(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that he supports President Donald Trump’s plan to get rid of the Johnson amendment, which bars pastors from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit.
“I’ve long believed that. Yeah, I’ve always supported that,” Ryan said at a Capitol Hill press conference when asked whether he supported plans to repeal the amendment, which President Trump announced in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.
“It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said the God who gave us life gave us liberty. Jefferson asked, ‘Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift from God?’ Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs,” Trump said.
“That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution,” Trump said.
Ryan also said that he doesn’t want the Little Sisters of the Poor “to be forced to buy coverage that violates their conscience.”