Editors Note: This article is part of The Christian Post's year-long series of articles “Politics in the Churches: Evangelical Christian engagement in elections of the Moral Majority to this day.” In this series, we'll look at issues related to election integrity and new ways to get out the vote. Read other articles in the series by clicking here.

Lawyers say a prominent San Francisco media outlet has contacted California election officials to raise questions about whether a national campaign to help churches collect ballots may have violated the law.

Advocates for Faith and Freedom (AFF), a religious freedom advocacy group, says Pastor Greg Phelps and Calvary Chapel Red Bluff have faced “misleading allegations and sensationalist media coverage” after participating in voter-raising training in the run-up to the November presidential election. .

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The church partnered with Real Impact, a Calvary Chapel Chino Hills ministry, to provide its congregation with what lawyers say was “an appropriate way to exercise their voting rights in full compliance with the laws of California.”

Led by Director Gina Gleason, Real Impact provides churches with a template to promote the ballot collection service and methods to secure ballots until they are delivered to polling offices. Gleason personally led Real Impact's outreach with Calvary Chapel Red Bluff, located about 130 miles north of Sacramento.

But in a title for an article dated November 9, San Francisco-based news website SFGate suggested that Calvary Chapel Red Bluff is “facing an investigation” for its voter collection efforts after the news outlet contacted the district official to raise questions about the legality of the campaign.

“SFGate reached out to Tehama County Clerk and Recorder Sean Houghtby about Calvary Chapel Red Bluff's ballot collection effort to ask if it was sanctioned by county officials,” wrote contributing editor Matt LaFever.

According to SFGate, Houghtby said, “I don't think that's legal” after reviewing Calvary Chapel's website. The report also states that Houghtby said he would “forward to our [District Attorney] for review” for potentially violating a 2020 pandemic-era memo from the California secretary of state.

The report also refers to “sharply combative language” at CC Red Bluff's effective page, who quotes Isaiah 62:6 and, as SFGate reported, promises to “'equip' parishioners” and “sound the alarm when the church's time to act comes.”

In response to the report, Houghtby and Tehama County District Attorney Matthew Rogers issued a statement on Nov. 22, which cited the SFGate story and said CC Red Bluff “did not violate California election law.”

“The District Attorney's Office and the Department of Elections, working together, reviewed the concerns raised by the SFGate news article,” the press release stated. “Based on the information obtained and review by both departments, Calvary Chapel did not violate California election law.”

In a statement shared with CP, AFF said that after meeting with the district attorney and registrar of voters, it was “in no uncertain terms confirmed that no laws were broken” and that “no case exists, and there is no pending investigation.”

It is not clear what prompted SFGate, a Hearst publication with a readership of approximately 25 to 30 million unique readers per month – second in California only to the Los Angeles Times – to contact election officials about ballot collection efforts at a local church.

CP has reached out to editorial leadership at SFGate for comment. This story will be updated if a response is received.

In a statement, Pastor Phelps said he and CC Red Bluff “strictly adhered to the legal procedures established by the state, which expressly allows organizations, including churches, to engage in vote collection.”

“Churches like ours exist to serve the community, and that includes empowering our congregation to participate in the democratic process,” Phelps said. “We just want to serve our people and positively impact our community. We will not be silenced or discouraged by those who seek to distort our intentions.”

AFF attorney Robert Tyler said he believes media attacks like the SFGate report are “emblematic of a broader trend to vilify faith-based organizations that engage in legitimate, civic-minded activities.”

“Faith-based organizations should not be pressured or intimidated into abandoning their constitutionally protected rights,” Tyler said in a statement. “The law applies equally to all groups, whether secular or religious, and these baseless attacks on churches simply exercising their legal rights must stop.”

In the past, Gleason, who, along with founder and CC Chino Hills Pastor Jack Hibbs, launched Real Impact in 2020, has clearly stated that churches are not official dropbox locations and warned houses of worship not to identify themselves as such.

She told CP Tuesday that SFGate's article about CC Red Bluff was “sloppy” and “sloppy.”

“There are very few laws that are required when you collect ballots, you know, laws as simple as giving the ballots three days after receiving the ballot,” she said. “So I don't think so [the SFGate reporter] did his research before he wrote this article.”

Gleason believes that the article was written to scare other churches from following CC Red Bluff's lead.

“I think so [SFGate] did it as a way to scare the church into ever being involved in something like polling,” she said. “This was an attempt to silence the church and not be involved in polling people who have a biblical worldview because people who have a biblical worldview tend to be conservative in their voting patterns.

“And if they can silence the church and other churches would see that a local DA is going after the church for this activity, that other churches would be scared away.”