An atheist nonprofit has tattled on a Christian one, maliciously demanding that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) strip away its tax-exempt status for comparing the policy stances of the major party presidential candidates. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) had its staff attorney draft and send a letter to the IRS last Friday “to report illegal political campaigning by Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).” The letter served no purpose other than a desire to financially cripple the Christian ministry.

As the grounds for its complaint, FFRF cited “a special election issue” of BGEA’s Decision Magazine, contrasting the relative positions of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump as “Socialism vs. Freedom.” They complain the comparison was “cherry-picked” with the intention “to encourage readers to vote for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris.”

As further proof, the anti-Christian group cited a Franklin Graham quote included in the issue, which “denigrates the Democratic party’s platform,” without actually naming it: “Progressive, liberal thought and activism have so contaminated the mainstream of American life and culture that once-unthinkable abominations such as same-sex marriage, abortion on demand and transgender advocacy have become dogma in one major party’s platform.”

The FFRF never alleges that the magazine issue contained false information, simply that it set Trump’s and Harris’s policy positions side-by-side. This exercise led the FFRF letter to conclude, “The overall takeaway from this election guide is that Christians should vote for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris in the presidential election and Republicans in state and local elections.”

Reaching that conclusion requires a leap of logic, a missing premise that the FFRF letter does not provide. If the magazine issue were read by someone who leaned pro-socialism, pro-abortion, and pro-LGBT policies, the statements quoted by the FFRF would make the reader more likely to vote for Harris than for Trump. The FFRF implicitly assumes that someone with such far-Left political leanings is not the target audience for Decision Magazine.

(As an aside, the FFRF never explains how they obtained a copy of a magazine issue that has not yet appeared online. It seems that they subscribe to Decision Magazine simply to scour it for opposition research, like the jealous satraps who conspired to catch Daniel in prayer [Daniel 6:4-13].)

So, what is the missing premise in the FFRF’s argument? Here’s one possibility: a side-by-side comparison of Trump’s and Harris’s policies makes Harris look bad. Is that what FFRF is admitting? Here’s another possibility: Harris’s policy positions are directly opposed to the moral positions Christians hold. In this case, is the FFRF merely blaming Christians for noticing? With such possibilities as these, it seems obvious why the FFRF chose to leave their connecting premise unstated — the “missing link” dismissed with a wave of the hand.

The FFRF would likely respond by arguing that the magazine’s presentation was misleading — that all the information it presented may have been correct, but that the comparisons it chose were “cherry-picked.” Of course, every policy summary must choose which issues to include or exclude, from a nearly infinite set. BGEA has as much right to select the issues it finds important as the FFRF has to emphasize a different slate. If anything is misleading about BGEA’s issue selection, it’s the suggestion that the FFRF has the authority to condemn it as “cherry-picked.”

Unlike those nasty Christians, the FFRF is a responsible nonprofit who would never engage in “illegal political campaigning,” the letter argues. “FFRF is a registered 501(c)(3) and it takes this designation, along with the accompanying privileges and responsibilities, very seriously,” claimed the FFRF. “The Internal Revenue Code states that to retain their 501(c)(3) status an organization cannot ‘participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.’”

It comes as no surprise that this claim is, at best, unreflective and, at worst, insincere. The FFRF knows that public-facing nonprofits engage in political and policy commentary all the time. Indeed, it took less than five minutes on the FFRF’s own website to find the same sort of politically slanted commentary that they claimed was grounds for revoking the BGEA’s tax-exempt status — a financial death sentence.

Atop the FFRF website is a banner that includes a “Campaigns” tab, which reveals a drop-down menu. The first item on that menu states, “Make Your Voice Heard in This Election.” The first paragraph on this page declares (archived link), “Your right to vote is your voice in democracy. It’s how you influence issues that matter to you, from privacy rights to personal freedoms to educational reforms. This year, it’s also about stopping Project 2025 — a critical issue that affects us all.”

Two link-clicks from “Project 2025” navigates to an FFRF press release (archived link) dated July 30, 2024, which explains that Project 2025 — which must be stopped, remember — includes a “900-plus page proposal for the first 180 days in office of the next Republican president,” as well as “policy and personnel prescriptions for a Republican administration.” It claims that Project 2025 descends from a “precursor … launched in 2016 by Christian nationalists to remake the United States in their own theocratic image.”

How did their letter put it? “The overall takeaway from this [description] is that [non-theists] should vote for [Kamala Harris] over [Donald Trump] in the presidential election and [Democrats] in state and local elections.”

The FFRF may be hoping that likeminded IRS agents will respond sympathetically to their flimsy accusation against BGEA. The Biden administration has not been shy about lawlessly persecuting its political opponents. And the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees among other federal agencies, endorsed Harris for president last week.

On the other hand, the fact remains that the FFRF doesn’t have much of a case. Even sympathetic bureaucrats would likely worry that their expansive new standard for nuking nonprofits would inflict significant collateral damage on left-wing organizations, too — not to mention the obvious free speech concerns, which could result in unnecessary legal defeats. The IRS may respond to the FFRF’s childish complaint by dismissing it like an annoyed parent.

The anti-Christian organization filed a similar complaint against BGEA with the Obama administration in 2012, but that went nowhere. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been attacked by this activist group, and it won’t be the last. I don’t tell people who to vote for, but I do encourage Christians to pray and vote,” said Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and CEO of BGEA. “Every other group of people in this country has the right to do this — Christians shouldn’t be the one group denied that same right.”