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11 days until Election Day. What are evangelicals saying?

John Fea   |  October 24, 2024

Jerushah Duford has a piece in Newsweek yesterday making the case for Kamala Harris. Duford is noteworthy because she is an evangelical and the granddaughter of Billy Graham. It appears that she is voting for Harris based on the legacy of her grandfather. Duford writes: “Looking at my grandfather’s legacy, it’s clear that his values centered firmly in unity, justice, and compassion. Billy Graham joined with Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the fight for civil rights. He held the first large mixed-race event in then-segregated South Africa and proclaimed that apartheid is a sin.’ He would certainly condemn efforts to dehumanize the hardworking Haitian immigrants who are revitalizing towns like Springfield, Ohio.” Of course the Billy Graham legacy is mixed, but such nuance is not useful for Jerushah Duford.

***

In yesterday’s roundup, we noted Jack Hibbs’s response to Kamala Harris’s “oh you guys are at the wrong rally” comment directed at two anti-abortion protesters at a rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin. As I said yesterday, I don’t think Harris was trying to make an anti-Christianity statement with her remarks. She was just not happy with the disruption that these two protesters–both students at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse–were causing.

Now California pastor John MacArthur has entered the debate. Here is Jessica Lea at Church Leaders website:

At an evening service on Sunday, Oct. 20, John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, appeared to echo Hibbs’ view of what happened at Harris’ rally. “In a meeting, somebody cried out, ‘Jesus is Lord,’” MacArthur said. “Did you see that? Somebody said, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and she immediately said, ‘You’re in the wrong place.’ What else do you need to know?”

The Standing for Freedom Center at Liberty University is also getting in on the act:

Jesus is Lord.

— Standing for Freedom Center (@freedomcenterlu) October 21, 2024

***

Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service covered the recent Trump rally with evangelicals in Concord, North Carolina. Here are a few takeaway quotes from the event:

Eric Trump was there: “It is so clear to me, more so than ever before, that (Trump) was put here for this mission: to save this country. We need God in our life. We need God in society. We need children to respect God. We need God in our schools. And if Kamala Harris won’t say it, I will: We love God and we will always be a nation of faith.”

Franklin Graham was there. He prayed: “We pray for our nation, and Father if it be thy will that President Trump will win this election.”

Ramiro Pena of Christ the King Baptist Church in Waco, Texas prayed: “Today, Lord, we lift up the man we believe you’ve put your hand upon to help restore America and bring America back to the place that honors you, to a place where we will not be kicked out for saying Christ the King, or Jesus is Lord…”

***

A conservative evangelical group known as the American Association of Evangelicals is touting the very problematic book Shepherds for Sale. The organization recently released a letter asking pastors to beware of evangelicals who have been “rented” by Democratic billionaires to swing the 2024 presidential election. Here is the letter. It is signed by Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Megan Basham, William Federer, Jim Garlow, Eric Metaxas, Nancy Pearcy, Mat Staver, Lance Wallnau, Everett Piper, and William Wolfe. The list of “rented” evangelicals include Jim Wallis, David French, Russell Moore, Curtis Chang, and the leadership of “Evangelicals for Harris,”

***

What’s happening on X?:

John MacArthur triggered Southern Baptist pastor Dwight McKissic:

For evangelicals to endorse the—disruption & disrupters at the VP Harris’s rally, as behaving normal, peaceful, respectful, and lawful, as opposed to seeing them as abusers, disturbing the peace, non-compliant, & operating contrary to the laws of civility, & good behavior—as…

— Dwight McKissic (@pastordmack) October 22, 2024

If while John MaCarthur is preaching at his church this coming Sunday, and if I walked in, and walked through the aisles shouting “Jesus is Lord”, again while MaCarthur was preaching, the security team there, with MaCarthur’s approval, & no doubt instructions & directions would…

— Dwight McKissic (@pastordmack) October 23, 2024

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that the evangelical Maga crowd would endorse anarchy and disruption, by attempting to interrupt VP Harris’s speech. After all, this is what they did on January 6, where they also used Jesus’s name while engaging in riotous, rebellious, reckless, &…

— Dwight McKissic (@pastordmack) October 23, 2024

Faith & Freedom Coalition on the abortion watch:

WATCH: Kamala Harris says she wants to “take a look at the filibuster” to pass abortion-on-demand legislation through Congress.

