MEGAN MCARDLE: Churches shouldn’t be allowed to engage in politics. Also: That rule shouldn’t be too strictly enforced.
When evangelicals turned out en masse to vote for Donald Trump, seculars gaped. The serially divorced self-proclaimed groper who talked glibly of “Two Corinthians” hardly seemed like the sort of fellow to attract the admiration of every-Sunday churchgoers.
But evangelicals had a blunt response: Trump might be less than ideal, but he was also the lesser of two evils. Trump might not be a role model for them, but he would at least not pursue the sort of policies that had convinced Christians they were under an existential threat from the Democratic Party, like forcing Christian businesses to bake cakes for gay weddings. He would not use the power of the office to advance the continuing sexual liberalization of the culture. And of course, they expected that Trump would appoint judges who would help chip away at Roe v. Wade, if not overturn it entirely.
And so far, Trump has delivered. He appointed the impeccably conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. He announced he would reverse the military’s decision to allow transgender soldiers. And now Republicans have shoehorned one of his campaign promises into the tax bill: overturning the Johnson Amendment, which requires that churches abstain from political activity if they want to maintain their tax status.
This has long been on the wish list of conservative churches.
The thing is, after Lois Lerner et al., you can’t trust enforcement to be anything but politicized.