Those invited to recent luncheons come from various denominations. Most are Southern Baptist, charismatic or Pentecostal. The men — there are few, if any, women pastors — are overwhelmingly white. And despite the commonly used term Judeo-Christian, there are hardly any Catholics, and certainly no Jews.
Among those who spoke at most of the eight events across the state were two Baptist pastors on the Nov. 8 ballot. One is running, unopposed, for commissioner in Bladen County; the other is running for the North Carolina House in heavily Republican-leaning Randolph County. Barring a disaster, both will win.
Pastors lay hands and pray for Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, center left, at a pastors luncheon hosted by the American Renewal Project in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Oct. 10, 2022. The Rev. Gary Miller, director of the project, on stage, leads the prayer. RNS Photo by Yonat Shimron
The two pastors peppered their on-stage appeals with biblical references. One cited Peter, Jesus’ disciple, finding the courage to get out of the boat during the storm. The other paraphrased the Book of Esther so beloved by evangelicals: “You’ve been brought into the kingdom for such a time as this.”
A common refrain at the American Renewal Project is that Jesus’ saying, “Upon this rock I will build my church,” is commonly misconstrued. The Greek word “ecclesia,” often translated as “church,” actually means “assembly.” American Renewal’s supporters take this as a sign that Jesus wanted Christians to have influence in the public square, not just inside the walls of a church.
Project leaders think the strategy is working. They claim 50 pastors ran for various North Carolina offices in this year’s primaries, and 25 won their nominations and will appear on this November’s ballots.
The Renewal Project did not, however, provide a list of those vying for public office, and only a handful could be independently verified. The group does not fund any the pastors’ campaigns.
One reason, for the middling response? Pastors haven’t seen public office as part of their call.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson campaigned to become the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 1988. Mike Huckabee, formerly a Baptist pastor and also former governor of Arkansas, also ran for president in 2008 and 2016. Neither came close to clinching the nomination.
It wasn’t until 1978 that it was even possible for pastors in all states to run. Historically, some states had clauses in their constitutions prohibiting clergy from running for office, a holdover from English common law. In McDaniel v. Paty, the Supreme Court struck down the last of those clauses, ruling that a Tennessee law prohibiting clergy members from serving as political delegates violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
“For much of the 19th and 20th centuries there was a general idea that ministerial service was a separate profession from politics and it was incompatible with running for office,” said Daniel K. Williams, professor of history at the University of West Georgia.
Black pastors have, at times, been the exception, and almost exclusively on the Democratic ticket. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., onetime pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, served as a Democratic U.S. congressman from 1945 until 1971. The Rev. Jesse Jackson ran unsuccessfully for president in 1984 and 1988. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, is now running for reelection to the U.S. Senate. In local races there have undoubtedly been many more.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson addresses an American Renewal Project pastor luncheon on Oct. 31, 2022, in Jamestown, N.C. RNS photo by Yonat Shimron
Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, who is Black, is an exception. He captured the state’s second-highest elected office after a 2018 video that captured him admonishing the Greensboro City Council for attempting to cancel a biannual gun show went viral. Since winning office in 2020, he has defined himself as a culture warrior, decrying “transgenderism and homosexuality” as “filth,” calling for eliminating the state Board of Education and opposing abortion (though he acknowledged that he and his future wife terminated a pregnancy in 1989).
