Texas pastors poised to wield political power after IRS says churches can endorse candidates

Posted by yeongno_ate_yangban@reddit | Dallas | View on Reddit | 31 comments

Churches as cloaked political PACs and action groups, which have no ability to see how financing funnels through them, are now legal. It's time to make our own "Churches"?

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tabrizzi@reddit

Just a formality. They've been endorsing candidates already.

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For years, every Sunday and some Wednesdays, thousands of Evangelical pastors have been conditioning their flock to vote Republican no matter how vile, immoral or corrupt the Republican candidate is, because of the ‘unborn’! Democrats have not done enough to fight this unholy alliance between Evangelical movement and the GOP.

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UnknownQTY@reddit

Seriously. Any churchgoer dumb enough to not know who their pastor thinks they should vote for is… well they’re voting for Trump anyway, so kind of a moot point.

But seriously, it’s pretty obvious, on both sides of the aisle.

This is just the IRS saying “stop sending us complaints, we won’t do anything about it.”

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Silentrein@reddit

Tax them into the ground when Dems retake control

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Euphoric_Anxiety_162@reddit

proves their true priorities - power.

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Broad-Breakfast9991@reddit

It gets better: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says 'separation of church and state' is not in Constitution https://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-dan-patrick-no-separation-church-state-constitution

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Traveshamockery27@reddit

That’s literally true.

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Pretty_Shallot_586@reddit

this literally changes nothing.

the only good news, the church is hemorrhaging followers for the last decade

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jpurdy@reddit

I’ll guess that some of these are among the largest swing vote for Trump. 90% of evangelicals and 70% Catholics voted for him.

https://theweek.com/religion/young-men-returning-to-catholic-church

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hodor137@reddit

More like a fucking trickle. If it was hemorrhaging we'd notice a difference

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jpurdy@reddit

They already control the Republican party in many states. Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem for wealthy Texas pastor and kingmaker John Hagee and his “Christian Zionists”, for the soon to come End Times.

Now Texas joined other Republican states and Trump in giving $billions to white evangelical and Catholic schools. The Catholic Church was the single largest recipient of COVID funds. Our tax dollars replaced the more than $5 billion Catholic schools lost over pedophiles, the latest a Jesuit school in Dallas.

https://www.propublica.org/article/tim-dunn-farris-wilks-texas-christian-nationalism-dominionism-elections-voting

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Loud_Inspector_9782@reddit

Tax them.

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Sonic1psa@reddit

I mean citizen united paved the way for this

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dallasdude@reddit

But can they vocally criticize the administration?

Do they need to be careful when speaking about theology, like JD Vance threatened the pope?

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TXRhody@reddit

Thomas Jefferson famously described the wall of separation between church and state as a structure meant to protect both the government from religious interference and the church from government interference. This is what he warned the church about. Political interference will kill the church. Nobody will take churches seriously. Religious adherence will decline. God will die in the political PAC megachurch.

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QuestionableProtip2@reddit

As if this hadn’t already been rampant in the 3 decades I’ve lived in Dallas.

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jd1332@reddit

All the more reason for me to not go to church

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esalenman@reddit

They already do. But they have destroyed the U.S. already so I think their influence will go back where it belongs.

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Mistress_Jozi@reddit

Let them do it. It can be used to our advantage. Once they start openly endorsing candidates, that church is no longer a church, but a political ideology. Which is then covered under tRumps and many governors orders to remove political ideologies from public property. Rainbow crosswalks, BLM crosswalks, the Buddy Holly memorial crosswalk, we can then add the nativity scene and the three crosses. They are not religious symbols, they become a symbol of a political ideology. Remove them. At least file the law suits and burn tax dollars.

It also means that churches being a political ideology are free game for protests. At any time.

Play the game of chess and let them corner themselves with no way out. Just like they did with the Trans soldiers. 7000 of us fired and made ineligible for the draft. They think it was a giant win, they are still gloating over it. Well... Who did they think was going to replace the 7000 fired, and now we are in wartime operations with a automatic draft registration in December. The military will replace the Trans soldiers with fresh, green behind the ears, MAGA children. We will wave to the airplane as it takes off loaded with their kids to die in Iran. Whisky Pete has already set them up with the "biblically sanctioned" spin on the war and religious symbols promoting the war. God is on our side. Sure, let's go with that. So in reality, the Trans community won and won big. We stay, they go.

It's not the smartest administration, neither are the supporters. I mean a box of rocks has a higher IQ than a tRump supporter. They will however, given time, will stumble all over themselves.

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