-old tax law barring such
activity. Schatzline, a longtime pastor at Mercy Culture Church in
Fort Worth, was excited. The IRS affirmed “what we already knew,”
he said at the July 14 meeting: The government can’t stop the church
from getting civically engaged.

“There is absolutely no reason that a politician should be more
vocal about social issues than your pastor, and so I need pastors to
stand up,” Schatzline told the crowd made up of members of True
Texas Project, a Tarrant County-based organization that is a key part
of a powerful political network
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pushing lawmakers to adopt its hard-line opposition to immigration and
LGBTQ+ rights and to advance conservative education policies
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“We need pastors to be bold.”

For decades, pastors like him have fought for the right to speak on
political issues and actively endorse candidates in their capacity as
religious leaders. Now, before a judge has weighed in on whether to
allow the IRS policy change, some religious leaders are already
calling on congregations to demand greater political involvement from
their churches.

While the tax agency’s stance applies to churches nationwide, Texas
is expected to be where it will matter most, said Ryan Burge, a
political and religious expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

More than 200 megachurches
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call Texas home. In the Lone Star State, pastors seem to have a larger
profile in social, political and religious discussions. “Texas will
be the epicenter for testing all these ideas out,” he said.

Schatzline said as much in a follow-up interview with Fort Worth
Report. A nonprofit that Mercy Culture Church previously created to
help elect candidates to political office is working with President
Donald Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board to expand that work and
to mobilize churches and pastors to get them more civically engaged,
the state representative said.

Officials from the White House and the advisory board did not respond
to a request for comment.

While Schatzline said pastors can choose not to be vocal about
candidates, congregations like his may feel differently. “Especially
our conservatives across America, they have an expectation that their
pastor is going to speak to the issues of truth,” he said.

For more than 70 years, churches and other religious institutions in
the United States were told to steer clear of “any political
activity” or risk losing their tax-exempt status. That federal
measure, the Johnson Amendment
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added into IRS tax law in 1954 and named after its author, Lyndon B.
Johnson, then a Texas congressman.

In August 2024, during the last months of the Biden administration, an
association of religious broadcasters and two East Texas churches sued
the IRS, arguing that the Johnson Amendment infringed upon their
freedom of speech and religion.

Nearly a year later, the IRS, now under Trump, and the plaintiffs
filed a proposed joint settlement outlining in the agreement that when
a house of worship speaks to its congregation about “electoral
politics viewed through the lens of religious faith,” it neither
participates nor intervenes in a political campaign and so doesn’t
violate the amendment. The court must now consider their proposal.

IRS officials did not respond to a request for comment on what
prompted its decision.

The biggest implication of the proposed legal agreement is a push on
pastors to be “more political than they want to be,” said Burge, a
former Baptist pastor who is now a professor of practice at Washington
University’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.

“It all comes down to the 5% of people on each side of the political
spectrum who are the loudest and are trying to drag you into their
fervor,” said Burge, adding that congregants could threaten to leave
a church if their pastor doesn’t talk about their political stances.

A previous investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune
highlighted 20 examples
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of churches that were seemingly violating the Johnson Amendment. That
was more than what the IRS itself had investigated in the previous
decade. Thirteen of those congregations were in the North Texas area,
including Mercy Culture, where Schatzline was ordained a pastor in
2024.

The tax agency largely abdicated enforcing the amendment, the
newsrooms previously reported.

For example, in the mid-2000s, the IRS investigated a little more than
100 churches, including 80 for endorsing candidates
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pulpit, after citing an increase in allegations of church political
activity leading up to the 2004 presidential election. Agency
officials didn’t revoke the tax-exempt status of any churches,
instead sending warning letters.

Following the filing of the proposed settlement in July, the Fort
Worth Report identified at least three churches in Texas whose leaders
openly praised the IRS decision, including Mercy Culture and Sand
Springs Church, one of those involved in the lawsuit that sparked the
IRS change.

The day after the court filing, Mercy Culture Church posted a
screenshot on Instagram and Facebook of The New York Times article
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detailing the news and noting it was “time for the church to get
loud!”

