Will the government ever take away the tax exemption of churches?

There’s a history behind that question. Years ago, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax exemption of Bob Jones University because of their racial prejudice. Now, what Bob Jones did and believed was horrific. It was terrible. It was wrong. But what was interesting is the Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to take away their tax-exempt status for acting—this is a paraphrase—in a way that is contrary to the purposes of government. Tax exemption, they say, is the same thing as government support, and government can’t support something like racial discrimination.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the government could say the same thing to a church that discriminates not on the basis of race but on the basis of sexual preferences: “If you don’t recognize same-sex marriage, you’re acting in a way that is contrary to the purposes of the state.” It is very easy to see how that could happen—and in fact, it is happening.

At First Baptist Dallas, we were the subject of an Internal Revenue Service examination that lasted more than two years and cost our church hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Freedom From Religion Foundation lodged a complaint with the IRS for two reasons. First, they said that we had invited Mike Pence, who at the time was the sitting vice president of the United States, to come and speak at our patriotic celebration. Mike said nothing political. We followed the book on what you do when you have a political figure at a service. He never said a word about the election; all he did was share for the first time in public how he came to faith in Christ. Second, the foundation objected to my personal endorsement of President Trump. Our church has a policy of not endorsing candidates. We never have. But I personally endorsed President Trump on Lou Dobbs and other programs.

The IRS did nothing about this complaint for eighteen months until Trump was out of office. As soon as Joe Biden came into office, the IRS moved into action, and they decided they were going to make First Baptist Dallas a test case of the Johnson Amendment.

Eventually, a well-known senator went to the commissioner of the IRS, who was unaware of the situation. He looked into it, and they found that a rogue group of mid-level agents had launched this effort on their own to see if they could bring down our church and make other conservative churches fearful of speaking out on issues. It got shut down immediately, and that was the end of it—after two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago. About six of us were at a table having dinner with President Trump. Somebody said, “Robert, tell President Trump what happened to your church.” So I told him the brief synopsis, and he listened intently. He said, “I had no idea that was going on. Why didn’t you tell me? When I came to visit your church during that time, I said to my staff, ‘Something’s wrong with Robert. He’s burdened about something.’ Why didn’t you tell me?” Several others spoke up about their experience. President Trump asked me to send all the materials and all the documentation to him and his staff, and they would look at it and see what could be done to make sure this never happens to another church in America. So good is going to come out of this.

People say, “What’s the big deal with tax-exempt status? So what if you don’t get to deduct a contribution? That’s hardly persecution.” What people don’t realize is if you lose your tax-exempt status, you lose your exemption from property taxes. Every church in America will have to pay property taxes. You might say, “Well, they ought to.” But hospitals don’t. Colleges don’t. It’s long been recognized that churches perform a unique aid to society.

The government has absolutely no business controlling what happens in the pulpit of the church, and we need to say, “No more!”