Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas told a White House religious liberty panel on Wednesday that the federal government has no authority to regulate what pastors preach from the pulpit, insisting that such oversight is “none of the government’s business.”
Speaking before the U.S. Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Commission, Jeffress—joined by Senior Executive Pastor Ben Lovvorn—recounted the church’s encounter with the IRS during a contentious tax inquiry launched in 2021 under former President Joe Biden.
Jeffress explained that his remarks to the Commission echoed comments he had shared with his congregation days earlier, recalling that the atheist advocacy group Freedom From Religion Foundation filed an IRS complaint after former Vice President Mike Pence and then–HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson spoke at the church in June 2020 about “how they came to know Jesus as Savior.”
Jeffress told the panel that the IRS remained silent for nearly a year, only initiating the inquiry several months into the Biden administration. “It's interesting that we did not hear anything from the IRS for 11 months and four months after Joe Biden became president,” he said. “It was on May 6, 2021, that the IRS informed our church that they were initiating an inquiry into the tax-exempt status of our church because of our patriotic service.”
Noting that First Baptist Dallas had “never had an issue” with the agency previously, Jeffress emphasized his long-standing position that pastors should comply with IRS guidelines and refrain from endorsing political candidates in sermons. “We encourage Christians to vote their biblical conviction,” he added.
Jeffress also highlighted what he viewed as a double standard, pointing to a 2020 event at Sharon Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He noted that on Nov. 1, 2020—the same day he addressed his own congregation about the presidential race—Biden spoke at Sharon Baptist, where, according to Jeffress, the then–candidate and the church’s pastor “openly encouraged members to vote for Biden while both men were standing in front of a campaign banner in the church.”
While the IRS inquiry extended for more than a year, Jeffress noted that in July 2022 the agency ultimately concluded that First Baptist Dallas “did not engage in any improper political intervention or violate the U.S. tax code.”
“The government has absolutely no business determining what is proper and improper speech in the worship service of any church,” he said. “The IRS and any government agency lack the ability to distinguish between political speech and political conviction.”
A substantial portion of the discussion focused on concerns surrounding the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 revision to the Internal Revenue Code that bars nonprofit organizations—including churches—from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Jeffress contended that the provision is vulnerable to misuse.
He referenced the experience of Bunni Pounds, the founder of Christians Engaged, whose organization was initially denied tax-exempt status in May 2021 because of its biblically grounded stances on issues such as marriage and abortion.
Although the IRS later reversed its decision, Jeffress warned that “this initial decision by 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.”
