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christian nationalism
'Dangerous for Democracy': Trump IRS Says Nonprofit Churches Can Make Political Endorsements
"Holy shit, a real masks-off moment," said one professor. "The divide between church and state is already falling. The divide between church and political group will disappear."
Jul 08, 2025
"This is another dark day for our democracy."
That's what American Humanist Association (AHA) executive director Fish Stark said in a Tuesday statement responding to a move from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to allow houses of worship to endorse political candidates.
When former President Lyndon B. Johnson was a senator, he introduced a provision of the U.S. tax code that bans organizations from participating or intervening in campaigns for public office as a condition for keeping their nonprofit, tax-exempt status.
The National Religious Broadcasters and Intercessors for America and two Christian churches—Sand Springs Church and First Baptist Church Waskom—wanted a federal court in Texas to strike down the Johnson Amendment. Instead, according to a Monday filing from the plaintiffs and Internal Revenue Service intended to settle the case, the IRS created a formal exception for houses of worship.
Noting the definitions of participate and intervene, the filing states that "bona fide communications internal to a house of worship, between the house of worship and its congregation, in connection with religious services, do neither of those things, any more than does a family discussion concerning candidates."
"Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted," the document continues.
R.I.P. The Johnson Amendment, 1954-2025
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— Robert Downen (@robertdownen.bsky.social) July 8, 2025 at 12:16 PM
While the court could reject the plan laid out by the Trump IRS and plaintiffs in this case, observers responded to the settlement document by declaring the 1954 Johnson Amendment "essentially overturned" and "effectively DEAD."
Like many critics of the decision, the court filing acknowledges that its new interpretation "is in keeping with the IRS' treatment of the Johnson Amendment in practice," as the agency "generally has not enforced the Johnson Amendment against houses of worship for speech concerning electoral politics in the context of worship services."
Also highlighting that "it's been clear that many churches were both collecting tax deductions while engaging in partisan politics, so this merely formalizes the practice," Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, wrote on social media, "Holy shit, a real masks-off moment."
"There is already a problem of political operations pretending to be churches," he added, citing 2022 ProPublica reporting. "The divide between church and state is already falling. The divide between church and political group will disappear."
Christa Brown—whose memoir Baptistland tells the story of abuse she endured in her Texas childhood church—said that "churches were already doing this but now it's going to get a lot worse. Bad for the country, dangerous for democracy, and terrible for the separation of church and state. Inevitably, heaps of dark money will now get funneled through churches to influence elections."
AHA's Stark issued a similar warning, saying that "the Johnson Amendment, though weakened over the years by lax enforcement, is the small but mighty dam standing in the way of a torrent of dark money influencing our elections. Now that the Trump administration has opened the door to pastors and houses of worship explicitly backing candidates for office, all bets are off."
"There will be little to stop billionaires from funneling money through churches to buy our elections—and they will get a tax write-off for doing it, all subsidized by American taxpayers," Stark continued. "Weakening the Johnson Amendment to consolidate political power has long been a priority for Christian nationalists—and now they have the megaphone they've been waiting for for decades."
Americans United for Separation of Church and State president and CEO Rachel Laser said Tuesday that "the Trump administration's radical reinterpretation of the Johnson Amendment is a brazen attack on church-state separation that threatens our democracy by favoring houses of worship over other nonprofits and inserting them into partisan politics. It's President Trump and his Christian nationalist allies' signature move: exploiting religion to boost their own political power."
"For more than 70 years, the Johnson Amendment has reflected the will of the American people, the majority of whom want to protect the integrity of our elections and shield our houses of worship from the corrupting influences of partisan politicking," Laser added, urging the court "to reject the administration's latest gambit to rewrite the law through the judicial system."
Trump’s IRS just declared churches can endorse political candidates from the pulpit.This move upends a core protection for church-state separation, AND erodes the freedom and independence of churches.www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...
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— Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons (@guthriegf.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, also criticized the "deeply concerning" court filing for "furthering an assault on the bedrock principle that charitable organizations must remain nonpartisan in law, fact, and purpose in order to serve their missions and communities."
"This action—long sought by President Trump—is not about religion or free speech, but about radically altering campaign finance laws," Yentel argued. "The decree could open the floodgates for political operatives to funnel money to their preferred candidates while receiving generous tax breaks at the expense of taxpayers who may not share those views."
