NEW YORK (RNS)—By going on the offensive in the second presidential debate, Donald Trump may have righted his listing campaign enough to halt the defections that followed the shocking video showing him bragging about groping women and exploiting them for sex.

But even after a weekend spent huddling in Manhattan plotting strategy, a crucial question for the Republican nominee was whether this latest outrage would finally repel conservative Christians who are key to the GOP’s hopes for recapturing the White House.

So far, the verdict appears mixed.

‘We’re all sinners’

Many of Trump’s longtime Christian supporters, especially in the party’s white evangelical base, stuck by the New York real estate mogul and reality television star.

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., an early and vocal Trump backer who had remained silent since the damning video came out Oct. 7, lavished praise on Trump in a tweet posted right after the debate at Washington University in St. Louis.

Falwell later expanded on those comments, telling WABC radio in New York City the video leak “might have even been a conspiracy among the establishment Republicans who’ve known about it for weeks and who tried to time it to do the maximum damage to Donald Trump.”

Trump had been “contrite” about the comments, Falwell said, adding: “We’re all sinners, every one of us. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t.”

The next day, Focus on the Family founder and Trump supporter James Dobson indicated in a statement that he still would back Trump.

“The comments Mr. Trump made 11 years ago were deplorable, and I condemn them entirely,” Dobson said. “I also find Hillary Clinton’s support of partial birth abortion criminal and her opinion of evangelicals to be bigoted. There really is only one difference between the two. Mr. Trump promises to support religious liberty and the dignity of the unborn. Mrs. Clinton promises she will not.”

Locker room banter

After the 2005 video came out, Trump initially dismissed the comments about grabbing women’s genitals and forcing himself on them as “locker room banter,” and he said Hillary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, was “far worse.”

As the backlash against Trump mounted, he released a video from his Trump Tower home apologizing for the comments but pivoting again to argue that Bill Clinton was worse and Hillary Clinton was complicit in covering up for her husband.

Dozens of Republican officials began withdrawing their endorsements of Trump or calling on him to withdraw, and his campaign appeared to be in freefall.

But Trump continued to insist his trangressions were nothing compared to what a Clinton presidency would do to the country—a line he used in the debate as he repeatedly attacked his opponent in harsh and personal terms.

Hierarchy of concerns

If that logic made some in the GOP nervous, it resonated with many evangelical leaders.

“People of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, grow the economy, appoint conservative judges and oppose the Iran nuclear deal,” said Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and a Trump supporter.

“In their hierarchy of concerns, an 11-year-old tape of a private conversation with a talk show host on a tour bus ranks very low,” Reed said, arguing the video would have “little or no impact.”

Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and a member of Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board, said the comments were “lewd, offensive, and indefensible.” But he said he would still be voting for Trump over Clinton.

“Here is a woman who lied to the families of the Benghazi victims, she destroyed 33,000 emails while under subpoena, and she’s attacked the women who attacked her husband,” Jeffress told The Daily Beast. “The fact is we’re all sinners, we all need forgiveness, and God doesn’t grade people according to their level of sin.”

Shared concerns, not shared values

Tony Perkins, another prominent evangelical adviser to Trump and leader of the conservative Family Research Council, also stood by the candidate.

“My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values; it is based upon shared concerns about issues such as justices on the Supreme Court that ignore the constitution, America’s continued vulnerability to Islamic terrorists and the systematic attack on religious liberty that we’ve seen in the last 7 1/2 years,” Perkins said in an email to BuzzFeed News.

Michele Bachmann, a former Republican congresswoman and outspoken evangelical who has been one of Trump’s main champions, dismissed the tape as “bad boy talk” in an interview on MSNBC and said she would still support the GOP nominee.

Eric Metaxas, a popular Christian author and vocal Trump defender, initially made light of Trump’s comments in Twitter but then deleted that comment after sharp criticism. He later wrote that Trump’s remarks were “ugly stuff,” but he did not renounce his support for Trump.

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network also sought to minimize Trump’s culpability. “This just in: Donald Trump is a flawed man!” he tweeted. “We ALL sin every single day. What if we had a ‘hot mic’ around each one of us all the time?”

Reaffirmed #NeverTrump views

On the other side, Christian leaders who have long been in the #NeverTrump camp indicated that the latest tape only reaffirmed their prophecies about Trump’s unsuitability for the Oval Office.

They also lamented the spectacle of their fellow believers defending him.

“What a disgrace. What a scandal to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the integrity of our witness,” tweeted Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and a staunch Trump foe.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, echoed that view: “I am humiliated by arguments about character I am hearing tonight from some evangelicals. Lord, help us.”

Owen Strachan, director of the Center for Public Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that Christian men have to speak out against Trump if the church is to maintain a credible witness.

“We … boggle at how some Christians and conservatives still defend Donald Trump,” Strachan wrote. “Without telling anyone who to vote for, let me speak directly: His words are inexcusable. His conduct is reprehensible. He deserves no defense.”

“Cannot be defended, but …”

Others who have backed Trump seemed to try to thread the needle—distancing themselves from a full embrace of the candidate but still signaling that Christians could, and perhaps should, support him.

Franklin Graham, who has praised Trump while not officially endorsing him, wrote on Facebook that “the crude comments made by Donald J. Trump more than 11 years ago cannot be defended.”

“But,” he continued, “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended.”

Graham said the next president’s nominations to the Supreme Court are what matter most—a rationale deployed by Christian conservatives to justify voting for Trump based on his promises to appoint justices who will rule against legalized abortion.

Backpeddling theologian

The most prominent in this camp was evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem, whose endorsement of Trump earlier this year provoked a split among evangelical leaders.

A few hours before the debate, Grudem backtracked on his praise of Trump as “a morally good choice” and said that if he had known then what he knows now, he would not have written that.

He called on Trump to withdraw in favor of another nominee, but he also said that Christians must vote and the Republican Party is a far better choice than the Democrats.

In the end, what matters will be what conservative Christian voters think, and Trump could be in bigger trouble with the rank and file than he is with the leadership.

Even before this latest episode, he appeared to be significantly underperforming with white evangelicals, earning less than70 percent support from that critical bloc as opposed to the nearly 8-in-10 white evangelical voters who have gone for the Republican candidate in recent presidential election cycles.

NASHVILLE (BP)—Political endorsements by preachers appear to have been few and far between this election season—perhaps because the most popular candidate among preachers is “I don’t know,” a recent study shows.

A report from LifeWay Research found four out of 10 Protestant pastors are undecided about their presidential vote. A third (32 percent) plan to vote for Donald Trump. One in five (19 percent) plans to vote for Hillary Clinton. Four percent support Gary Johnson. Three percent do not plan to vote.

Researchers surveyed 1,000 Protestant senior pastors Aug. 22-Sept. 16, before the presidential debates. This was prior to the emergence of an 11-year-old video in which Trump described women in vulgar terms and talked about groping them.

Most pastors are ambivalent about the major party candidates, said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research.

“Donald Trump does better with pastors than Hillary Clinton,” he said. “But both candidates are still less popular than ‘Undecided.’”

Christians vote but necessarily not the same way

Researchers found wide support for voting among Protestant pastors. Eighty-eight percent of pastors say American Christians have a biblical responsibility to vote. That includes pastors of all denominational stripes—from Pentecostal (98 percent) and Baptist pastors (95 percent) to Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (81 percent) and Church of Christ ministers (79 percent).

But pastors don’t expect all Christians to vote the same way, and few believe Christians should support only candidates who can win. Two-thirds (65 percent) disagree with the statement, “Christians who truly vote their conscience will vote for the same candidate.” Less than a third (29 percent) agree. Six percent are not sure.

Two-thirds also disagree with the statement, “American Christians should vote for a candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning.” Twenty-nine percent agree, and 6 percent are not sure.

While they believe voting is important, Protestant pastors have been extremely reluctant to make political endorsements during church services. Ninety-eight percent of pastors surveyed have not endorsed a candidate during a church service this year. One percent have endorsed a candidate during a service, and 1 percent are not sure.

Endorsements outside church are more common. Twenty-two percent of Protestant pastors have endorsed a candidate outside their church role. Seventy-seven percent have not. One percent are not sure.

A similar survey in 2012 found 10 percent of Protestant pastors agreed when asked whether pastors should endorse a candidate from the pulpit. Eighty-seven percent disagreed. In 2012, 44 percent agreed they had endorsed candidates outside of their church role. Fifty-two percent disagreed.

“Enthusiasm for endorsements appears to be waning this year,” McConnell said.

What matters most?

Researchers found no consensus among pastors about which characteristic matters most when choosing a candidate. Twenty-seven percent say personal character matters most. Twenty percent are most concerned about a candidate’s likely Supreme Court nominees. Twelve percent say the ability to protect religious freedom is most important. Ten percent point to the candidate’s position on abortion. Among other factors: the ability to improve the economy (6 percent), ability to maintain national security (5 percent) and a candidate’s position on immigration (2 percent).

Pastors voting for Trump are more likely to cite Supreme Court nominees (36 percent) and abortion (17 percent) and less likely to say personal character matters most (10 percent). Pastors voting for Clinton are more likely to cite personal character (28 percent) and immigration (7 percent) and less likely to cite abortion (less than 1 percent).

Baptist pastors care most about potential Supreme Court nominees (28 percent). Presbyterian/Reformed (36 percent), Methodist (34 percent) and Holiness pastors (34 percent) favor personal character, and Pentecostal pastors (30 percent) care most about religious freedom.

Demographics and denominations divide pastors when it comes to the 2016 election:

• African-American pastors (37 percent) are most likely to vote for Clinton. Six percent plan to vote for Trump and 54 percent are undecided.
• White pastors (35 percent) favor Trump, while 18 percent favor Clinton and 41 percent are undecided.
• Methodist (44 percent) and Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (50 percent) are more likely to support Clinton.
• Baptist (46 percent) and Pentecostal pastors (61 percent), along with Church of Christ ministers (50 percent), are more likely to favor Trump.
• Pastors voting for Trump are the most likely to say Christians should vote for a candidate who can win (43 percent).
• Evangelical pastors (36 percent) are more likely than mainline pastors (16 percent) to say Christians who vote their conscience will support the same candidate.
• • Democratic pastors (78 percent) are most likely to vote for Clinton, and Republican pastors (53 percent) are most likely to vote for Trump.
• • Pastors who are still undecided include independents (52 percent), those age 18-44 (52 percent), and evangelicals (45 percent).

Clergy and other church leaders may share a common faith, McConnell said. That doesn’t mean they all agree on who should lead the country.

“When it comes to politics, pastors are just as divided as other Americans,” McConnell said.

Researchers used a stratified random sample calling list, drawn from a list of all Protestant churches and used quotas for church size. Each interview was conducted with the senior pastor, minister or priest of the church called.

Analysts weighted responses by region to reflect the population more accurately. The completed sample is 1,000 surveys, providing 95 percent confidence the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.2 percent. Margins of error are higher in subgroups. Subgroups for voting intentions are limited to likely voters.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (RNS)—Talking about one’s faith doesn’t come naturally to a “Midwestern Methodist,” Hillary Clinton admitted. But she spent about a half-hour doing just that, addressing the National Baptist Convention, USA, one of the nation’s oldest and largest African-American religious organizations.

The Democratic presidential nominee quoted Scripture and hymns as she described her “activist, social-justice faith—a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-your-hands-dirty faith.”

