Are American churches viable political threats?

"...The churches in America are more innocuous...there is an elaborate American comity by which political domination of the churches is sanctioned by the status of church property holdings. Thus, tax exemption for the churches inhibits a critical political witness by the churches. Thus, a presidential assurance of aid to church-related schools can in sure the silence of the ecclesiastical hierarchy on certain public issues. In short, the dependence of the American churches upon property renders the churches so utterly vulnerable to political manipulation as to obviate a more direct ecclesiastical interference."
pg. 271 "A Keeper of the Word" by Kellerman