Church and state – No Union upon any terms / Th. Nast. Harper’s weekly, v. 15, no. 739 (1871 Feb. 25), p. 172. Public domain.
A couple weeks ago, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the church told Utah stake presidents to start calling “specialists who can assist church members to better understand and participate in the civic process.” Over the weekend, I listened to Ep. 82 of the Trib‘s “Mormon Land” podcast, which discussed this calling with the Hinckley Institute’s Morgan Lyon Cotti. That discussion was an excellent and substantive discussion of why the church might be interested in doing this, and the benefits of additional civic engagement.
At this point, it’s not clear precisely what being a civic process specialist will entail, though, among other things, they might help people figure out how to register to vote, figure out how, when, and where to vote, and, apparently, given them some guidance with Utah’s caucus system. The church has been clear that it will continue to be neutral with respect to candidates and parties. Still, there are people who worry that the specialists will be less nonpartisan than the church. Which brings up the question: can the church do this, or is it going to lose its tax exemption?
Spoiler alert: it’s not going to lose its exemption.
As background—a background I’ve laid out a bunch of times—the church is exempt from the federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Code. That means it doesn’t pay taxes on (at least most of) its income, and donors (or, at least, donors who itemize) can deduct their donations as they calculate their tax liabilities.
Exemption under section 501(c)(3) comes with its limitations. For our purposes, there are two limitations on an exempt organization’s ability to participate in politics. First, “no substantial part” of its activities can entail trying to influence legislation. (For these purposes, influencing legislation includes both lobbying directly and encouraging the public to lobby.) Second, an exempt organization cannot endorse or oppose candidates for office.
The specialists are not going to cause the church to violate the first limitation. True, there’s some ambiguity about how to measure “no substantial part.” Maybe its the percentage of assets used on the politicking vs. the percentage of assets used for everything. Maybe its the time spent on politicking vs. the time spent overall. So assume every ward in the church called two civic process specialists. Even if the median ward only has 100 people who attend, the activities of two out of 100 will almost certainly not rise to the level of substantial, no matter what metric we use. (That’s compounded by the fact that, at least for now, this is just a Utah thing and, for various reasons, no matter how well it works in the Mountain West, I suspect it will be hard to scale in areas with less Mormon density.)
But what about the absolute prohibition on endorsing and opposing candidates for office? I mean, people are people, and even if the church absolutely and definitively tells these civic process specialists not to discuss who to vote for, someone is almost certainly going to tell ward members that they should vote against (or, I suppose, for) Trump in 2020. So isn’t the church taking a huge risk?
No. Not really. I mean, this is kind of a complicated issue, because tax-exempt organizations, while they’re legal persons, aren’t person-persons. They can’t act independently—they can only act when people act on their behalf. So are the actions of civic process specialists going to be attributed to the church?
The IRS released a revenue ruling (basically, an official statement of its policies) in 2007 going through hypothetical situations, and evaluating whether those situations violated the prohibition on endorsements. There’s a lot of detail there, but, in broad strokes, there are a couple points that are relevant:
- The IRS expressly blesses voter registration, education, and get-out-the-vote drives by tax-exempt organizations, as long as they’re handled in a nonpartisan manner.
- The IRS recognizes that leaders of tax-exempt organizations may want to endorse or oppose candidates. That’s fine—even when the leader is identified as a leader of the exempt organizations—as long as the endorsement is made in a personal capacity, rather than an official capacity.
I’ll note that the revenue ruling doesn’t map perfectly onto the church’s largely lay-driven organization. I would say, though, that I would be hard-pressed to argue that your average ward member’s comments could be attributed to the church. Like, if a member gets up to bear her testimony, and endorses Pete Buttigieg, there’s no way that endorsement can be attributed to the church.
And yes, a testimony is self-drive. But what if the bishop asks a member to give a talk, and in that talk, the member tells ward members that they should vote for Elizabeth Warren? At that point, she wasn’t entirely going on her own—the bishop, after all, asked her to speak—but she’s speaking in her individual capacity. I mean, heck, the Sunday School teacher slips in an endorsement of Kamala Harris? Still no violation. It’s hard to see how an endorsement by the civic process specialist would be any different.
(Note here that I’m not saying that these testimony/talk/lesson endorsements are a good thing—that’s a whole different question. What I’m saying is that they’re not going to be attributed to the church, thus risking its tax exemption. Moreover, they shouldn’t be attributed to the church.)
Now, there is one difference, perhaps, between the civic process specialist and the others: the civic process specialist was asked specifically to talk about political engagement. I sincerely doubt that raises her to the level of official speaker for the church, but let’s assume it does. Can the church protect itself?
If I were advising the church, I’d recommend it do a couple things. First, I’d recommend it provide training that lays out in big letters that the specialists are not to endorse or oppose candidates while they’re doing their calling. Second, I’d publicize that to the church at large, and not merely with a general statement about political neutrality. I would expressly say something to the effect of, “Civic process specialists have been called to help ward members engage in the political process. They have not been called to recommend who or what you vote for—you need to make those decisions yourself, following your own values, conscience, and inspiration.” Finally, the church should produce (and provide the specialists with) handouts, pamphlets, and maybe websites (like, where you can enter your address and find out where you vote) that are expressly nonpartisan. With those three steps, the church would make clear that the specialists don’t speak for the church if they’re endorsing candidates or otherwise recommending what to vote for.
Again, to be clear, I don’t think that the specialists’ statements will be attributed to the church if it doesn’t do these things; if the church is worried, though, these moves would work to ensure that it was absolutely and 100% clear that the specialists are merely there to help with the process of civic engagement, and not with the substance.