Churches can endorse political candidates during religious services without losing their tax-exempt status, under a July 2025 IRS policy change. The agency told a federal court that when a house of worship speaks to its own congregation through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith, an endorsement is not political campaign intervention under the tax code. The Johnson Amendment itself is still on the books, and the exception is narrow: campaign donations, use of church resources for campaigns, and endorsements aimed at the general public remain prohibited.
What the 2025 IRS Policy Actually Changed
The shift came in a joint filing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, in a lawsuit brought by the National Religious Broadcasters and two Texas churches. The IRS agreed that speech by a house of worship to its congregation, made in connection with religious services through the church’s customary channels of communication on matters of faith, does not violate the Johnson Amendment. The agency compared such communications to a private family discussion about candidates rather than public campaign activity.
The consent decree technically binds only the two plaintiff churches, but the IRS signaled it will not enforce the Johnson Amendment against other houses of worship for similar internal speech. The statute has not been repealed. Removing it entirely would require an act of Congress. What changed is how the IRS reads and enforces the rule as applied to a church talking to its own members.
What Churches Can Now Say From the Pulpit
Under the reinterpretation, a pastor can express support for or opposition to a candidate during a sermon. A church bulletin distributed during worship can discuss candidates through the lens of religious values. Written materials handed out as part of a service qualify as customary channels of communication, so they almost certainly fall within the exception too.
Technology muddies the boundary. Whether livestreamed services, television broadcasts, or church websites open to the general public count as “customary channels of communication” is unsettled. A message delivered to a room of congregants is not the same as one broadcast to thousands of non-members online. The further a communication reaches beyond the physical congregation, the more risk it carries.
What Still Puts a Church’s Exemption at Risk
The 2025 policy is narrower than early headlines suggested. Several activities remain off-limits for a church that wants to keep its 501(c)(3) status.
- Donating church funds to a candidate, campaign, political action committee, or political party.
- Providing office space, computers, phone systems, mailing lists, or email databases to a candidate or campaign.
- Placing a newspaper advertisement endorsing a candidate, posting campaign material on a public-facing website, or organizing volunteers for a campaign.
- Linking from an official church website to a candidate’s donation page.
The line the IRS drew separates internal religious speech from outward-facing campaign activity. A church can talk to its own members about candidates during worship. It cannot operate as an arm of a campaign.
Nonpartisan Civic Activities Churches Can Still Run
A range of election-season activities was permitted before the 2025 change and remains permitted now. These carry lower risk than pulpit endorsements because the IRS has accepted them for decades.
Voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts are allowed when conducted in a nonpartisan manner, without reference to specific candidates or parties. A church can set up a registration table in its lobby and encourage members to vote.
Candidate forums and debates are allowed when all viable candidates for an office are invited and given equal time. The church has to present itself as a neutral venue, and moderators should ask balanced questions rather than ones designed to help one side.
Voter guides are permitted if they cover a broad range of topics, present all candidates’ positions fairly, and do not signal approval or disapproval. A guide that cherry-picks issues or shades the language to make one candidate look better crosses into intervention.
Issue Advocacy Versus Campaign Intervention
Churches can take positions on policy issues and legislation. A church can speak forcefully about immigration, healthcare, or poverty, and it can urge members to contact their representatives about a pending bill. The line gets crossed when issue advocacy functions as a disguised endorsement tied to a specific candidate near an election.
The IRS looks at several factors to decide whether issue speech has slid into campaign intervention:
- Whether the communication identifies a candidate by name.
- Whether it expresses approval or disapproval of a candidate’s positions.
- Whether it is delivered close to an election.
- Whether it references voting or an election.
- Whether the issue is one that distinguishes the candidates.
- Whether the communication is part of an ongoing series independent of election timing.
A congregation that has heard sermons on environmental stewardship every month for years has a strong case that an October sermon on the same topic is issue advocacy. A church that raises an issue for the first time two weeks before Election Day, naming the candidates’ opposing positions, is on much thinner ice.
Clergy Acting as Private Citizens
Pastors, rabbis, imams, and other religious leaders keep their full First Amendment rights as individuals. They can endorse candidates, donate to campaigns, volunteer for parties, and speak at rallies. What matters is separating personal activity from institutional activity.
A clergy member endorsing a candidate should do so away from church property, without using church letterhead, email accounts, or social media pages. At a political event, they should clarify they are speaking as a private citizen. If their church affiliation is mentioned for identification, printed materials should carry a disclaimer along the lines of: “Organization shown for identification purposes only; no endorsement by the organization is implied.”
The moment a clergy member uses a church publication, church funds, or church staff to support personal political activity, the IRS treats the activity as the organization’s. Before 2025, a pastor endorsing a candidate from the pulpit during a Sunday service was the textbook example of impermissible organizational activity. That specific scenario now falls within the exception. Using church resources for campaign logistics does not.
Penalties If a Church Steps Outside the Exception
A church that crosses the line faces two categories of consequences. The most severe is revocation of 501(c)(3) status. Revocation makes the church’s income taxable and eliminates the charitable deduction for donors, which can gut fundraising.
The second is excise taxes under Section 4955 of the Internal Revenue Code, assessed on political expenditures:
- First-tier: the organization pays a tax equal to 10 percent of the political expenditure. A manager who knowingly agreed to it pays 2.5 percent, capped at $5,000 per expenditure.
- Second-tier: if the expenditure is not corrected within the allowed period, the organization owes an additional 100 percent of the amount spent. A manager who refuses to help correct it pays 50 percent, capped at $10,000.
Excise taxes and revocation are not mutually exclusive. The IRS can impose either or both. Enforcement has historically been rare; only one church, the Church at Pierce Creek in Binghamton, New York, is widely known to have lost its exemption for political campaign intervention, after full-page newspaper ads opposing a presidential candidate in 1992. The penalties on the books, though, are substantial, and a church whose political activity reaches beyond internal religious communication should weigh that risk seriously.