(RNS) — With President Joe Biden sitting over his right shoulder, Bishop J. Louis Felton made it clear as he stood in his Philadelphia pulpit how he felt about the continuing candidacy of his guest.
“If we ever lock arms and come together, there’s no election that we cannot win,
there’s no enemy that we cannot defeat,” said the senior pastor of Mount Airy Church of God in Christ at a campaign event on Sunday (July 7). “We are together because we love our president,” Felton said, as his congregants cheered in agreement.
“We are together because we love our president. We pray for our president. We ask that you continue to give him strength. He’s an Eagles fan. Renew his youth like the eagles. Let him mount up with wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint.”
Just before Felton’s prayerful affirmation, a gospel choir had sung a song with lyrics that included the words “You are important to me. I need you to survive.”
In the wake of Biden’s widely panned debate performance Biden against former President Donald Trump, there is strong support as well as a plethora of questions from a wide array of Americans, including those in the country’s Black churches, long considered a significant part of Biden’s base.
At Mount Airy, when Biden concluded his seven-minute remarks in which he praised the power of the faith of Black churches “in good times and in tough times” — members of the church chanted “four more years.”
On the other hand, another Church of God in Christ minister, the Rev. Karl Anderson of Gainesville, Florida, said he’s hearing no-voting threats and “serious” fear — despite the biblical command against it — from the barbershop to the texts that interrupted his attendance at an international COGIC convention in St. Louis on the night of the debate.
“I’m getting text messages from people back home, saying, ‘Pastor, what are we going to do? it’s not looking good,’” Anderson recalled. “I’m getting text messages from family members: ‘Cuz, it’s not looking good. I don’t know what we’re going to do. Man, we got to pray.’”
A Thursday report from Pew Research Center shows that registered voters said if they only had Biden and Trump as candidate choices, 50% would side with the former president, compared with 47% with the incumbent. Trump has greater support among white voters (50% to 36%) while Biden has the greater share of Black voters (64% to 13%, with 21% supporting third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).
While Protestants overall favor Trump (55% to 29%, with 15% supporting Kennedy), Black Protestants favor Biden (65% to 11%, with 22% supporting Kennedy).
The survey, taken July 1-7, follows an April 8-14 survey that did not include questions about Kennedy. The earlier survey found 48% of registered voters favoring Biden and 49% for Trump. Protestants overall favored Trump (60% to 38%), while Black Protestants gave Biden more support (77% to 18%).
The numbers show, before and after the debate, that there is not monolithic Black church support for Biden.