Some political leaders also weighed in. Congressman Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said that "this is really bad. The merger of tax-exempt conservative churches with the MAGA Republican Party is complete. It started with endless rightwing attacks on the IRS, leading to partisan political operations like Family Research Council posing as 'churches,' and now this. American taxpayers are now subsidizing both partisan (mainly GOP) politics and religion."
California state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-25) concluded that "if churches can make political endorsements and make political donations, they can pay taxes."
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For a Different Kind of Apocalypse—From LA to Tehran
Instead of pushing us close to the brink of Armageddon through military escalations at home and abroad animated by religious fundamentalism, U.S. policymakers must find the courage to lead us toward world peace through diplomacy and climate repair.
Jul 03, 2025
As an Iranian American Christian from Los Angeles, I watch with alarm as a fringe religious prophecy creeps into the highest levels of American policy. What may sound like a spiritual metaphor—biblical End Times, Armageddon, divine vengeance—is now inspiring large-scale political decisions, putting lives at risk from LA to Gaza to Tehran.
After Hamas killed over a thousand Israelis and took hundreds captive on October 7, 2023, Israel has dropped the equivalent of several nuclear bombs on the Gaza Strip’s mass incarcerated Palestinian refugee enclave—with the U.S. supplying about 68% of Israel’s foreign-origin weaponry in this war. Amnesty International describes Israel’s response to October 7 as a genocide—killings “with the specific intent of destroying Palestinians in Gaza.”
In April 2024 in LA, masked vigilantes attacked UCLA’s nonviolent pro-Palestinian encampment for three hours with wood, metal, and fireworks before LAPD intervened. At the beginning of this year, Angelenos were devastated by the Eaton and Palisades Fires—worsened by global warming—taking dozens of lives, destroying thousands of homes, and creating eerie orange skies above Los Angeles.
The thought of my U.S. taxpayer dollars funding bombing campaigns of my ancestral homeland that could eventually become nuclear, threatening the beautiful ancient city of Isfahan that I visited in my childhood, is unbearable.
Now, the world is in the throes of President Donald Trump’s chaotic second term. Shortly after his inauguration, he once again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accords—while LA was ablaze. More recently, as Angelenos have protested the federal government’s inhumane mass deportation campaign, which has lately targeted Iranian nationals, the Trump administration majorly escalated by sending in thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
On June 13, while the U.S. and Iran were in the middle of diplomatic negotiations around reinstating Obama-era restraints on Iran’s nuclear energy program, Israel under Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu, still waging a genocide on Gaza and facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court as of November 2024, began a large-scale attack on Iran. This represented the most significant attack on Iran since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988—culminating in the killings of at least 600 Iranians, including many civilians and children. In response, Iran attacked Israel with retaliatory strikes that killed dozens of Israelis.
In a televised address on Sunday, June 22, President Trump reported that the United States military under his command bombed three sites in Iran housing the country’s nuclear energy program, including Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, entering the U.S. into Israel’s offensive attack. He even at one point raised the possibility of a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran in the future. On Monday, June 23, Iran retaliated against the U.S. by launching limited missile strikes directed at an American military base in Qatar, with no casualties. Later that day on social media, Trump announced a cease-fire deal between Israel and Iran. Though both nations continued to exchange fire shortly after the cease-fire went into effect, Israel and Iran are now experiencing a fragile peace. Trump and Netanyahu have purportedly agreed to end the war in Gaza within two weeks of the U.S. strikes on Iran, and the U.S. and Iran are expected to talk during the week of June 30.
This conflict has deeply impacted Angelenos, including my own family. LA is home to the largest Iranian diaspora globally, known as “Tehrangeles.” As an Iranian American, I don’t see Iran as a geopolitical adversary; it’s home to my loved ones and heritage. Israel concentrated many of its airstrikes in Tehran—the most populous city in Western Asia—including airstrikes in my own cousin’s neighborhood. The escalation of this conflict, including Trump’s call on Iranians in Tehran to “evacuate immediately,” forced my cousin and disabled U.S. citizen grandmother to flee Tehran to Northern Iran. It was a strange feeling when I last spoke to my grandmother before her internet went out, hearing her say in Farsi, “Ma ra zadan”—“They hit us.” The thought of my U.S. taxpayer dollars funding bombing campaigns of my ancestral homeland that could eventually become nuclear, threatening the beautiful ancient city of Isfahan that I visited in my childhood, is unbearable. After all, Iran is filled with rich world history—including the most widely accepted site of the tomb of Prophet Daniel of the Bible, who I am named after.