“I am grateful for the gift of personal salvation and for the great obligation of the social gospel to use the gift of grace wisely, to reflect the love of God and to follow the example of Jesus Christ to the greater good of God’s beloved community,” she said. “That’s what led me to devote my life in the ways I could to serving others.”

Clinton’s Sept. 8 remarks at the 136th annual session of the National Baptist Convention, USA, in Kansas City followed Donald Trump’s address a few days earlier to the predominantly African-American Great Faith Ministries International Church in Detroit.

Early influences

In her speech, Clinton remembered her father kneeling beside his bed to pray and her mother teaching Sunday school. She remembered traveling from Chicago’s suburbs into the city with her church youth minister to attend a black congregation for the first time and to hear a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. and shake his hand.

She recounted the “hard lesson” she has taught as the occasional Sunday school teacher: “We’re not asked to love each other, not urged or requested. We’re commanded to love. Indeed, Jesus made it his greatest commandment.”

Faith and works

She repeated the Methodist credo that has peppered her speeches throughout her campaign: “Do all the good you can for all the people you can in all the ways you can as long as ever you can.”

And she drew applause and shouts, citing a quote attributed to St. Francis, “Try to preach the gospel always, and, if necessary, use words,” and Bible verses: “Faith without works is dead” and “We cannot just be hearers of the word, we must be doers.”

“For me, it has always been about trying to live up to the responsibility described by the prophet Micah—that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God,” she said.

Impact of faith on public policy

Clinton also praised the gun buyback program at Tabernacle Community Baptist Church in Milwaukee while pledging to support “common-sense gun safety reforms.”

She remembered celebrating the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ resistance to segregation at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., saying: “Rosa Parks may have opened up every seat on the bus. Now it’s our job to create good jobs so everyone can afford the fare.”

She pledged to reform the criminal justice system, address systemic racism, raise the national minimum wage, guarantee equal pay for women, support small businesses and bring back high school vocational programs. She called threats to limit voting rights a “blast from the Jim Crow past.”

And she touted her experience as secretary of state, wrestling with the hard choices “that will drive you to your knees” with President Obama in the Situation Room.

“As president, I will be your partner in this work of translating love into action,” she said.

Throughout the night, Clinton took several jabs at her Republican opponent. Clinton leads Trump 91 percent to 1 percent with registered African-American voters nationwide, according to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released last month.

Trump has “a long history of racial discrimination in his business,” Clinton asserted. And she responded to his recent appeal to black voters, in which he said: “You’re living in poverty; your schools are no good. You have no jobs; 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

“People who look at the African-American community and see only poverty, crime and despair are missing so much,” she said.

Clinton also spoke about the humility she said is rarely mentioned in politics, but an important quality in a leader, admitting she’d made mistakes.

“It’s grace that lifts us up, grace that leads us home,” she said. 

NASHVILLE (BP)—Since the 1950s, the IRS has banned preachers from endorsing candidates during worship services if their churches want to retain tax status as nonprofit organizations. A new study reveals most Americans seem to like it that way.

Eight in 10 U.S. adults (79 percent) say it is inappropriate for pastors to endorse a candidate in church. Three-quarters say churches should steer clear of endorsements. Yet fewer than half want churches to be punished if they do endorse candidates. Those are among the findings in a new report on religion and politics from LifeWay Research.

Americans already argue enough

Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, cites little enthusiasm for political endorsement by pastors or churches.

“Americans already argue about politics enough outside the church,” McConnell said. “They don’t want pastors bringing those arguments into worship.”

The IRS law regarding endorsements, known as the Johnson Amendment, dates back to a conflict between then-U.S. Sen. Lyndon Johnson and a Texas nonprofit that opposed his re-election bid. Approved in 1954, the IRS rule bans all 501(c)(3) nonprofits, including churches, from active involvement in political campaigns.

Since 2008, a group of mostly Protestant pastors has challenged the ban each year by endorsing candidates in an event called “Pulpit Freedom Sunday.” Recent polling shows few churchgoers have heard their pastor endorse a candidate. The Johnson Amendment has been a point of contention this election season in some quarters.

Disapproval of pastoral endorsements strong and consistent

The new LifeWay report compares results from telephone surveys of 1,000 Americans about religion and politics in 2008 and 2015. Researchers found disapproval of endorsements remains strong.

In both surveys, LifeWay Research asked Americans to respond to the following statement: “I believe it is appropriate for pastors to publicly endorse candidates for public office during a church service.”

In 2008, 86 percent of Americans disagreed, while 13 percent agreed. One percent was not sure. In 2015, 79 percent disagreed, while 19 percent agreed. Two percent were unsure.

Support for endorsements was tepid across denominational lines in 2015. Few Protestants (20 percent) or Catholics (13 percent) see endorsements as appropriate. A quarter of evangelicals (25 percent) agreed, while 16 percent of other Americans agreed.

Support for endorsements outside of church declined slightly. In 2008, about half of Americans (53 percent) said it was appropriate for pastors to endorse candidates outside of their role at church. In 2015, fewer than half (43 percent) agreed.

Churches should steer clear of endorsements

Americans also want churches to steer clear of endorsements in general. Three-quarters disagreed with the statement: “I believe it is appropriate for churches to publicly endorse candidates for public office.” Twenty-four percent agreed. One percent was not sure.

A 2008 survey found similar results. Seventy-six percent disagreed. Twenty-two percent agreed. Two percent were not sure.

Again, those who support endorsements remain in a minority across faith traditions. Three in 10 (29 percent) of evangelicals said endorsements by churches are appropriate. Twenty-seven percent of Protestants agreed, as did only 18 percent of Catholics. Weekly churchgoers (29 percent) were skeptical, as well as those who rarely or never go to church (18 percent).

Stay out of political campaigns

Most Americans also want churches to steer clear of any involvement with political campaigns. Eighty-one percent disagreed with the statement, “I believe it is appropriate for churches to use their resources to campaign for candidates for public office.” Seventeen percent agreed. Two percent were not sure.

