Dissertation

The Pulpit Freedom Sunday (PFS) initiative is one of the most pointed challenges to IRS restrictions on church political activity in modern American history. Organized by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), PFS was not simply an act of pastoral defiance. It was a deliberate legal strategy aimed at provoking a constitutional test of the Johnson Amendment, which bars 501(c)(3) organizations from engaging in campaign intervention. By inviting pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit and then send their sermons to the IRS, ADF hoped to trigger enforcement and ultimately overturn the statute.

My dissertation uses this effort as a window into the changing relationship between American evangelicalism, law, and liberal democracy. It asks how and why some pastors moved from implicit political commentary to explicit campaign intervention. It also asks what they believed was at stake theologically and morally when they made that move. Rather than treating pulpit politicking as simple partisanship, the project shows that many PFS participants framed political engagement as a religious obligation. They rooted this obligation in their understanding of biblical authority and in their sense that “moral knowledge” has eroded in public life, drawing on arguments articulated by Dallas Willard.

Empirically, the project centers on a mixed-methods analysis of sermons delivered between 1990 and 2024 at two high-profile evangelical congregations. These are Calvary Chapel Chino Hills (CCCH), which participated in PFS, and Grace Community Church (GCC), which did not. Using computer-aided text analysis in MAXQDA and DICTION 7.2, together with R and interrupted time series analysis, I trace changes over time in political rhetoric, campaign intervention, and moral–political framing. I supplement this work with manual coding and qualitative interviews with ADF attorneys and PFS pastors in order to reconstruct both the legal strategy and the theological justifications behind it.

The findings indicate that CCCH had long engaged national politics, but participation in PFS marked an inflection point. After 2008, sermons at CCCH show a clearer and more sustained integration of electoral politics. The language of a “biblical vote” became central. Certain policy stances, including opposition to abortion, rejection of LGBTQIA+ rights, and support for Israel, were framed as non-negotiable duties for Christian voters rather than as discretionary political preferences. Statistical models show significant increases in campaign-related language, especially in election years, relative to GCC.

To interpret these developments, the dissertation draws on James W. Ceaser’s analysis of foundational concepts. These concepts are religion, nature, and history, and they function as sources of political authority. PFS pastors understood their political speech not as a departure from pastoral calling but as a fulfillment of it. They grounded this view in revealed moral law and in a providential view of history. They frequently invoke Lockean language about liberty and limited government. At the same time, they remain deeply skeptical that reason or “nature” alone can secure moral truth. In practice, their politics are anchored less in abstract natural rights and more in biblical revelation.

Taken together, the project argues that PFS was less about securing a narrow legal victory and more about reasserting a particular foundation for moral reasoning in public life. It shows how evangelical leaders used the pulpit to contest the state’s authority to define the limits of religious speech. It also shows how they responded to what they see as the disappearance of moral knowledge from public institutions. In doing so, the dissertation contributes to debates about the relationship between church and state and about evangelical political development. It also speaks to the capacity of liberal democracy to sustain a shared moral language in an era of deep disagreement over the sources of moral authority.