A consent judgment can carve out one kind of speech for the parties who signed it and still leave the rulebook the agency hands to every church unchanged. That church rulebook is Publication 1828, and it still states the broad ban.

The paper's June 28 piece reported that the IRS guidance page still states the ban the consent decree narrowed for pulpit speech. That was the general charities page. The document written specifically for churches carries the same wide rule, unedited by the settlement.

The IRS Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations, Publication 1828, tells churches that as 501(c)(3) organizations they may not participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, a candidate. [1] This is the guide a congregation is actually handed, and it states the prohibition in the same broad terms the settlement did not rewrite. A reader who believes churches may now endorse freely should read the publication the IRS still publishes for them.

The case that narrowed the rule binds only itself. National Religious Broadcasters v. Bessent, in the Eastern District of Texas, records the consent judgment in which the IRS agreed that good-faith speech from a pastor to a congregation through usual channels is not campaign intervention. [2] That carve-out lives in a filed judgment for named parties; it does not amend the publication the agency distributes to every other church.

The statute is the anchor under both. Section 501(c)(3) exempts churches and charities on the condition that they not participate or intervene in campaigns for or against candidates. [3] The consent judgment reinterprets that condition for pulpit speech; Publication 1828 shows the agency has not generalized the reinterpretation. The honest reading sits between two overstatements — that churches may now endorse anyone, and that nothing has changed.

This is the divergence. X turns a pulpit clip into a hidden political apparatus, where one sermon proves a machine. Mainstream political coverage runs the opposite simplification, treating religion as campaign atmosphere. The records are narrower and more useful: the guide the IRS still hands churches, the judgment that narrowed it for one case, and the statute beneath both.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington