There were genuine threats to religious expression in America, Moore said, but a government crackdown on churches wasn’t among them. Assuming pastors played by the rules that govern all nonprofits–namely, no endorsing political candidates from the pulpit–there would be no trouble.
As it happens, some pastors have openly flouted this regulation for years, all but begging the IRS to come after them. The government has done exactly nothing in response. Jeffress knows this better than most. Numerous high-profile churches in Texas, including several in the Dallas area, are notorious for their brazen defiance of the Johnson Amendment. (The Texas Tribune has reported on this extensively.)
Not only was the Biden administration not coming after churches; the Biden administration was actively looking the other way as churches broke the law.
In the end, it was revealing that Jeffress felt the need to fabricate these threats to the Church. Far more revealing, however, was that he saw the persecution of Christians as sufficient to justify behavior that is antithetical to what Christ taught. …
Christians volunteered to live in a negative world. Christians signed up to be under siege. The notion that some conjectural bullying of the American Church is a defense for the indefensible–while Christians worldwide are being harassed and hunted and even killed for their faith–would be comical if it weren’t so calamitous.
— Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory
Bologna 