However, while the church gained a favorable outcome, the inquiry cost the congregation hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses.
“Although our church could afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending ourselves, most churches could not do that, and no church should have to do that,” Jeffress said. “The government has absolutely no business determining what is proper and improper speech in the worship service of any church.”
“The IRS and any government agency lack the ability to distinguish between political speech and political conviction,” he added.
Ben Lovvorn, senior executive pastor of First Baptist Dallas, testified alongside Jeffress and said, “The Johnson Amendment is unconstitutional on its face, and it’s unconstitutional as applied.”
Jeffress said that the decision of the IRS “to equate biblical beliefs with forbidden political speech illustrates how easily the Johnson Amendment could be misused to silence churches directly or cause them to engage in self-censorship to avoid costly litigation.”
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“What I preach from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas—or any pastor preaches from his church—is none of big government’s business,” he added.
