By Ryan FoleyChristian Post Reporter Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Editors Note: This is part 6 of The Christian Post's year-long article series “Politics in the Churches: Evangelical Christian engagement in Moral Majority elections today.” In this series, we will look at issues related to election integrity and new ways to get out the vote, including churches participating in ballot collection. We will also look at issues that evangelicals think are most important to them before the presidential election and the political engagement of various groups, politically and ethnically. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 at the links provided.

Working to address the “real problem” of millions of evangelical voters failing to vote in elections, a longtime political activist is urging pastors to mobilize their faith ahead of the 2024 presidential race.

A panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, last week titled “Honest Graft” focused on the role churches can play in keeping evangelicals from currently registering to vote in order to do so in time for Election Day.

“I'm sick of losing,” said Chad Connelly, founder and CEO of Faith Winsan organization dedicated to “educating, activating and mobilizing faith leaders, helping them leverage their influence and impact within the governmental and political arena.”

“We've been way too good at losing over the last few cycles,” Connelly said. “We spent a billion dollars last cycle. The experts can't find the low-propensity Christian voter, the 30, 35, 40, 45 million people who sit in churches who don't vote. That's a real problem.”

Connelly suggested that television ads and digital outreach campaigns, like those used in the last cycle, are failing to reach these voters.

“I've spent the last 15 years of my life completely focused on reaching the pastor, building relationships that are authentic,” he said. “You can't do it with some distant digital ad saying, 'Oh, you've got to go vote.'

Connelly cited research by noted Christian pollster George Barna that found “one of the biggest reasons people vote is … someone they respect says 'this is a big deal'.”

As the Republican National Committee's first National Director of Faith Engagement, he emphasized that “the pastor” is an important role that people respect.

Citing the estimate that between 40 million and 45 million evangelicals do not vote, Connelly noted that “many of them are registered” but are “too busy.”

“[T]hey brings up children; they take their children to the football matches, and they will not go to vote,” said the activist.[W]I have to go after those people.”

Faith Wins has hosted more than 17,000 pastors at virtual and face-to-face events with a focus on engaging their churches to vote “biblical values.” The organization expresses optimism as it sees more pastors and church leaders getting involved, holding voter registration drives and “sharing what The Word says about the issues we face in America,” its website states

“We spent all our time with Faith Wins working in the states to build relationships with pastors of multiple denominations,” Connelly said.

As part of his efforts, Connelly encouraged churches to “register everyone” and “not to leave anyone unregistered.” He said churches should also “teach them to vote biblical values.”

“We hold small meetings that turn into big meetings to identify and find those pastors who will lead the way,” he explained. “We find that pastors who hear other pastors, they get empowered, they get active and…they're not just data points, they're multipliers.”

He urges political consultants, candidates and advisers not to overlook the influence of pastors and churches.

“That pastor over there has 1,200 in his church,” Connelly said, citing one example, adding that other pastors could influence multiple campuses.

Panel moderator Hogan Gidley, a former deputy White House secretary under Trump and vice president of the America First Policy Institute's Center for Election Integrity, said he and Connelly worked together ahead of the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia.

“As I recall, through Zoom and other ways, we were in 312 churches [and] registered 77,000 people,” he said.

Gidley said Republican Glenn Youngkin only won the race by about 65,000 votes.

Connelly said the strategy in Virginia extended beyond voter registration.

“We picked the places that liberals won by a little bit, and we thought, 'Let's run up the score.' , people said, 'What are we doing?'”

“I said, 'I'll tell you what. You care about election integrity? So we started recruiting poll watchers, workers.'

Connelly said Faith Wins has recruited 1,343 people in churches to act as poll watchers.

“These were not political hacks. They were not experts. They were not consultants. They did not work for the campaign or the committees,” he said. “They were people at Maple Street Baptist and Calvary Chapel down the street. And I just wrote a little 3×5 card: 'We're here to pray for you; I want to pray with you. What can we do to help? And, by the way, we would like to see a copy of all new joiners since last Friday midnight.'”

Connelly stated that the poll-watching campaign in Virginia was looking for people who voted who were over 100 years old and households where more than six people were registered.

“These are not trained experts. These are church members,” Connelly noted.

In one case, poll watchers discovered that a house with 17 people registered was using a field as its address.

Connelly added that people affiliated with Faith Wins in Michigan found that 67 of the first 200 people over 100 who were registered to vote had obituaries written about them.

“There are God-fearing, flag-carrying, tax-paying Americans who love this nation, and they're sick and tired of what's going on. But you have to talk to them authentically, so we're going to be in every state we can eventually afford to be in to find those priests, to encourage them to say, 'I want to get involved,'” he vowed.

Towards the end of the discussion, Connelly pushed back into the idea that the activities he encourages churches to engage in are “political.” He reassured a pastor who expressed such concerns by saying, “I want you to be biblical” rather than political.

“If we just wake up the Church a little bit, just a little bit, 40 to 45 million non-voting Christians. And I know people want to look for this shiny, shiny object, whatever is sexy and fun and all that. Go. find the low inclined voters in the churches, and the way to approach them is the priests, through relationships,” he concluded.