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When Robert Jeffress takes the pulpit at First Baptist Dallas on Sunday, he’ll give his 16,000 congregants a not-so-subtle message: Beware of false faith. Jeffress will preach about the Tower of Babel, a topic that shares “some parallels to what's happening in the election,” he said in a recent interview with POLITICO. “My goal as a pastor is not to get people in the voting booth, but to keep them out of hell,” the archconservative megachurch pastor, televangelist and longtime Republican backer said. Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, “seems harmless,” Jeffress continued, “but the toxic faith he is preaching will lead people away from heaven, not toward it.” On Sunday morning, conservative evangelical pastors across the country will be sharing a similar message, with the hope of galvanizing their congregations to support right-wing candidates and causes on Election Day. But the big difference from recent years: They’ll be preaching against Democrats in four battleground U.S. Senate and House races who’ve made their faith a key part of their campaign message. Talarico is a few classes short of becoming an ordained minister. Kansas Senate Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton is pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country. In Iowa, Presbyterian pastor Lindsay James and Lutheran minister Sarah Trone Garriott are running for Congress. All four are in tight races in red territory, according to polls. They’ve all made their faith an explicit part of their closing message. “Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.’ This is really important. All of these things guide us,” Hamilton says in his stump speech. “I approve this message because my faith teaches me that caring for my neighbor is not optional,” James says in a face-to-camera ad. It’s a marked deviation from decades of the Democratic Party’s gradual march toward a less religious tone that has matched their increasingly secular voting base, and an effort to win over politically moderate believers who have grown disgruntled with Trump and the Republicans. These Democrats' campaigns have put the country’s conservative evangelical pastors in unfamiliar territory: needing to convince their congregants that self-described fellow believers deserve their condemnation, not their vote. “There are some Christians that don’t know how to respond to it, because [the candidates] are using all the same language that we do, but they are advocating for a lot of things that we are not for,” said Josh Bingaman, lead pastor of the First Church Open Bible in Des Moines, Iowa. Many conservative pastors contend these Democrats are wolves in sheep’s clothing, pointing out disagreements on abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender rights or even the nature of God. In Wichita, Kansas, Rob Rotola of Word of Life Church will lay out the stakes of the election in his Sunday sermon. He said he has “no problem” calling Hamilton a false prophet, and imagines when his sermon is through, his congregants will “feel sorry for Adam Hamilton and would pray for him, but would tell their friends where he stands.” In Iowa, Mike Demastus of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ plans to remind his congregants of “the importance of every single one of us, as believers, to go and vote and be engaged in this process.” He doesn’t include Trone Garriott among those “believers”: “She's a poser and a fake, and most conservative evangelical Christians see through that as quickly as she can say it.” Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in the state, called Trone Garriott a “dangerous politician” and dismissed James as straying from the true path. “To hijack Scripture to make it fit your agenda, versus to embrace the comprehensive nature of Scripture to fit God's agenda, that's a very, very risky thing to do,” Vander Plaats said in an interview. A spokesperson for Talarico pointed to the candidate’s past statements on faith, including his assertion that “when I take on the politicians who are serving themselves and not the people, I’m doing it on biblical grounds.” Trone Garriott spokesperson Zach Schenkman said that “while others try to divide Iowans and dictate how every Christian should practice their faith, Sarah is focused on showing up to make a difference for her neighbors.” James spokesperson Jackson Smith said: “No politician gets to define or dictate how any Iowan practices their faith, and Iowans are disgusted by this kind of politics.” Hamilton’s campaign declined to comment. Trump has long enjoyed overwhelming support from white evangelical Christians: In 2024, exit polls found more than eight in 10 white evangelical Protestants voted for the president. Even now, as his approval rating among other demographic groups has declined sharply, Trump’s support remains relatively strong with white evangelicals, according to polls. Some conservative evangelical leaders have long mixed faith and politics, criticizing Joe Biden for how he practiced his Catholicism, questioning whether Hillary Clinton was really a practicing Methodist, and attacking Barack Obama’s sincerity as a Christian (Jeffress once said Obama was "paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist”). Other pastors feel newly empowered by the Trump administration’s moves to loosen restrictions on tax-exempt churches engaging in partisan political activity. Joseph Hall, lead pastor of Crossroads Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, said that for weeks he has dedicated a portion of his Sunday sermon to talking about the midterms: “I am promoting ‘vote red.’ Most every Republican stands closer to our beliefs and people of faith’s lifestyle than obviously the Democrats.” Jeffress, a longtime Trump booster, says he will not be explicitly endorsing Republican candidates this cycle. He argues his dalliance into the election is a moral engagement, not a political one. “As a pastor, I'm reacting to what James Talarico is saying about his faith more than his politics,” Jeffress said. “Look, James Talarico's religious beliefs don't disqualify him from being a senator, but they do disqualify him from being a Christian pastor, or even a Christian.”
document fetched 2026-11-01 02:57 · canonical https://politico.com/news/2026/10/31/conservative-pastors-sermons-talarico-hamilton-christian-01143604