When Did Churches Worship at the Altar of the 501-3c?

One of the more puzzling facets of modern life is how Christian churches washed their hands of politics even though “man is a political animal” as Aristotle taught.  To wash your hands of politics is like washing your hands of part of your humanity -- like washing your hands of religion (for man is also a religious animal who must worship something). 

Of course the simplest reason Christian churches abdicated responsibility is money: churches want to keep that tax deductible status at all costs since it would presumably result in a crash in donations.  So, in a sense, the government at this point "owned" churches. 

But what’s odd is we have a clear and recent example of what happens when the local church doesn’t want to get involved in politics: Nazi Germany.  It seems hard to imagine Hitler would’ve come to power and been so politically successful had the dominant German Lutheran church taken a hard stand. I assume because of our belief in American exceptionalism and the figment of our Constitution, we figured nothing like that could happen here. 

Examining our history it began, as usual, with good intentions: charities had been given tax breaks since the Tariff Act of 1894. Back then, most revenue of the federal government had come from tariffs.

One of the more evil men ever to become US President, Woodrow Wilson, not surprisingly had a hand in directing that organizations “disseminating controversial or partisan propaganda’ were not ‘educational’ for purposes of qualifying for tax-exempt status...As a result, contributions to these organizations were not deductible from the new federal income tax.”

To try to separate humans from politics is trying to separate where God ends and man begins with regard to scriptural inspiration - they are entwined to such a degree that it’s hopeless to try to disentangle.  Legal challenges came and no clear standard emerged from the court decisions so as a charitable organization you had to guess to the degree you were “controversial” or “partisan”. 

Another very evil man who became president was Lyndon Johnson, and he was eager to ban any political activities even to the point of not allowing the endorsement of a candidate by any group or church receiving tax exempt status. And so continued the building of the wall between church and state that was never intended by the founders.