Religious leaders did not want this? They think it would harm houses of worship?

I thought it is exactly what they wanted, since many of them practically do it already.

Then they tell you what your conscience says to do.

Especially since the term "religious leaders" probably includes such as choir directors and Sunday school teachers.

Religious leaders who are worth anything know darned well how dangerous church state entanglement is. They don't want the state dictating to them any more than we want religions dictating to the state. Government intrusion into religion or a national religion are definitely unwelcome by most clergy.

The Christian nationalists and politically oriented evangelicals are louder, more organized, and already embedded with the GOP. The participants in crap like "Justice Sunday" do not represent the feelings of religious leaders in general. Nor are they remotely a majority of religious leaders in this country.

Ask clergy from other denominations of Christianity and other religions, and you will get a very different answer. I cannot think of a single one of my colleagues in the ministry who want to see the Johnson Amendment rolled back.

ETA: By colleagues I am referring to an inter-faith community, not simply clergy within my own denomination.

Almost every church has members in both parties. The last thing they need is one side of the congregation expecting them to endorse a candidate from the pulpit and simultaneously insult part of the congregation.

Unless this passes they can shrug to both sides and say "that darn law keeps me from speaking my mind"

problem that many churches have been worrying about for a long time now, some speaking out against it and trying to withdraw their congregations from political involvement, but most have been unable to stop what is happening. The result of politics in religion is that millions of people have developed a huge disconnect between the precepts of their religions and their political beliefs and behaviors. Fox thumps a closed Bible but doesn't teach Proverbs.

I see it all the time because this is the Bible Belt, and religion is a huge part of people's lives. Ours is also one of the most conservative districts in the nation. Lots of people around here believe Satan literally walks the earth, almost all believe in immortal souls and that narrow gate, but most also clearly seem to believe that God doesn't hold violations against them that are committed out of partisan fervor. Or perhaps just somehow that they're saved and those rules are for others.

And a Democrat asking "what would Jesus do" is useful only for putting an immediate end to discussion. The very question reveals the asker to be a hostile outsider who could never understand their righteousness--conveniently obviating any need to answer. No, I've never been that Democrat , but I've witnessed it a few times over the years and gotten the same smug, glance exchanging, clamming up response a couple of times to other queries.

I've a few times rather delicately asked people talking public issues what their church has to say, and each time the feeling was their pastors or ministers support and share their attitudes. Most southern denominations don't require formal college-level theological training, and religious leaders who lack the understanding necessary to give guidance on moral issues and even the religious doctrines of their own churches are common.

But even when they are, given the extreme political partisanship that's taken so many over, I strongly suspect that attempting to provide proper guidance at most or all of the local conservatively oriented churches would lead to firing of ministers and board members and flight of angry parishioners to other churches. It would also likely break apart the congregations the lives of their parishioners have been built around as events revealed the private beliefs of those who've also felt a need to mostly be silent in the face of what's happening.

Karl Roves 2004 Bush camp was Huge in the churches. They showed Abortion films, stuff that has always been illegal, as if they had to turn out for Bush to stop murder of children, right before they were delivered.

They will stop at nothing.

More of this from our Repubs:

It's clearly not a budget factor of the type that can be done with reconciliation, I'd think.

Part of the current law was amended in 1987 through reconciliation

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987, Pub. L. No. 100-023, 101 Stat. 1330. Congress clarified that the prohibition applies to actions “in opposition to” as well as “on behalf of” a candidate, id. § 10711(a), that an organization that loses its charitable status cannot seek exemption as a 501(c)(4) entity, id. § 10711(b), and enhanced the IRS’s audit and enforcement procedures, id. § 10713(a).