Finding 'Common Good' Among Evangelicals In The Political Season (NPR)

On a recent evening in Houston, under the heavy branches of live oak trees, Doug Pagitt stood before a couple dozen people gathered on blue folding chairs on the Rice University campus.

"You've heard it said that to be a true Christian, you must vote like a Republican," he said. "But we are here to be reminded that just ain't so."

You have heard it said, 'America First,' but we are here to be reminded to 'seek first the Kingdom of God,' on behalf of all those everywhere in the world.

Pagitt, 52, describes himself as a progressive evangelical. He pastors a church in Minneapolis and has been traveling the country by bus, preaching a message that juxtaposes Trump campaign slogans against quotes from the Bible.

"You have heard it said, 'America First,' but we are here to be reminded to 'seek first the Kingdom of God,' on behalf of all those everywhere in the world," he said, quoting the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.

Pagitt's organization, Vote Common Good, is focusing on evangelicals and other Christian voters who feel out of place in President Trump's Republican Party. It's an uphill battle, given that more than 8 in 10 white evangelical voters supported Trump in 2016.

Pagitt said the group has just under $1 million in private donations. They're touring the country ahead of the midterms, visiting more than 30 congressional districts that were chosen in part based on their religious makeup.

At an event in San Antonio, Tracy Goodrich, 48, said she and her husband quietly left their evangelical church soon after the election.

"I kind of feel like I'm in this space where I grew up in an evangelical home, and with the last several years just kind of not feeling like I have a home as the things I once felt represented Christ and Christlikeness — completely the opposite things I see have been supported by family and friends and community," Goodrich said.

Goodrich, who is still home schooling two of her four children, said she voted for Republicans until 2016. But she doesn't like the way Trump talks about vulnerable people, she said, like immigrants, women and the poor.

Goodrich said many of her evangelical friends initially opposed Trump until it became clear he would be the Republican nominee.

"Literally all of a sudden, Donald Trump — we couldn't see anything wrong with Donald Trump. It was: Now we're blind to everything. But it was all on the abortion issue," she said.

Goodrich describes herself as "pro-life," but she said other issues, like helping the poor and helping those facing discrimination, should be just as important to Christians.

Singer Meah Pace has been traveling with the group, performing hymns like "Amazing Grace" at parks and churches. Pace grew up in a predominantly black Baptist church.

Unlike their white evangelical counterparts, black Christians overwhelmingly vote for Democrats; Pace said people who've faced a history of disenfranchisement often see the abortion debate differently.

"When you are fighting to keep your family together; when you're fighting to keep your children safe — from criminals and from cops; when you don't know if someone's gonna pick up your résumé because of your name; when you don't know how you're gonna send your kids to college — things like that, because things were set up that way to disenfranchise people," Pace said, "us fighting about an issue like this is something that we feel we can leave in God's hands."

Doug Pagitt said the issue of abortion has come up again and again since the bus began touring in early October. He published an op-ed in USA Today this week, arguing that evangelicals should put more energy into reducing abortions than trying to criminalize them and should vote against politicians who support Trump's agenda.

Kristan Hawkins, who runs the anti-abortion-rights group Students for Life, is a former evangelical who converted to Catholicism. She said she has heard this argument before and doesn't think most conservative Christian voters will buy it because of how they view abortion.

"There are certainly a lot of issues that Christians care about when they go to vote," Hawkins said. "But at the end of the day, we know there is a human rights atrocity happening inside of our country — and that atrocity is abortion."

However the issues are framed, pollster Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute said moving white evangelicals away from the GOP will be an uphill battle.

"Once you have several generations that are voting 80 percent Republican, it's less that they're doing that because of one particular issue, and more that it has become, in many ways, a kind of tribal identity that's just inextricably tied to evangelical identity," Jones said. "And I think that is the tie that binds much more than any single issue."

Vote Common Good is trying to push beyond those identities by talking to small groups of Christian voters almost daily in the weeks leading up to the midterms. Organizers say they're planning more events for the 2020 presidential cycle.

Rep. Ted Lieu, the current vice chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has informally advised the group. He said he hopes they will "help Americans understand that if they want to vote their conscience, there is a place in the Democratic Party for them."

Lieu said Democrats could do a better job of reaching religious voters including Christians.

"Religion and faith is something that's been part of America for over two centuries," Lieu said. "For one party to ignore that aspect of American life is not a good idea."

Until now, there has existed a strange silence on the subject of Democrat Party's absolute insistence on promoting the "destroying" of human life in the womb.

On the underlying question moral question discussed here, nothing addresses it better than the simple logic of this quotation from Mother Teresa, who, at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC on February 3, 1994, as cited above, stated: "And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"

Mother Teresa's declaration may be the most powerful statement in 2016 from which to begin discussions of where a candidate stands on all the questions of life and liberty.

In America, our constitutional protections rest on the Founders' premise that each and all individuals are "endowed by their Creator" with the unalienable right to both life and the liberty to enjoy it, or, in their words, "the pursuit of happiness."

The sole reason these rights were deemed unalienable is that both are derived from the Creator--not from the mother or father, and not from government or judicial decision. What is "granted" by human decision also can, by implication, be withheld.

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them (life and liberty)," said Thomas Jefferson.

"The world is different now. . . and yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forefathers fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God." - John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address

That understanding underlies every other consideration embodied in our Declaration of Independence and every protection of our Constitution. It is the very basis of our rights to life and liberty, of laws to protect them, and it distinguishes ours from other forms of government.

When we fail to acknowledge that foundation of our liberty, then we risk liberty itself for future generations, for where does the right to choose who lives and who does not really end?

That is why the question is of vital importance in each election. Already, we have deprived millions of their Creator-endowed rights to life and liberty, and our nation must be weaker for their loss. We need leaders who understand the implications and potential consequences of departing from our founding principles.

In recent decades, technological advances have enabled us to observe the characteristics and actions of God's tiniest creations in the womb. Unlike previous generations who could not see, we have no excuse for imagining that these are mere blobs of tissue labeled "fetuses." In their early weeks, we now can see that they are living babies who will continue on to possess life and liberty if we do not "destroy" both. Indeed, they are simply smaller versions of ourselves.

Questions on the economy, taxes, threats from terrorists, health care--all are considerations at this election time. One, however, may be basic to all others. Who will best protect the underlying premise of our Constitution--and the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn?

Promises are illusive and cheap. One fact is indisputable, however: Hillary Clinton is committed to the Far Left's agenda on this matter, and that agenda is not compatible with our Constitution's premise.

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