Father, we ask that You empower church leaders to have boldness in speaking the truth in love.  Thank you for the many pastors who preach the Word consistently and effectively. Encourage them, Lord.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free… (Lk 4:18)

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Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez complained about voters being influenced by the “pulpit on Sunday” during an event in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

Perez, speaking at Demand Justice’s “The Court In Crisis: What’s Next For Progressives After Kavanaugh” summit, discussed the need he saw for Democrats to more effectively get their message out to voters.

“[W]e all have to make sure we’re fluent in what’s happening across our ecosystem so that we can come to each other’s defense, because we need to build a bigger orchestra,” he said. “They’ve had a big orchestra for some time, and they’ve got the megaphones to amplify it, whether it’s Sinclair at a local level, Fox at a national level.”…

“I’ve learned this from the outreach we’ve done at the DNC. Why aren’t we penetrating, I asked. And I had someone in northwestern Wisconsin tell me, ‘you know what, for most of the people I know, they’re principle sources of information are Fox News, their NRA newsletter, and the pulpit on Sunday.’ And it should come as a surprise to no one that our message doesn’t penetrate,” Perez continued. “It should come as a surprise to no one that that person has elevated the issue, of course, to the top, because that person on the pulpit is saying ‘ignore everything else that this person has done and is doing. We have to focus on one issue of Roe vs. Wade.'”…

The Democratic Party has struggled to appeal to religious voters, especially evangelicals. Eighty percent of white evangelicals supported President Donald Trump in 2016. Protestant voters made up just over half of the electorate in 2016, and Trump won 56 percent compared to 39 percent for Hillary Clinton. A slight majority of Catholics, who make up the second largest bloc of religious voters, supported Trump over Clinton. Trump won a majority of religious voters who attend services at least monthly.

In 2018, 75 percent of white evangelicals supported Republican candidates. Among Protestant voters, 55 percent supported the GOP, while Catholics split about evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Fifty-five percent of voters who attend religious services at least monthly supported GOP candidates….

“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country,” Feinstein said.

In a December 2016 interview with The Atlantic about the Democrats’ “religion problem,” Michael Wear, an evangelical Christian who directed former president Barack Obama’s faith outreach efforts in 2012, said Democrats are “not even pretending to give these voters a reason to vote for them.” (Excerpts from Jeffrey Cimmino article on The Washington Free Beacon)

PDF Version of December 13, 2018 Alert