The Republican National Committee has launched its first web-based effort to explain to religious conservatives how important it is for them to vote in this year’s midterm elections – a gesture that shows the GOP cannot risk taking its evangelical Christian base for granted.
“This shouldn’t be outreach, this should be who we are — it is who we are... Evangelicals are our biggest, most reliable voting bloc,” said Chad Connelly, director of faith engagement for RNC and the force behind GOPfaith.com.
Despite evangelicals identifying more closely than ever with the GOP, for some reason they do not seem to be turning out at the polls in adequate numbers, causing Republican candidates to lose the elections. According to Connelly, a conservative Christian who has also served as chairman of the Republican Party in South Carolina, votes based on faith are an afterthought in most places, which is why even though 89 million Americans call themselves evangelical Christians, only a third of them voted in 2012 and over one-fifth of those voters voted for Barack Obama.
RNC’s Faith Engagement group was set up in 2013 as a strategic initiative to ensure a larger turnout from evangelical Christians on Election Day. Earlier, the party did not have to make such efforts because conservative believers undoubtedly turned out for the GOP. But, ever since adjunct groups like Christian Coalition and Moral Majority have stopped taking as much of an initiative in the GOP’s propaganda, the party has felt the need to use digital tools to directly reach constituents that are likely to support their agenda but unlikely to show up on Election Day.
The website says its aim is to create an army of conservative pro-faith activists that will identify 100,000 believers to spread the message at the grassroots level, especially in churches. Evidently, pastors are in the center of affairs but according to Connelly, they are too reticent to discuss political issues because houses of worship could risk their tax exemption for endorsing individual candidates under federal law.
“Let’s overcome that myth of the Internal Revenue Service saying you can’t talk about this from the pulpit. Look, if there’s no freedom of speech in the pulpit, there’s no freedom of speech. Now is the time of righteous indignation, a time to be the ‘turn-the-tables-over Jesus’ and not the ‘meek, turn-the-other-cheek Jesus,’” said Connelly.
The initiative hopes to maximize the faith vote in red and purple states including Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas and North Carolina because winning these seats will help the GOP take over the majority in the Senate this year.