LifeWay Research found similar results in 2008. Thirteen percent agreed, 85 percent disagreed, while 2 percent were not sure.

Fewer Americans think churches should be punished for their involvement in campaigns.

In 2015, fewer than half (42 percent) said churches should lose their tax exemption for publicly endorsing candidates. Fifty-two percent disagreed. Five percent were not sure.

In 2008, more than half (52 percent) of Americans said churches should lose their tax exemption for publicly endorsing candidates. Forty-two percent disagreed. Six percent were not sure.

Demographic differences noted

Men (47 percent), people in the Northeast (46 percent) and those in the West (48 percent) were more likely to say churches should lose their tax exemption. Women (38 percent) and Southerners (37 percent) were less likely.

Adherents of non-Christian religions (56 percent), nones (53 percent) and those who rarely or never go to church (52 percent) were more likely to agree churches should lose tax exemptions. Fewer Christians (37 percent), those with evangelical beliefs (33 percent) or those who go to church at least once or twice monthly (35 percent) agreed.

“Endorsements from the pulpit are unpopular, and most Americans say they are inappropriate,” McConnell said. “But they don’t want churches to be punished for something a pastor said.”

Researchers conducted the phone survey of Americans Sept. 14-28, 2015. The calling utilized random digit dialing. Fifty percent of completes were among landlines and 50 percent among cell phones. Analysts used maximum quotas and slight weights for gender, region, age, ethnicity and education to reflect the population more accurately.

The completed sample is 1,000 surveys, providing 95 percent confidence the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.6 percent. Margins of error are higher in subgroups.

Analysts also compared results to a LifeWay Research telephone survey of Americans June 12-14, 2008, using randomly dialed listed landlines.

LifeWay Research is a Nashville-based evangelical research firm that specializes in surveys about faith in culture and matters that affect churches.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee—More than 100,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages nationwide last year, but few Protestant pastors officiated at the ceremonies.

A new survey by Nashville-based LifeWay Research found only 11 percent of Protestant senior pastors have been asked to perform a same-sex wedding.

At 1 percent, Baptist pastors are the least likely to say they were asked to perform a same-sex wedding. At 26 percent, Presbyterian/Reformed pastors are most likely.

Overall, pastors who identify as mainline were three times as likely to have been asked than evangelical pastors—18 percent for mainline, compared to 6 percent for evangelicals. Pastors 55 and older (14 percent) are twice as likely to have been asked than those 54 and younger (7 percent).

“Most couples, if they want a church wedding, will ask a pastor they know or who they think will support them,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “For same-sex couples, this appears to be an older Presbyterian pastor.”

Role of LGBT individuals in church

The survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors also asked about the role of LGBT people in the church, which remains a contentious issue for many denominations. Fewer than half of Protestant senior pastors say their church allows lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender people to serve, even in limited roles, LifeWay Research found.

When asked where LGBT people can serve, 34 percent of senior pastors say “nowhere.” Thirty percent say “anywhere.” Fifteen percent say LGBT people can serve in at least one role. Twenty-one percent aren’t sure or haven’t discussed the issue.

Slightly more than half (51 percent) of mainline pastors say LGBT people can serve anywhere. By contrast, only 18 percent of evangelical pastors say the same.

Among denominational traditions, Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (66 percent) are most likely to say LGBT people can serve anywhere, followed by Methodists (49 percent) and Lutherans (42 percent). Baptists (8 percent) and Pentecostals (13 percent) are least likely.

Pentecostal (58 percent) and Baptist pastors (54 percent) are most likely to say LGBT people are not allowed to serve. Methodist (5 percent) and Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (14 percent) are least likely. Overall, 42 percent of evangelical pastors say there is nowhere for LGBT people to serve in church. Only 22 percent of mainline pastors agree.

Defying stereotypes

The research shows pastors don’t always fit the stereotypes when it comes to the roles of LGBT people in church, McConnell said.

Evangelical pastors are often seen as less friendly to LGBT people, but fewer than half of their churches completely bar LGBT people from serving, he noted.

Mainline pastors, on the other hand, are seen as affirming to LGBT people, yet they are split down the middle over whether LGBT people can serve anywhere. And a surprising number of churches haven’t talked about the issue, McConnell said.

Serve in the background, not in leadership

Pastors seem most comfortable allowing LGBT people to serve in the background.

Forty-four percent of all pastors in the survey say LGBT people can serve in “helping or serving roles.” Fewer say they can lead public worship (32 percent), teach publicly (32 percent) or hold public leadership roles (33 percent).

Many mainline pastors (64 percent) say LGBT people can fill helping or serving roles. They are more divided over whether LGBT people can lead worship (54 percent), teach (54 percent) or hold leadership roles (55 percent).

Fewer evangelical pastors say LGBT people can lead worship (19 percent), teach (20 percent) or hold leadership roles (21 percent). A third (35 percent) say LGBT people can fill helping or serving roles.

A previous LifeWay Research study found most Protestant pastors believe same-sex marriage is morally wrong, but there’s less consensus about the roles LGBT people can play in church.

“More pastors are open to LGBT people serving in their church than being married there,” he said.

Researchers conducted the phone survey of Protestant pastors March 9-24. The calling list was a stratified random sample, drawn from a list of all Protestant churches. The study used quotas for church size and Black Protestant denominations.

Researchers conducted each interview with the senior pastor, minister or priest of the church called. Analysts weighted responses by region to reflect the population more accurately. The completed sample is 1,000 surveys, providing 95 percent confidence the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.2 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  After this article originally was posted, California Sen. Ricardo Lara—sponsor of the bill—announced he was amending the legislation to keep religious exemptions for colleges and universities in place. The bill still requires schools to “disclose if they have an exemption and report to the state when students are expelled for violating morality codes.”