Harris would consider upending a key component of American democracy to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. pic.twitter.com/WXIr8sQL6r

— Faith & Freedom (@FaithandFreedom) October 24, 2024

Lance is worried about turnout:

If we lose this because Christians did not turn out and vote we will need to identify those self sabotaging churches, leaders and networks and make sure everyone knows who they are. Not to harm them, of course, but to warn our people as we organize ourselves and face the… https://t.co/mPpBKN6wLa

— Lance Wallnau (@lancewallnau) October 23, 2024

Praying for a Trump victory at Turning Point USA:

Pray for President Trump! pic.twitter.com/zeqeCjyeFE

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 24, 2024

I’ve been asking this question for a long time. Is it theologically possible to remove God from the public sector?

DR. BEN CARSON: “Depressing the value of the family, removing God from the public sector, changing the churches so that instead of the real gospel you had the social gospel, making sexual perversion normal, natural, and healthy. All of these things are going on in our society… pic.twitter.com/OHy3hMhNDn

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 23, 2024

Charlie will be at a megachurch near you this weekend:

Charlie Kirk: "The Democrat Party supports everything that god hates … I hope you give a Sunday sermon and you talk about how the Democrat Party believes everything that god hates."

So much for turning down the rhetoric! pic.twitter.com/af0IV398XF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 23, 2024

Translation: Vote for Trump:

Yes we need to all vote Pastor Jack. And it should be painfully obvious who we should vote for.
Why not just tell your members, listeners and followers to vote for Donald J Trump?
Those patriot pastors didn’t sugar coat their messages during the Revolutionary War did they? 🙏✝️

— The Virginian🇺🇸 (@tomlussier17) October 23, 2024

Eric Metaxas has started responding to the Bonhoeffer scholars:

Did this really happen? It's when the secular leftist Bonhoeffer "scholars" began to get upset… https://t.co/75FjRq22Qf

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) October 23, 2024

Remember the world before TDS? And Tim Keller wrote the foreword to my book. Good times. pic.twitter.com/53ng1yKWts

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) October 23, 2024

Ralph Reed voted:

Voted for ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ today. Don’t wait until Nov 5. Vote early! #VoteEarly pic.twitter.com/d3nVVgsVSA

— Ralph Reed (@ralphreed) October 21, 2024

Ralph Reed is going to get all the mileage he can get out of this one:

At a "Believers & Ballots Faith Townhall" in Georgia, @ralphreed repeats false claim that Harris told people to leave rally for saying "Jesus is Lord." He then led crowd in chanting "Jesus is Lord!" Reed is lying & using Jesus's name in vain:https://t.co/gRKm1LXc3a pic.twitter.com/owSiSVGpm4

— Brian Kaylor (@BrianKaylor) October 23, 2024

You know its election season when Paula White starts reposting Trump:

Trump vows to protect Armenian Christians: pic.twitter.com/qSpUFg5xUi

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) October 23, 2024

And she starts showing-up on the campaign trail:

I was so honored to be in Concord NC with President Trump and people of faith this week. Your vote matters and makes a difference. Having served as Senior Advisor to the President for Faith and Opportunity Initiative I watched first hand as he fought and implemented policy that… pic.twitter.com/pfqoER9EjB

— Paula White-Cain (@Paula_White) October 23, 2024

“Powerful words”:

Powerful words from Rev. @Franklin_Graham in North Carolina: "They've tried to put him in prison, they've tried to assassinate him twice, he's attacked every day in the media — and the only hope for Donald J. Trump and our nation is GOD." pic.twitter.com/wNO95Fa8M3

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 21, 2024

Tony and Al:

Sean Feucht seems to suggest Kamala is going to hell:

😅 pic.twitter.com/EbmHMicZMo

— Sean Feucht (@seanfeucht) October 23, 2024

Filed Under: Way of Improvement Tagged With: 2024 presidential election, evangelicalism, evangelicals and politics