It Was Never About the Tax Code. They Are Afraid of the Word.

Stop buying the lie that the sudden outrage over Albuquerque’s Legacy Church has anything to do with the IRS tax code.

On Thursday, New Mexico Political Report——ran a hand-wringing piece questioning "church/state separation" and 501(c)(3) rules because Legacy Church Pastor Steve Smotherman endorsed Republicans Greg Cunningham and Gregg Hull. Right on cue Friday, the Democratic Party of New Mexico shared the article on Facebook, sneering at "the Megachurch business" and lecturing Christians on "Biblical morality".

If you actually believe their concern is a half-century-old tax provision called the Johnson Amendment, look at what the state Democratic Party posted on that exact same Facebook page just hours earlier.

Attacking Gregg Hull’s campaign ad featuring everyday residents, the party complained that the voters on screen could not be trusted as "everyday New Mexicans" because they were connected through "the same religious network, Isabella Solis Ministries".

Read that again. Those citizens weren’t preaching from a tax-exempt pulpit. They were private citizens speaking in a campaign ad, and the ruling political party of New Mexico tried to disqualify them from public life solely because they are Christian.

That gives the whole game away. It was never about tax status. It is about fear of the Word.

They Attacked Scripture First

Short memories are a politician’s best friend, so let’s rewind the tape to August.

Two months before Pastor Smotherman endorsed anyone this fall, Congressman Gabe Vasquez cut a campaign attack video targeting Greg Cunningham over his membership at Legacy Church. Vasquez didn’t put a tax return on the screen. He put Legacy Church’s statement of faith on the screen—specifically the core biblical doctrine that God created human beings male and female and ordained marriage between one man and one woman—and stamped the church "MAGA extremist".

As we documented back in August, Vasquez didn’t just insult one congregation on Central Avenue. He insulted the Catechism of his own Catholic Church, Southern Baptists in Farmington and Hobbs, Pentecostals, Orthodox Christians, and observant Jews across New Mexico who hold to the exact same verses in Genesis.

When Archbishop John C. Wester stood up in July to defend an Albuquerque mosque from intimidation, not a single Democrat mocked "the Mosque business" or put Islamic scripture on screen with an "extremist" label. Polite society treats every other religion as untouchable. Only Christianity—and the Judeo-Christian moral code—is treated as fair game for political target practice.

For years, a quiet permission structure took hold in public life: Christians were expected to absorb the insults, bow their heads, keep their faith locked inside four walls, and apologize for believing what the Bible has said for thousands of years.

Then they wonder why a pastor with nine churches across New Mexico finally punches back.

The Bedrock They Want You to Forget

You do not even have to sit in a pew on Sunday morning to recognize what is being attacked here.

Every American who lives an honest life, raises a family, respects their neighbor’s property, and expects equal justice under the law is living on top of a Judeo-Christian foundation. Our Founding Fathers wrote into the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from our Creator—not from Santa Fe, not from Washington, and certainly not from a political party. Every dollar bill the Democratic Party begs donors to send them still reads In God We Trust.

The laws that separated Western civilization from tyranny—laws against murder, theft, perjury, and corrupt judges—came straight out of Exodus and Deuteronomy. When political operatives sneer at biblical truth, they are sawing at the very branch this republic sits on.

And they are terrified that millions of ordinary people are waking up to that fact. They aren't afraid that Legacy Church might violate an IRS regulation. They are terrified that the Word of God cannot be regulated, taxed, or canceled—and that it is spreading outside the church walls into a culture they thought they owned.

The False Gods of the Modern Left

Look closely at the people lecturing Pastor Smotherman about "the message of the Gospel" on social media. Have they abandoned religion? Not for a second. When people tear down the God of the Bible, they don’t become rational skeptics—they revert to paganism and build uglier idols.

Modern progressive politics is a full-blown secular religion, and its altars are everywhere:

• They have replaced the Creator with the State.
• They have replaced Genesis with gender ideology and the mutilation of basic biological truth.
• They have replaced grace and redemption with racial idolatry and a permanent caste system of grievance and victimhood.
• They have replaced the sanctity of life with a culture that celebrates ending it in the womb—and brands anyone who objects an "anti-choice activist".

The Bible is not all pastel rainbows and polite platitudes. Scripture is full of fire for those who set up false idols, pervert truth, and call evil good. "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness," Isaiah 5:20 warns. When Christ walked into the temple and saw corrupt operators exploiting the people, He didn’t form a bipartisan committee—He braided a whip and flipped the tables over.

The Pendulum Is Swinging Back

Here is the message New Mexico’s political class and its media megaphones need to hear on this Sunday morning: Christians are not curling up in a ball with our Bibles and wooden crosses anymore.

You wanted faith in the public square when you thought you could bully churches into silence or use Scripture as a prop. Now you are feeling the pendulum swing back—in Albuquerque, in Rio Rancho, in Las Cruces, in Roswell, and across every small town where families still bow their heads before dinner.

And to those sitting inside that political machine, typing out angry posts about "the Megachurch business" while drowning in perpetual outrage: we don’t hate you. Honestly, we pity you.

We see the misery of living under a religion of endless grievance, where nothing is ever forgiven, every neighbor is sorted by race or class, and truth changes every Tuesday. That cloud of hate and idolatry is exhausting because it was never meant to save anyone.

The church doors you are trying to close will still be open this morning. And when your false idols finally fail you, the Word you are so afraid of will still be standing right where it has always been, waiting for you.