‘Constructive, critical, but also uncomfortable conversations’ as Akron-area churches prepare for Election Day

By Leah Shepard/Kent State NewsLab

At a time when tensions rise all over the country in anticipation of the election, local churches and Christian faith organizations say they are also rising in the American evangelical churches — but most remain wary of letting politics divide their congregations.

According to a recent Lifeway poll, 50% of Protestant pastors in the United States plan to vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, with 24% planning to cast their vote for Kamala Harris and 23% remaining undecided. Evangelical voters are sharply divided along racial lines, too.

In greater Akron, some churches remain passionate about issues like abortion, while they and others try to heal or prevent divisions in their congregations. 

For some evangelicals, pro-life positions remain key

According to a 2024 study by Pew Research Lab, 73% of white evangelicals in the U.S. believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, in contrast to the 36% of all Americans who believe it should be illegal in all or most cases. 

Matt Miller, lead pastor at Springfield Assembly of God in Springfield Township, said in the 2023 election cycle he and his staff encouraged their congregation to vote against Issue 1, which enshrined the right to abortion in the Ohio state constitution, and Issue 2, which legalized recreational marijuana usage.

He described his church as “unashamedly pro-life,” but said his church does not endorse one party.

“We don’t endorse candidates, but we do encourage and inform our people,” Miller said. “I encourage them to take the policies, their stances on certain things… and then use the Bible as the sifting filtering thing, and whatever candidate has the most on top after you do that should get your vote.”

Dan Harrison, lead pastor at Ravenna Assembly of God, which is attended regularly by 100 people, said his congregation sees pro-life policies as important.

“We also believe that life should be precious outside of the womb,” he said. “We don’t want to be these kind of pro-life people that we’re just voting for babies to always have to be born, but then not taking care of families once the babies have been born.”

Harrison said he has received numerous election guides from political parties encouraging him to tell his congregation to vote a certain way. Despite this, he said he won’t endorse a political party from the pulpit.

Harrison said he was “surprised” at how quickly American white evangelicals were won over by Trump in 2016. 

“Unfortunately they put a lot of their identity into that, they think ‘oh, he’s going to bring us religious freedom again,’” he said. “I think, honestly, that might have done us more harm than good.”

Evangelical political leanings differ by race

In 2020, 85% of white evangelicals cast their ballots for Trump. Conversely, an April 2024 Pew Research Study found that 84% of Black evangelicals vote Democrat. 

Kemp Boyd is the executive director of Love Akron, a nonprofit faith-based organization that aims to create unity in churches in the Akron-area in order to serve communities in and around it. He also is co-lead pastor at Garden City Church, which he calls a multi-ethnic nondenominational church in Akron. 

Boyd said he first noticed dissension around politics in the church when Trump ran for president against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It got worse in 2020 during Trump’s reelection campaign and the rejuvenation of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

“When George Floyd was murdered, you had some predominantly white churches saying, ‘hey man, why are we talking about justice?’ When [in] Black churches, it’s all about justice,” Boyd said. “Jesus was about justice, so how are we not talking about justice?”

Boyd said part of the reason he thinks many white evangelical churches chose not to address this was that they “didn’t know how to. But it came across as very dismissive,” he said.

Around this time, Boyd and other local pastors had a meeting to talk about the election and tensions that gripped the nation.

“One of the Black pastors said, ‘hey, when are we going to come together as the body of Christ to talk about the racial dialect of our president?’” Boyd said. “And one of the white pastors said, ‘I didn’t come here to talk about all that.’”

Harrison thinks many white evangelicals vote Republican because they equate their religious values with American tradition — but he things the combination of those two identities is a mistake.

“A lot of the American church, as far as evangelicals…have just held on to that concept and have been unable to separate ‘I’m an American,’ from ‘I’m a Christian,’” he said. 

Boyd said the “politicalization of Christianity” and Christian nationalism often steers believers away from the root of their faith. 

“I think there are Christian believers who feel as if this is the real way, as if [Trump] is the messiah,” he said. “And we’re trusting in a person instead of trusting in our God. I think that has drawn a divide.”

Some churches aim to overcome polarization

Angela Porubsky, co-lead pastor at Radiant Life Church in Wadsworth, said that instead of addressing policies directly, they encourage their congregations to focus on what they can do individually to follow biblical teachings. 

“For instance, taking care of the orphan and the widow and the foreigner among you,” Porubsky said. “We would speak to the significance of that, but not address how that’s done or what party has a better plan for it.”

Porubsky has been in ministry for 17 years and at Radiant Life Church for 12. She and her husband co-lead congregations in Orville, Akron and Wadsworth.  

“The thing that pains my heart the most is that people say ‘you can’t be a Christian and be a part of this party,’” Porubsky said. “Those blanket statements are damaging to the church and damaging to people. I don’t believe that the church and politics are meant to marry one another.”

Harrison said that though his congregation has been largely unified, polarization in the church as a whole is something he thinks has gotten worse recently.

“[That’s] partly due to our wanting to believe the worst about the people we don’t agree with,” he said. 

Boyd echoed this, saying that polarization is something that Love Akron is also working to fight. On Oct. 26, the nonprofit held an event called “Seeking Understanding” that brought in Christian politicians and citizens from both sides of the aisle.

“We want to create spaces where we can get information out to people and have really constructive, critical, but also uncomfortable conversations that challenge how we see things and how we’re looking at it.”

This story was originally published by the Kent State NewsLab, a collaborative news outlet publishing journalism by Kent State students.