93% of Protestant pastors don’t plan to endorse candidates from the pulpit: survey
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, more than 90% of Protestant pastors do not plan to endorse political candidates, even if their churches would face no legal consequences, according to a new Lifeway Research study.
A Lifeway Research survey of over 1,000 Protestant pastors in the United States released Tuesday finds that 93% of respondents won't endorse any political candidates during worship services even after being told the Internal Revenue Service said last year that it wouldn't strip tax-exempt status of churches if their pastors or leaders make political endorsements.
By contrast, 5% of pastors surveyed said they do plan to endorse candidates during worship, while the rest said they were unsure whether they would do so.
“Since historically very few Protestant pastors had endorsed candidates from the pulpit, we were interested in whether the IRS ruling last year would change that,” Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell said a statement. “Were pastors simply obeying the tax law or was their neutrality in a worship setting their conviction?”
The survey of 1,003 Protestant pastors was conducted Sept. 2 to 24, 2025. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
African American pastors (11%) and pastors of other ethnicities (9%) were twice as likely than white pastors (4%) to say they plan to endorse candidates. Pentecostal (13%), Baptist (9%) and non-denominational (7%) pastors were also more likely than Lutheran (1%) and Methodist (1%) pastors to say they plan to endorse a candidate.
The survey was conducted about two months after the IRS submitted a joint motion for entry of consent judgment last July to settle a lawsuit, saying the agency doesn't enforce Johnson Amendment restrictions "against houses of worship for speech concerning electoral politics in the context of worship services."
In 2024, the National Religious Broadcasters and two churches filed a complaint seeking to stop the federal government from enforcing the Johnson Amendment. The 1954 law bars some nonprofits, including churches, from engaging in political activity such as endorsing candidates.
However, in an opinion and order issued in March, U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker of the Eastern District of Texas said he cannot approve the joint agreement because of the Tax Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) and the Declaratory Judgment Act (DJA). The two laws generally bar federal courts from blocking tax enforcement in advance or issuing rulings that declare how federal tax law applies.
Barker, a Trump appointee, cited an earlier ruling that “DJA prohibits courts from providing declaratory relief with respect to federal taxes,” adding that the consent of both parties was not enough.
“Subject-matter jurisdiction is determined by the nature of the claims and parties in the operative complaint, not by consent during litigation,” Barker wrote. “The DJA and AIA apply here because plaintiffs’ claims are ‘in respect to’ taxes and seek to restrain the threat of tax collection or assessment based on certain activity.”
The Trump administration's positon on Johnson Amendment enforcement appears to have little influence on pastors, McConnell said.
“If the IRS ultimately allows candidates to be endorsed in church services, 93% of pastors will not do so," he said. "What pastors say from the pulpit has far more to do with their religious convictions than avoiding tax penalties.”
