Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, more than 90% of Protestant pastors do not plan to endorse political candidates, even if their churches would face no legal consequences, according to a new Lifeway Research study.
A Lifeway Research survey of over 1,000 Protestant pastors in the United States released Tuesday finds that 93% of respondents won't endorse any political candidates during worship services even after being told the Internal Revenue Service said last year that it wouldn't strip tax-exempt status of churches if their pastors or leaders make political endorsements.
By contrast, 5% of pastors surveyed said they do plan to endorse candidates during worship, while the rest said they were unsure whether they would do so. “Since historically very few Protestant pastors had endorsed candidates from the pulpit, we were interested in whether the IRS ruling last year would change that,” Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell said a statement.
“Were pastors simply obeying the tax law or was their neutrality in a worship setting their conviction?” The survey of 1,003 Protestant pastors was conducted Sept. 2 to 24, 2025. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. African American pastors (11%) and pastors of other ethnicities (9%) were twice as likely than white pastors (4%) to say they plan to endorse candidates.
Pentecostal (13%), Baptist (9%) and non-denominational (7%) pastors were also more likely than Lutheran (1%) and Methodist (1%) pastors to say they plan to endorse a candidate. The survey was conducted about two months after the IRS submitted a joint motion for entry of consent judgment last July to settle a lawsuit, saying the agency doesn't enforce Johnson Amendment restrictions "against houses of worship for speech concerning electoral politics in the context of worship services." In 2024, the