WASHINGTON (BP)—A multi-faith coalition urged California legislators to abandon a bill it says would violate religious freedom in higher education.

The coalition—spearheaded by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission—called for members of the State Assembly to oppose Senate Bill 1146.

The statement—signed by more than 140 religious, academic, legal, policy and media leaders—says the legislation especially would harm low-income minority students who seek to attend religious universities and colleges. 

The measure also would limit the capability of schools to establish standards consistent with their religious beliefs, the endorsers assert.

In the statement, the signers acknowledge they do not all agree on religious issues but “all agree that the government has no place in discriminating against poor religious minorities or in pitting a religious education institution’s faith-based identity against its American identity.”

The California legislation—passed by the state Senate in late May—would only exempt seminaries and other schools that train students for pastoral ministry, theological teaching or another religious vocation from anti-discrimination laws. The state assembly could vote on the proposal by Aug. 19.

One effect of the measure, opponents say, would be to deny Cal Grants—scholarships for low-income students, three-fourths of whom are minorities—to students who attend religiously affiliated nonprofit universities or colleges in the state.

Opponents of SB 1146 also contend it would bar Christian and other religious schools from enforcing such requirements as a profession of faith by their students and faculty, standards of sexual conduct, restroom and locker room policies based on biology instead of gender identity, and the integration of faith in curriculum.

“Applying legal or political pressure on institutions that disagree with the cultural majority of the moment is not merely unwise or unfair—it is un-American,” said ERLC President Russell Moore. “A healthy American culture is one in which ideas can freely be discussed and debated, in good faith, among people who, though they disagree, would defend the right of the other to participate.”

Southern Baptists signing the statement include seminary presidents Al Mohler, Paige Patterson, Chuck Kelley, Jeff Iorg, Daniel Akin and Jason Allen, along with Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board; Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California; Fermin Whittaker, executive director of the California Southern Baptist Convention; and Ronald Ellis, president of California Baptist University.

Others include Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Alan Sears, president of Alliance Defending Freedom; Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family; Jerry Johnson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters; Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary; and Marvin Olasky, editor in chief of World magazine.

Academics who endorsed the statement include Robert George, Princeton University professor; Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia law professor; Michael McConnell, director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center; Barry Corey, president of Biola University in La Mirada, Calif.; and Hamza Yusuf Hanson, president of Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal-arts school in Berkeley, Calif.

Based on reporting by Tom Strode with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Most American churchgoers are hearing politics from the pulpits of their churches during this presidential election season, a new survey reveals.

Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (64 percent) to the Pew Research Center survey say their ministers spoke about at least one political or social issue in the spring and early summer.

And 14 percent said their pastors even spoke about a specific presidential candidate. That’s even though churches can be stripped of tax-exempt status for endorsing or opposing a candidate under the Johnson Amendment, which both Donald Trump and the Republican Party platform have said they want to repeal.

But more than three-quarters of all recent churchgoers say the political talk happens “only sometimes, rarely or never,”

Hot-button topics

Most often, it comes in the form of remarks on political or social issues, according to Pew.

Hot topics included religious liberty and homosexuality, with about 40 percent of recent churchgoers saying they’d heard about either one of those two topics. That was followed by abortion (29 percent) and immigration (27 percent) and, less frequently, environmental issues (22 percent) and economic inequality (18 percent).

Messages on religious liberty and abortion echoed positions traditionally associated with political and religious conservatives: 32 percent said they had heard from their pastors that religious liberty is under attack, and 22 percent had heard messages against abortion.

Messages on immigration and the environment seemed more aligned with political and religious progressives: 19 percent heard comments welcoming immigrants, and 16 percent on the need to protect the environment.

Pulpit talk was more mixed on homosexuality: 20 percent heard critical views of homosexuality, while 12 percent heard messages encouraging acceptance of LGBT people. Another 7 percent of churchgoers said they had heard both sides from pulpits.

Some pastors endorse candidates

A few recent churchgoers heard pastors endorse (9 percent) or oppose (11 percent) a presidential candidate from the pulpit, according to Pew. Despite some prominent endorsements from evangelical leaders for Donald Trump, more churchgoers have heard their pastors speak against the Republican candidate (7 percent against Trump compared to 4 percent against Hillary Clinton) or for his Democratic opponent (6 percent for Clinton, compared to 1 percent for Trump).

Black Protestants were most likely to hear about the candidates at church: 28 percent had heard messages supporting Clinton (compared to 2 percent supporting Trump) and 20 percent opposing Trump (compared to 7 percent opposing Clinton).

The survey was conducted online and by mail June 7-July 5 among a nationally representative sample of 4,602 adults, Pew reported.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Religious groups ranging from black Protestants to Latino evangelicals to Reform Jews are gearing up for massive voter-registration activities to boost turnout on Election Day.

PICO National Network, a faith-based organizing network, announced its “Together We Vote” plan to work with allies to seek new voters concerned about racial justice.

“We’re going to be talking to over a million voters in conversations with people who have regularly been bypassed by conventions and parties and candidates,” said Denise Collazo, leader of the initiative and PICO’s chief of staff.

Jose Arce of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition spoke at the “Together We Vote” news conference at the National Press Club. He joined other faith leaders in plans to register people to vote. (RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks)The campaign will focus particularly on issues such as police brutality, improved wages and keeping immigrant families together.

“We will work to withhold federal dollars from cities and states that refuse to hold police accountable for how they are treating black and brown bodies in this country,” said Dwayne Royster, PICO’s political director.

Involve children of immigrants

Jose Arce of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition said many of the children of deported immigrants are now citizens with voting power.

“They’re coming of age, and they’re ready to vote,” he said. “And we’re ready to register them.”

In addition, activists hope their efforts will counter so-called voter suppression laws they believe have reduced voting opportunities in many states. Appellate courts across the country recently invalidated restrictive voting laws.

