A Christian evangelist urges Christians to avoid behaving like “fools for Jesus” or “cowards for Christ,” while emphasizing the need for the faithful to stand up for biblical truths, even if that means getting involved in political discourse.

In a video Posted Wednesday on Facebook, evangelist Shane Pruitt lamented that “for a very long time the world has bullied the Church into silence on certain issues because the world wants to dominate this conversation.”

According to Pruitt, “They will say to the Church, ‘Hey, you can’t talk about this, it’s a political issue and you’re too political.’ »

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“However, you have to realize that some things were biblical truths long before they were political statements,” he added. Addressing the issue of abortion, Pruitt identified the question of “when does life begin” as “a biblical truth.” He also cited “who determines what marriage is” and “who determines what sex and gender is” as additional examples of biblical truths.

Pruitt, who serves as New generation national director of the North American Mission Board, affirmed that “it is the world that encroaches on the territory of the planet, and not the other way around”. He insisted that Christians “speak only where the Bible speaks.”

The video ended with Pruitt delivering a message to Christians: “Arise, Church. Be bold, be confident, be kind.

“Nowhere in the Bible does it give us an excuse to be a fool for Jesus, but it also doesn’t give us an excuse to be a coward for Christ,” he stressed. “We always talk about the need to have a heart for Christianity and a heart for ministry. Yes, we need a heart, but sometimes we also need a backbone and a backbone.

Pruitt made his remarks about Christians’ obligations in political speech less than a week before the 2024 presidential election. He did not specifically discuss the election, but the topics he addressed, in particularly abortion and the LGBT debate, are issues that occupy an important place in the campaign.

THE Johnson Amendmentwhich dates back to 1954 and requires churches to refrain from explicitly supporting or endorsing political candidates as a condition of maintaining their tax-exempt status, is often cited as the reason why churches and pastors are reluctant to get involved in politics.

Secular organizations like the Freedom From Religion Foundation often reference the Johnson Amendment when filing complaints against churches for engaging in what they characterize as political speech.

Former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, campaigned on eliminating this long-standing provision of the U.S. tax code during his first presidential campaign in 2016. During the first months of his presidency, he issued an executive order ordering the Internal Revenue Service to relax its enforcement of the Johnson Amendment against churches and pastors.

A Lifeway Research survey released last month found that 29 percent of respondents considered pastors’ support of political candidates appropriate. Although this figure remains significantly below the majority, the share of the American public supporting pastors supporting church candidates has increased from the 13% measured in 2008.

A group of religious broadcasters and churches filed a lawsuit earlier this year, accusing the IRS of selectively enforcing the Johnson Amendment in a way that allowed progressive pastors to speak politics from the pulpit without granting the same right to their conservative counterparts.

The complaint contends that the Johnson Amendment, which also applies to nonprofit organizations with tax-exempt status from the IRS, violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution as well as the Civil Protection Act. restoration of religious freedom.