How did we get to this escalating polycrisis of destruction? In part, because white Christian nationalist leaders have embraced a belief in the End Times—an extremist theology that now holds wide political sway according to religion scholar Bradley Onishi. Texas megachurch pastor, founder of influential political lobbying organization Christians United for Israel, and Trump adviser John Hagee preaches that warfare between Israel, Palestine, and Iran is part of a biblically predicted Battle of Armageddon, in which the U.S. must militarily support Israel to be reunited with God in the Rapture. He cites Ezekiel 38 and 39, an Old Testament prophecy that says a restored Israel in the End Times will be attacked by a nation called Gog, supported by Persia (modern-day Iran). In retaliation, a vengeful God of Israel would decimate Gog and Persia through brute force “to cleanse the land.” In Hagee’s words, Iran is “already in the hit list in Ezekiel 38.” This prophecy also talks of climate destruction during this violent vision of the End Times, including “torrents of rain, hailstones, and burning sulfur.” These ideas are no longer confined to pulpits—they are shaping real-world policy. Even former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that God sent Trump to save Israel from Iran.
If we must turn to apocalyptic scripture to understand the future, then why don’t we skip ahead to Revelation 21: the creation of a “new heaven and a new Earth,” including a “new Jerusalem,” where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Los Angeles and our world are enduring too much grief to bear. Instead of pushing us close to the brink of Armageddon through military escalations at home and abroad animated by religious fundamentalism, U.S. policymakers must find the courage to lead us toward world peace through diplomacy and climate repair. That means reinstating the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran of zero weaponization, as opposed to an unrealistic goal of zero enrichment. It means pushing for an immediate, permanent cease-fire between the U.S., Israel, Palestine, and Iran, and it means reentering the U.S. into the Paris climate accords.
My faith teaches redemption, not vengeance. As God promises in the Bible, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
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When Theology Kills: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the Christian Zionist Agenda
The GHF offers a gospel of charity with one hand while authorizing sniper fire with the other.
Jul 01, 2025
When Rev. Dr. Johnnie Moore, a Trump-aligned Christian Zionist, was selected to lead the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the appointment was framed as a mission of mercy. In reality, it was a calculated move reflecting a theology that sanctifies suffering and weaponizes aid to serve empire.
The GHF is a United States and Israeli-backed entity, established in February 2025 under the guise of delivering emergency food, water, and medicine to a population devastated by bombs and blockades—bombs dropped and blockades enforced by the very governments funding the aid. GHF bypasses United Nations infrastructure and funnels resources through fortified "aid hubs" surrounded by biometric scanners, militarized checkpoints, and private American security contractors. Global humanitarian leaders have widely condemned GHF, and its initial executive director, former U.S. Marine Jake Wood, resigned in May, stating that GHF could not meet "humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence."
What appears to be humanitarian relief is a choreographed catastrophe. Since the GHF launch, over 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured while attempting to access aid. One U.S security contractor described the chaos in Zeteo: metal lanes collapsed under pressure as desperate civilians were funneled into kill zones. "What we—these American companies and contract personnel—are doing is directly leading to more pain, suffering, and death for the Palestinians in Gaza," he said. The Israeli military is not-so-secretly embedded in GHF operations. U.S contractors shared radio communications with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units, with snipers and tanks operating within earshot. The contractor added, "I would not be surprised if the aid was delivered at night deliberately, given it would then draw people out, at which point they could be fired on as combatants, even though they weren't."
Christian Zionism claims to stand with Israel, but in practice, it turns both Jewish and Palestinian lives into pawns in violent political theology that demands blood to feel righteous.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently published a military whistleblower report confirming that Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot directly at unarmed Palestinians waiting at designated humanitarian aid sites—the very places GHF celebrates as sites of successful distribution. One IDF soldier told Haaretz: "It's a killing field. Where I was stationed, between 1 and 5 people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force—no crowd-control measures, no tear gas—just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars… I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." The parallel testimonies of American contractors and Israeli soldiers expose a coordinated structure of lethal control masquerading as compassion. Aid becomes ambush. Flour becomes bait. Mercy becomes a mechanism of surveillance and control.