African-American churches plan registration drives

Even as this umbrella group makes plans for coordinated efforts especially in battleground states, individual denominations—including historically African-American churches—are making additional plans.

The Freedom Sunday Coalition has been organizing several black denominations with conference calls, talking points and social media tips.

The Progressive National Baptist Convention planned training for its church members during its annual session in New Orleans.

“What we want is every church to be involved in registering new people, and we don’t want them to feel like they have to wait for a certain day to do it,” PNBC President James C. Perkins said. “We want them to do it every Sunday.”

The African Methodist Episcopal Church held voter-education training during its quadrennial general conference in July in Philadelphia. And it has joined other voter-education activities in states across the country as well as the “Together We Vote” campaign.

“No matter what our faith is, all have some of the same concerns,” said Adam Richardson Jr., an AME bishop who is working on voter registration in Florida. “One of the things that we all are striving for is to do something to ameliorate voter apathy ’cause voter apathy is, in my opinion, worse than voter suppression. … So, we have to make sure that people are mobilized to go vote.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Political analysts wonder if Democrats have a chance for the first time in many presidential election cycles to close the so-called “God gap”—the dynamic that has seen regular worshippers pulling the lever for Republican candidates far more than they do for Democrats.

Shrinking gap

A Pew Research Center survey released this month showed the overall gap shrinking significantly, with registered voters who attend religious services at least weekly leaning to Republican nominee Donald Trump by a 49-45 percent margin over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. That is far smaller than the 55-40 percent advantage Republican Mitt Romney held over President Obama at the same point in 2012.

With the key Catholic swing voter, Clinton actually leads Trump by a 19-point margin among weekly people who attend Mass weekly, whereas Romney led Obama by 3 points among that same group—a 22-point shift.

And with Clinton’s selection of U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., as her running mate—a Jesuit-educated Catholic who served as a missionary in Honduras—some believe Clinton, a lifelong Methodist who can speak fluently about her faith, has a chance to widen the lead over Trump.

Do the Democrats want to engage the faithful?

The big question now, however, is whether the Clinton campaign is equipped to exploit that opening, or if it wants to.

The campaign waited until July to hire a full-time faith outreach director, and in the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention, staffers still were scrambling to fill out a lineup of faith-friendly speakers and events to try to showcase their outreach to the media and a huge television audience.

“Hillary Clinton, and even the Democratic National Committee, have not been very active in pursuing the faith-based vote, nowhere even like what (the Obama campaign) did in 2012, which was nowhere like it was in 2008,” said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron and a leading expert in religion and politics. “So, there really has been a decline in that” effort.

Prime opportunity for Clinton

And yet, some political observers see it as an opportune time for Democrats to reclaim religious voters, given Trump’s near-record lows in some polling categories. And Trump, who has been divorced twice, has a history of vulgar behavior and switching positions on foundational issues to many believers—like abortion rights—while often struggling during the campaign to present a convincing witness of his professed Christian faith.

“The bar is lower than it’s ever been for Democrats just to show they’re not antagonistic to people of faith,” said Michael Wear, an evangelical who worked on faith-based issues for the White House during Obama’s first term and then directed faith outreach for the 2012 re-election campaign.

“Hillary doesn’t have to back down on principle one bit. She never has. The question is whether they choose to look at the faith community as a convenient foil or whether they are going to live up to the message of unity and togetherness of the campaign and actually engage in faith outreach.”

In a sense, it’s as if the Clinton campaign is making the old mistake of fighting the last war: Democrats have been so unsuccessful at attracting pew-sitters to the polls, many party officials and strategists simply have thrown in the towel and decided it’s not worth the effort.

Attracting the religiously unaffiliated

As the electorate, like U.S. society, has become increasingly polarized, campaigns have become increasingly focused on turning out the base rather than trying to reach out to a shrinking center of persuadable voters. For Trump and the Republicans, that means trying to attract conservative Christians. For Clinton and the Democrats, that has meant rallying the more secular voters and, in the process, often alienating faith-based voters.

The Pew survey showed even if Clinton isn’t generating as much enthusiasm among religiously unaffiliated voters as Obama did in 2012, she is winning that demographic handily.

More importantly, the number of so-called “nones” has risen sharply, from 14 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 21 percent this year—a larger bloc than Catholics (20 percent), white evangelicals (20 percent), white mainline Protestants (19 percent) or any other religious group. And they make up more than one-quarter of the Democratic base.

Unwise to alienate religious voters

But many experts—as well as some Clinton supporters—say this shouldn’t be an “either/or” calculus. For one thing, voters who identify by religious labels or practice, when taken together, still far outnumber purely secular voters. Alienating them is probably not wise, nor is it a path to expanding the field of play.

“My view is that it’s worthwhile trying to maximize the vote overall,” Green said. “Going into the general election, that’s where there can be some real advantage” for Clinton, he said, especially if the contest is as close as expected. “In that mix, a faith-based appeal could be the thing that makes a difference.”

Building the campaign team

The campaign also seems to recognize the possibilities of appealing to the faith-based bloc, some observers noted. Selecting Kaine as the vice-presidential nominee sent an important signal, and Clinton recently hired John McCarthy, a graduate of Catholic University of America who worked on Catholic outreach for the 2012 Obama campaign, to coordinate faith efforts for the campaign.

In January, the campaign hired a Jewish outreach director and recently also added Zina Pierre to fill a new slot as African-American faith director. More such hires are expected soon, said Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for the campaign. “We are growing our team,” she said.

The question is whether, having arrived relatively late to the party, these faith outreach staffers will have sufficient sway and resources to make that message a priority. McCarthy insisted that won’t be a problem, because faith is so important to Clinton herself, and her message of unity is at heart a religious one.

