The transmogrification of the SBC: When Baptists no longer are Baptist

Turning local police into ICE agents makes everyone less safe.

Sweeping heavenward like an enormous glass-and-metal ski jump, a new Protestant church dominates the crumbled earth, freshly planted trees and unfinished water features of a suburban park under construction in Changsha, China.

The Johnson Amendment has perhaps caused the greatest division among groups historians say were probably not Lyndon B. Johnson’s prime target: houses of worship and religious leaders.

Over the past half-century since the Johnson Amendment became law, a grand total of just one church has lost its special tax status — and that after an episode of blatant electioneering.

Ask Graham biographers and religion scholars today who will be the next Billy Graham, here’s their answer: Nobody.

Trump’s gesture toward his religious base appeared to falter as a matter of policy, and perhaps as politics: Social conservatives who had been expecting more expressed disappointment, and the order itself seems unlikely to have much impact on current law.