Generational Talent

In the eyes of a southeast Wisconsin minister, she’s the one. He feels so strongly about her that he prepared a sermon that got him in hot water with his denomination. Rather than let it go, he summoned the courage of his convictions and resigned on the spot. Went ahead and delivered the sermon, off church grounds.

Pastor Jonathan Barker had planned to stand before his congregation at Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha and endorse New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for president, a pulpit play that’s been off limits since a 1954 federal law put churches and charities at risk of losing their tax-exempt status if they endorse candidates for office.

That law remains on the books, but the Internal Revenue Service issued a ruling in May that the law should not apply to preachers speaking to their own congregations. American churches have responded to the IRS’s reinterpretation of the 70-year-old law in widely varying ways. Many conservative evangelicals are chomping at the bit; mo…