“I would say that from Day One, because of who this candidate is,” outreach to people of faith “is something that has been at the very core of this campaign,” McCarthy said in an interview. “It’s going to be a lot of work going forward. But we have a great candidate who this means a lot to.”

Any place for pro-life Democrats?

Another serious challenge, however, is that Clinton has come out in favor of reversing the longstanding policy to bar federal funds from paying for abortions. The so-called Hyde amendment has been routinely attached to annual appropriations bills since 1976, a rare instance of ongoing bipartisan agreement in Washington.

The Democratic draft platform this year went so far as to incorporate a pledge to overturn the Hyde amendment—a single sentence that has infuriated Democrats who oppose abortion and those who, if they are pro-choice, want to at least allow room for other Democrats who would limit abortion rights or press for policies that seek to reduce abortions.

“Political malpractice,” fumed a Protestant who has consulted with the party on faith outreach and asked not to be named.

Many of the angry Democrats are in fact the Catholic voters and legislators Clinton needs to woo in order to win in November. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia called the platform language “crazy,” and Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota also objected. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, one of the hosts of the convention, wrote a letter to the platform committee calling for a change.

And one group, Democrats for Life, put up billboards in Philadelphia proclaiming that “1 in 3 Democrats are pro-life” and that the party needs to be a “big tent” that welcomes a diversity of views and policy approaches.

Clinton’s personal faith

In the end, the Democrat’s best hope, and best weapon, may be Clinton herself—if she decides to open up.

Clinton has said she doesn’t like to “advertise” her faith and she hasn’t spoken much about religion during the campaign. One notable exception came in January during a town hall event ahead of the Iowa caucuses when Clinton delivered an extended answer about how her faith informs her progressive views.

She also highlighted her faith a month later while campaigning in South Carolina, where she wanted to attract African-American Christians who identify with the connection between faith and politics.

Will those episodes be harbingers of a general election message to convince voters that the GOP is not “God’s Own Party”?

“At any given moment you could imagine that (Clinton) could start talking about her faith,” McCarthy said. “I think between now and November, you’re going to hear not only her talking a lot about her faith, but you’re going to hear about her personal motivations for doing these things.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Evangelical Christians converged on the nation’s capital for a prayer rally on one of the hottest days of the summer.

With the nation reeling from recent shootings and shocked by news of a terrorist attack in France and an attempted coup in Turkey, speakers at Together 2016 cited the global events from the stage and spoke of the challenges facing Americans.

“Jesus can heal our nation,” former Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd said to applause and cries of “Amen.” “Jesus can heal relationships. America is like a broken bone that needs to be put back into its correct place in order to experience healing.”

Emphasis on prayer

With their calls for prayer and unity, speakers generally focused on spiritual rather than political solutions to the nation’s problems. The event had been promoted by Pope Francis and noted by President Barack Obama.

A crowd gathered for Together 2016, an evangelical Christian prayer rally in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks)Nick Hall, 34, the leader of the Pulse ministry that organized the event focused on Millennials, also addressed the crowd in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

“God, we don’t need to hear from some man or some woman,” he said in an opening prayer. “God, we don’t need to hear from some band. We need to hear from heaven today. That’s why we’ve come.”

Others taking the stage included preachers such as Josh McDowell and Samuel Rodriguez, Christian musical artist Lecrae and the group Hillsong United.

Millennnial and multi-ethnic

Hall, speaking especially to the Millennials, said “we want to get the hashtag #JesusChangesEverything trending around the world today.” It remained one of the top trending tweets on Twitter hours after the event.

Many in the multi-ethnic crowd joined in as contemporary Christian singer Michael W. Smith sang about compassion. As people sweated and fanned themselves, wearing beach hats and hovering under umbrellas, they offered bottles of water and welcomed others to the scant shady spots in earshot of the stage’s speakers and songs.

Repent and reset

Although cut short due to the heat, the event moved methodically through discussions of how to “reset,” with sermons and prayers calling for repentance, prayer and service. The generation of Facebook and Twitter was urged to put down cellphones and meet people for coffee instead and to think about people less fortunate than themselves.

“We, the people of the cross, repent of 1.2 million children who will be trafficked around the globe this year while we care more about traffic reports,” Christian author Ann Voskamp prayed, “repent of the 3.1 (million) children under 5 who will die this year because of starvation while we spend $60 billion dollars this year trying to lose weight.”

Some members of the audience prayed for others who they thought needed a divine touch.

Jennifer Yeisley, 31, a nondenominational Christian from Rockville, Md., got on her knees and prayed for Jackie Herbertson, 73, from Brooksville, Fla., who sat in a wheelchair, her toes curled by arthritis.

Families and senior adults

Although many Millennials gathered near the stage, the crowd also included families and senior citizens.

“My husband has been praying for a revival in this nation,” Herbertson said of her spouse, Bill, adding he had written to congressmen and evangelist Billy Graham. “He wanted to see us all get together and pray. So, when we heard about this one … we wanted to come.”

Some of the prayers from the stage were tied to pleas for improved family and race relations.

“Let me die for my home. Let me die for my community. Let me die for a white man; let me die for a black man; let me die for a Hispanic man; let me die for an Asian man,” gospel artist Kirk Franklin prayed. “Let me get out of the way, so you can be God in my life.”

Women in attendance, on the program

The event follows many other religion-related gatherings—both of believers and nonbelievers—on what is known as the nation’s front lawn. Together 2016 was planned in ways similar to Promise Keepers’ 1997 “sacred assembly” for evangelical Christian men—but this time, it included women, too.

The program, with an unusually high number of women speakers for an evangelical gathering, featured Voskamp and poet Amena Brown in a spoken-word segment that featured calls for forgiveness and reconciliation related to racism and privilege.

“We will not be the people who turn a blind eye to injustice,” Voskamp said.

“We will use our voices, our time, our resources to effect change,” Brown responded.