“We will not be silent on issues of righteousness, life, liberty, or
leadership. We don’t endorse parties — we stand for the
Kingdom!” the post read.

In Athens, less than 100 miles south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area,
Sand Springs Church senior pastor Erick Graham told congregants during
a July 9 Bible study that the IRS ruling is “encouraging.”

He told congregants during the teaching, which was livestreamed on
Facebook and reviewed by the newsroom, that the church was not going
to comment on the IRS court filing until the judge’s final ruling
approving or denying the proposed settlement.

“A Powerful Tool”

Megachurches with the means to livestream services online or by
broadcasting “could be a powerful tool for promoting political
candidates,” said David Brockman, a nonresident scholar at Rice
University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and an adjunct
professor at Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist
University.

In North Texas, First Baptist Dallas draws about 16,000 members to
attend worship in person or through several streaming methods,
according to the church’s website
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Church draws thousands of worshipers
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to its flagship location in Fort Worth, The Washington Post has
reported. Since its inception, the church has formed other campuses in
east Fort Worth, Dallas, Waco and Austin.

First Baptist Dallas’ lead pastor, Robert Jeffress, an avid Trump
supporter, thanked the president on Facebook for the IRS’ recent
interpretation of the Johnson Amendment.

“This would have never happened without the strong leadership of our
great President Donald Trump! Honored to get to thank him personally
today in the Oval Office,” Jeffress wrote in his July 9 post.
“Government has NO BUSINESS regulating what is said in pulpits!”

Religion News Service reported this spring
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that Jeffress was one of multiple pastors who told Trump during a
White House Easter service in April that the IRS had investigated
their churches for their political endorsements. Jeffress told The New
York Times
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he believed the conversation was a “tipping point,” in the new IRS
interpretation of the Johnson Amendment, something Trump himself
promised to do during his 2016 presidential campaign.

He did not respond to requests from the Fort Worth Report for comment.
A spokesperson for the church said he was out of town.

Different religious traditions may respond to the policy change in
distinct ways, said Matthew Wilson, a religious and politics professor
at Southern Methodist University.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
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and the United Methodist Church
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for example, both announced they would maintain their stances on not
endorsing or opposing political candidates. The Freedom From Religion
Foundation, a national nonprofit advocating for separation between
church and state, announced
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July 30 it is joining others in condemning efforts to ignore or weaken
the Johnson Amendment.

While some religious leaders may be reluctant to engage in politics,
white conservative churches, which generally support Republican
candidates, and African American churches, which historically have
favored Democrats, have “come right up to the line” of the
provisions in the Johnson Amendment — “if not sometimes crossing
it,” Wilson said.

“Those religious organizations have spoken in more explicitly
political terms for a long time, and this [IRS decision] frees them
even more to do that,” he said.

Mansfield Mayor Michael Evans, who has been pastor for 30 years at
Bethlehem Baptist Church, southeast of Fort Worth, said he doesn’t
plan to endorse candidates for the congregation because it could only
lead to more division. At his predominantly African American church,
congregants come from both ends of the political spectrum, he said.

While the candidates put forth by political parties and their
philosophies may change, Evans said, “the word of God remains the
same.”

Mercy Culture Church is already well down the path of exerting its
political influence. Schatzline launched its nonprofit For Liberty &
Justice in 2021 after a church elder unsuccessfully ran to become the
mayor of Fort Worth. The organization partners with local churches in
grassroots campaigning efforts to “promote Godly candidates for
local government,” according to its website
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The nonprofit created an online program called “Campaign
University,” designed to train people of faith on how to run for
office. The organization’s “liberty rallies” have “influenced
the decisions of local school boards and city councils to lead with
Christian values in Tarrant County,” according to its website
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For Liberty & Justice has supported 48 candidates since its inception.
One was Schatzline.

Cecilia Lenzen [[link removed]] of
the Fort Worth Report contributed reporting.

Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith
for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at
[email protected].

* religion
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* Electoral Politics
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* churches
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* mega-churches
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* IRS
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* texas
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