Yet Moore, in a Fox News op-ed, paints a different picture: one of flawless logistics and divine providence. While Moore boasts of "Over 7 million meals were delivered… no trucks seized, no aid diverted, no violence at distribution sites," Palestinians were being trampled in fenced lanes and shot while reaching for flour, tea bags, and lentils, all requiring water that Palestinians do not have. While he cites spontaneous gratitude from the Gazans, his account includes no mention of the casualties, the gunfire, the biometric surveillance, or the private contractors earning up to $1,000 per day to "protect" food distribution, despite having no training in humanitarian law or weapons discipline.
This narrative, where Christian Zionist leaders claim victory while erasing the suffering caused by their own policies, is part of a carefully crafted theological strategy. My seminary thesis, Bad Theology as a Social Determinant of Health, argues that theologies built on white supremacy—like Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism—transform faith into a political force that legitimizes structural violence by driving policy; justifying oppression; and becoming a cause of disease, displacement, and death. In this worldview, the modern state of Israel is a divine actor in prophecy, Palestinians are obstacles to redemption, and every military escalation is recast as sacred inevitability. So when global outrage over mass starvation in Gaza grew too loud to ignore, the GHF emerged—not as a bridge to recovery, but as a theater of benevolence. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made the logic plain when he said that aid was allowed only as a prerequisite for "international legitimacy to conduct this war." In other words, humanitarianism becomes camouflage, and aid is required to sustain the optics of righteousness while the siege continues.
The brazenness of this theological complicity has only been intensified. Even before Israel's bombing campaign against Iran began, Christian Zionist leaders were at the forefront of urging escalation, framing regional war as a necessary prelude to prophetic fulfillment. Once the Iran-Israel war began, they did not grieve the violence—they celebrated it. Mike Huckabee, a longtime evangelical ally of President Donald Trump and now the U.S. ambassador to Israel, proclaimed on social media that Trump was spared from assassination to fulfill God's plan in the region. In this worldview, every missile launched and every city bombed becomes a step in a divine script. Christian Zionist leaders are not bystanders to this destruction but are its interpreters and enablers.
Christian Zionism does not just erase Palestinian life. It instrumentalizes Jewish death. It claims to defend Israel while advancing a theology in which the majority of Jews are expected to die in a coming apocalypse. As Stephen Sizer documents in Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon?, evangelical writers describe the Rapture as "the time of Israel's greatest bloodbath" and "a holocaust in which at least 750 million people will perish." This is not solidarity—it is eschatological antisemitism, cloaked in prophecy and wrapped in the American flag.
These beliefs have long shaped U.S. policy. Sizer notes that during the Reagan administration, figures such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were invited to the White House to interpret events in the Middle East through the lens of the Book of Revelation. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin reportedly called Falwell before President Ronald Reagan to brief him on the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, Falwell falsely insisted, "The Israelis were not involved." When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in 1998, his first stop was not a meeting with President Bill Clinton—it was with Jerry Falwell. This is why the resume of Johnnie Moore is no surprise: former spokesman for Falwell's Liberty University, participant in Trump's evangelical advisory board, and a carbon copy of Huckabee, known for his infamous quote, "There's really no such thing as a Palestinian."
The GHF is not a bridge to recovery, but a theological rehearsal, a performance of control and consecrated theater. It asks us to witness a catastrophe and call it the fulfillment of prophecy. To baptize privatized militarism and call it salvation. To offer a gospel of charity with one hand while authorizing sniper fire with the other.
Christian Zionism claims to stand with Israel, but in practice, it turns both Jewish and Palestinian lives into pawns in violent political theology that demands blood to feel righteous. Its leaders speak the language of salvation while sanctioning policies that produce siege, displacement, and death. Johnnie Moore and others like him do not save lives—they provide spiritual cover for systems that end them. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not a deviation from this logic; it embodies it.
As theologian Reverend Dr. Munther Isaac reminds us, Christ is under the rubble—and the church put him there. Will Christians continue to preach biblical literalism that demands a body count? Will Christians let prophecy justify annihilation? The one Christians claim to follow—a Palestinian Jew—was crucified by empire. Yet, Christian Zionism is insistent on crucifying Palestinians and Jews again and again.
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