As the event drew to a close, many pledged to pray more and study the Bible. Charlene Atkins, 49, who attends a mostly black African-American church in Dallas, said she hopes to encourage greater work across racial lines in her church community.

“One of the things that we talked about while out there was helping people who are Christians understand what it means to be as one body in Christ,” she said. “How do we look more like Christ and less like ourselves? I think that would help a lot in the issues that our nation is facing if the church would start to look more like the church.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A survey of 1,000 Americans by LifeWay Research finds six in 10 Americans don’t believe it is morally wrong for people to identify with a gender different from the sex they were assigned at birth.

And more than half don’t think it’s morally wrong to change one’s body to match his or her gender identity by taking hormones or having surgery.

“A majority of Americans reject the view of a creator giving them a gender that shouldn’t be changed,” LifeWay Executive Director Scott McConnell said.

But those numbers shift sharply among evangelicals, the survey revealed. Fifty-four percent of evangelicals believe it’s morally wrong to identify with a different gender. 

That’s significantly higher than among Catholics (26 percent), members of other religions such as Judaism and Islam (35 percent) and the nonreligious (20 percent).

In addition, evangelicals are almost twice as likely (61 percent) as nonevangelical Americans (32 percent) to say using surgery or hormones to transition from one gender to another is wrong.

The survey comes as several states have introduced legislation that would require people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex they were assigned at birth. And the murder of 49 people last month at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., has highlighted concerns LBGT people still are not safe and religious teachings may be a contributing factor to hatred toward them.

Among all Americans, 35 percent say it’s morally wrong for people to identify with a gender different from the sex they were assigned at birth, while 45 percent say it is not wrong, and 14 percent say it is not a moral issue, the LifeWay survey showed. When it comes to transitioning, 42 percent say it’s morally wrong, while 43 percent disagree.

Another 11 percent say transitioning is not a moral issue, which McConnell said reflects “a changing worldview.”

“A growing percentage of Americans don’t believe in right and wrong. They don’t believe there’s absolute truth—and if there’s no absolute truth, then they’re reluctant to talk about morality,” McConnell said.

Christians as a whole, both Protestant (22 percent) and Catholic (23 percent), also are least likely to say they know a transgender person, which affects one’s beliefs about the morality of being transgender, LifeWay discovered.

Among the 27 percent of all Americans who say they know someone who is transgender, 25 percent say identifying with a different gender is wrong, and 28 percent say transitioning is. Those numbers are higher among people who have no transgender acquaintances: 39 percent say it is wrong to identify with another gender, and 48 percent say it is wrong to transition.

The telephone survey was conducted Sept. 14-28 and had an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, according to LifeWay. Margins of error in subgroups were higher.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Donald Trump has been married three times, spoken lewdly about his daughter’s body and doesn’t seem to know his Bible. Yet white evangelical voters are flocking to him.

A new poll from the Pew Research Center finds 78 percent of white evangelical voters say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, and a third of them say they “strongly” back him.

This support does not startle the pollsters.

“It’s what we’ve seen consistently in past campaigns—that white evangelical Protestants tend to lean strongly toward the Republican candidate,” said Jessica Martinez, a Pew senior researcher.

But this evangelical support for Trump is even higher than Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, enjoyed at this point in his campaign.

Religiously unaffiliated support Clinton

Evangelicals form a powerful voting bloc, accounting for a fifth of all voters and a third of those who identify or lean toward the GOP. But they could be balanced in the general election by another hefty group—the religiously unaffiliated or “nones.”

The nones make up more than a quarter of registered Democrats, and two-thirds (67 percent) say they would vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, according to Pew.

Trump has worked hard to court evangelicals, scheduling campaign stops at churches and Liberty University, creating an evangelical advisory board and holding a summit in June with a cadre of evangelical leaders, one of whom emerged from the meeting asserting that Trump recently had been “born again.”

Some prominent evangelicals critique Trump

But Trump has also been called out by some prominent evangelicals for his statements deriding women and minority groups, his brags about his wealth and offhanded claims to a religiosity that seems to contradict his resume and lifestyle.

“Nothing beats the Bible, not even The Art of the Deal,” he told a group of Republicans last summer, referring to the book he wrote on business negotiations. Then asked for a favorite Bible verse, he declined to come up with one.

A Pew poll released in January showed that a sizable minority of white evangelical Republicans do not consider Trump a pious man—44 percent view him as “not too” or “not at all” religious.

“But at the same time, many of them thought he could make a good or a great president,” Martinez said.

Trump favored on nearly every issue

The current survey shows them preferring Trump by wide margins on almost every issue—from the economy to defending the nation from terror attacks to abortion.

Despite the new poll’s favorable numbers for Trump on the evangelical vote, its authors point out it does not so much reflect evangelicals’ confidence in the billionaire as their distaste for Clinton. White evangelicals split 45 percent to 30 percent on whether their vote is anti-Clinton as opposed to pro-Trump.

The inverse holds true for Clinton among the nones, though by a lesser margin: 36 percent say they are voting against Trump as opposed to the 30 percent who are voting for Clinton. That contrasts with the nones’ support for President Obama at this time during the 2012 election cycle, when 50 percent of votes for Obama were pro-Obama as opposed to the 13 percent that were anti-Romney.

Other findings from the new Pew survey:

• Black Protestants solidly favor Clinton over Trump, 89 percent to 8 percent.
• Catholics divide sharply along racial lines. Hispanic Catholics prefer Clinton to Trump, 77 percent to 16 percent. But half of white Catholics favor Trump, and 46 favor Clinton.
• Half of white mainline Protestants say they will vote for Trump, while 39 percent favor Clinton.

The Washington-based nonprofit surveyed 2,245 adults June 15-26. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.9 percentage points for white evangelicals and 5.1 percentage points for religiously unaffiliated voters.