In early October, Josh Howerton , the senior pastor at Lakepointe Church in the Dallas area, delivered a sermon titled, “How to Vote Like Jesus,” in which he repeated GOP talking points in support of electing Donald Trump over Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
The 41-year-old Southern Baptist pastor—with a reputation for comparing himself to Jesus and for dishing out misogynistic wedding advice in church services—never flat-out told his congregation of about 20,000 members and 340,000 Instagram followers to vote for Trump. However, Howerton spent much of the 45-minute sermon attacking the Harris-Walz ticket and spewing false rhetoric about their views on abortion and transgender rights.
The sermon quickly drew national attention: The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a Wisconsin-based association of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics” who aimed to maintain the separation of church and state ahead of the elections, filed a complaint with the IRS accusing Howerton of breaking the 70-year-old Johnson Amendment. (Howerton has since grown his Instagram audience to about 386,000 followers.)…