Robert Jeffress testified before the president’s Religious Liberty Commission this week how he and his downtown Dallas church have been persecuted, while failing to acknowledge his own persecution of other religious groups.
The pastor of First Baptist Dallas publicized in advance that he would be testifying before the commission at its fourth meeting, held at the Pavillion at Old Parkland, located about a mile away from the church. Unlike previous meetings, this one included testimony from Jewish, Hindu, Catholic and Sikh citizens as well as evangelicals like Jeffress.
Since its creation, the commission has focused largely on the grievances of evangelical Christians, who claim the government in previous administrations has persecuted them for their beliefs.
Jeffress homed in on his opposition to the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision in the U.S. tax code that prohibits nonprofits — including churches — from endorsing or opposing political candidates.
In his testimony before the committee, Jeffress called the Johnson Amendment “unconstitutional.” He said polls show many pastors do not want to endorse candidates and congregations do not want to see their pastors endorse candidates.
“That’s very clear,” he said. “But that’s not the issue here. The issue is not whether they should, but whether they can.” Why then does he bother?
Scene from “Celebrate Freedom” service at First Baptist Dallas.
His testimony focused on an IRS investigation launched against his church after its “Celebrate Freedom” patriotic service in 2020. That service featured then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was on a “Faith in America” Tour, as well as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
Critics said the church conducted a campaign rally — this was July before the November 2020 presidential election — more than a worship service. At the time, Jeffress told Baptist Press it was not a campaign rally: “I would just say I’ve never seen a campaign rally where there was a plan of salvation given and a prayer of salvation offered for those who wanted to trust in Christ.”
A complaint to the IRS about First Baptist Dallas violating the Johnson Amendment resulted in a yearlong investigation, but no charges were brought. There’s only been one time in 60 years the IRS has charged a nonprofit with Johnson Amendment violations.
Nevertheless, Jeffress said the investigation cost the church hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. “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.”
Typical of the evangelical playbook, Jeffress portrayed himself and his church as victims of “woke” persecution. He engaged in what Kenneth Burke calls the “victimage ritual.”
Jeffress is a hypocrite of the lowest order. He loves the glare of the Fox News studio lights where he supports and defends President Trump as if he were a high-priced defense attorney. He is the paradigm of the successful blesser of a successful president, but judgment is coming.
Historian John Fea identifies Jeffress as a leading “court evangelical” in the Trump entourage. Michael J. Mooney labels him “Trump’s apostle.”
Jeffress previously attacked Islam as “an evil and false religion.” He backed Trump’s “grab ’em by the genitals,” his hush money payments to a porn star, his “shit-hole countries” remark, his smearing of Democrats as traitors and perpetuators of violence, the separation of children from parents at the border, his threat to bomb North Korea, building a wall at the border (Jeffress claims heavens has walls and God loves walls), and calling NFL players “sons of bitches,” for kneeling during the National Anthem.”
Jeffress has a template response to all Trump’s opponents: “What we do support is this president’s wonderful policies.”
Jeffress has attacked Democrats as the “atheist party.” He has claimed Democrats worship the Old Testament pagan god Moloch. He has accused the professors at Union Seminary of being so liberal they “couldn’t find God if their life depended on it.”
“When you have a leading Southern Baptist pastor testifying against the Johnson Amendment in the name of religious liberty, you know you have a problem.”
When you have a leading Southern Baptist pastor testifying against the Johnson Amendment in the name of religious liberty, you know you have a problem.
He’s a Southern Baptist raised on the sacred doctrine of separation of church and state. Now, he wants to tear down the wall of separation. In the sermon arousing the suspicion of the IRS, Jeffress said: “America was not founded as a Muslim nation …. was not founded as a nation that is neutral to Christianity. America was founded as a Christian nation.”
Jeffress struggles to square his notions of religious liberty with his historic demeaning of Roman Catholics, his distaste for Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith and his attack of a Muslim imam in Dallas.
Jeffress is a traitor to a greater preacher than he who also was pastor of First Baptist Dallas. George W. Truett delivered his most famous sermon in 1920 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, addressing the topic of religious freedom and separation of church and state.
Truett said, “Our fundamental essential principles have made our Baptist people, of all ages and countries, to be the unyielding protagonists of religious liberty, not only for themselves, but for everybody else as well. … Thank God, mighty statesmen were won to their contention. Washington and Jefferson and Madison and Patrick Henry, and many others, until at last it was written into our country’s Constitution that church and state must in this land be forever separate and free, that neither must ever trespass upon the distinctive functions of the other. It was pre-eminently a Baptist achievement.”
The separation of church and state has been the singular contribution of Baptists to American Christianity. It is our crowning joy. To see it under such vicious attack wounds the spirit and makes it difficult not to be impatient at the disquisitions of Jeffress. His noxious pathology of nationalism is hard to ignore.
As blatantly nationalistic as the First Baptist Dallas celebration of the Fourth of July was, as repulsive as the flag-waving in a place of the Cross, as disgusting as the spectacle of fireworks, Jeffress was not guilty of violating the Johnson Amendment. He did violate every known principle of holy worship dedicated to God, but that is not unique to Jeffress.
For all his political fealty to Trump, finding Jeffress guilty of promoting political candidates from his pulpit turned out to be a dead end. The IRS was foolish to investigate First Baptist Dallas for violating the Johnson Amendment. Jeffress does his political work for Trump away from his pulpit.
I have watched sermons by Jeffress online. I never have heard him utter a word about the president. He almost never mentions politics. He talks about the rapture, the tribulation, about heaven as a real place, about the joy of success, the joys of fellowship in the church, and inviting people to trust Jesus as Savior.
Jeffress, like most hypocrites, is too smart to be ensnared by an IRS investigation.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.